In the beginning there was old Tom Morris and his son Tommy, both from St Andrews. The father won the British Open – the only championship at the time – four times and his eponymous son also won it four times. Yes, wet wool, 19th century golf, in all its paternalistic glory. The men marched off the first tee into a heavy sea wind and no one knew when or if they would return.

And ever since, fathers have raised sons in the game, both generations dreaming of hoisted trophies. OB Keeler spilled barrels of ink when he wrote about Bobby Jones and his little boy-blue start in golf at the behest of his golf-loving father, Robert Purmedus Jones (aka “The Colonel”), who was a wealthy Atlanta lawyer.

If Arnold Palmer said it once, he’d say it a thousand times: His father, Deacon, the instructor and head pro at Latrobe Country Club in western Pennsylvania, taught young Arnold how to handle a club once. Palmer never changed it.

The father of pharmacist Jack Nicklaus, Charlie, a three-sport athlete at Ohio State, started his son Jackie in golf as an oversized 10-year-old in Columbus, Ohio, in the summer of 1950, at their club, Scioto Country Club. Mid-country, midcentury – middle class, at the northernmost level. Donald Hall’s “Fathers Playing Catch with Sons” is largely about baseball, but Charlie and Jackie on the court in the 1950s could have fit right in.

Twelve years later, Jack Nicklaus defeated Arnold Palmer in an 18-hole playoff at Oakmont Country Club to win the first of his record 18 major titles, the 1962 US Open. It was Father’s Day. Since then (after a date change), most US Opens have concluded on Father’s Day, and most years the father-son relationship is an elementary part of the winner’s life story.

This next phrase is known throughout the gulf: Tiger and Earl. The green hug between father and son after Woods won the 1997 Masters Tournament is one of the most iconic moments in golf history. It was Tiger’s first major as a pro and he won by 12 shots. Nine years later, Woods fell into his caddy’s arms after winning the British Open at Royal Liverpool, 10 weeks after Earl Woods died aged 74.

But in 2014, Royal Liverpool became the scene of an evolving story when Rory McIlroy, aged 25 and the only child of working-class parents from outside Belfast, won the British Open. It was his third major title and in a nice, old-fashioned gesture at the awards ceremony, with thousands of fans ringing the 18th green, McIlroy dedicated the victory to his mother.

“This is the first big one I won when my mom was here,” he said. “Mom, this one’s for you.”

Rosie McDonald McIlroy, who helped pay for her son’s overseas junior golf trip through her shift work at a 3M factory, was beaming. Later, she hesitantly placed a few fingers on the winner’s burgundy jug as her son gripped it tightly.

Five years later, Woods won the 2019 Masters. It was quite a shock: He hadn’t won a major in 11 years. In the win, his mother, Kultida, who was born and raised in Thailand, stood in a grassy knoll about 10 yards from the 18th green. She couldn’t see her son’s winning putt, but she could hear the thunderous reaction to it. Her face was painted with pride. In the win, Woods spoke in a low voice about how his mother would get up at 5:30 a.m. to drive Tiger in a Plymouth Duster to nine-hole Pee-wee tournaments, 90 minutes there and 90 minutes back.

Last year, when Woods was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame, “Tida,” known in Woods’s close circle, was tough and direct, front row, radiant just like Rosie McIlroy in 2014.

Woods recounted, without notes, the many times his mother took him to a par-3 course near Tiger’s childhood home in Southern California, giving him 50 cents for a hot dog and 25 cents for the call home at the end of the day. Woods staked his early and successful putting games on the quarters his mother gave him. Tiger, sharing personal stories about his mother, and Tida, laughing with cameras pointed at her, was a rare personal moment for both of them.

This year at the Los Angeles Country Club, the final round of the US Open fell, as usual, on Father’s Day, but the day belonged to a mother and her son.

The winner Wyndham Clark had heard Woods talk about his own mother at Augusta National during the Masters and at the Hall of Fame induction. It stuck with him.

Breast cancer had taken the life of his mother Lise Clark ten years ago, when Wyndham was still a teenager. He almost quit golf after she died. He said his mother had a nickname for him – “Winner” – and had a two-word mantra for him: “Play big.”

The technical aspects of the game were not her forte. Nor were they for Rose McIlroy or Tida Woods.

When Clark was in high school, his mother came to one of his games. She watched him make an eight-foot putt and applaud enthusiastically for her son.

“Mom,” Clark said to Mother as he came off the green. “I just made triple bogey.”

Mama didn’t know and Mama didn’t care. Her son had holed a putt.

Minutes after winning the US Open, Clark said, “I felt like my mom was watching over me today.” Mother’s Day, so to speak. A wistful one.

And now the British Open is in high gear, once again at Royal Liverpool. After two rounds, English golfer Tommy Fleetwood was in second place alone, five shots behind the leader, Brian Harman. Everywhere Fleetwood comes onto the track he is greeted as ‘Tommy lad’. Even McIlroy went out of his way to find Fleetwood, after an opening round 66, to call him a “Tommy lad!” of his own.

Fleetwood, one of the most likeable players in the game today, grew up in humble circumstances about 30 miles north, in Southport, where his mother was a hairdresser. Fleetwood has a distinct appearance, an upturned nose that is often sunburned, blue eyes that look almost tucked in, and long, flowing hair. Sue Fleetwood longed to cut her son’s hair, but Tommy boy wouldn’t have it. Sue Fleetwood died last year at the age of 60, two years after being diagnosed with cancer.

“She took me everywhere,” Fleetwood said Friday night, on the one-year anniversary of her death. It started to rain and the air cooled.

“She was always the driver. She used to take me to the shooting range. To the golf course. To wherever I wanted to go. She was always a very supportive influence. She was a very tough woman, but she never said no to taking me everywhere. She was great to me.”

There was nothing sentimental about his tone. Fleetwood talked about golf and his mother and he smiled. Another Mother’s Day arrived, so to speak. Win, lose or not, another Mother’s Day arrived for another golfing son.

Not many major golf championships have given fans the chance to expand their vocabulary as well, but this year’s US Open at Los Angeles Country Club could do just that. Over the four days of the tournament, starting on Thursday, broadcasters – and perhaps the golfers too – routinely expect to use a word that may be unfamiliar to many in the international viewing public.

The word is barranca — pronounced “burr-ahng-kuh” — and it describes a narrow, winding, steep-walled gully or river canyon typical of Southern California landscapes.

The barranca on the LA Country Club’s North Course comes into play repeatedly throughout the 18 holes, especially as protection in and around the greens. Errant golf balls landing in the barranca may be unplayable and result in a one-stroke penalty. In other cases, you can expect competitors to run down the barranca in hopes of saving their golf balls. It could be a successful recovery trick, or it could just make for a good shot – a golfer dipped a few feet below the fairway flounders away to try to make par.

However, the LA Country Club barranca is far from a random course layout curiosity. It serves an important, effective drainage role during rainy seasons and adds a natural, whimsical aesthetic to the course design, which originated in the 1920s. In the 2010s, the barranca, which meanders throughout the site with tributaries flowing extending in several directions, but mostly grassy. A renovation of the grounds, completed in 2017, by the golf architect Gil Hanse, his design partner, Jim Wagner, and a design consultant, Geoff Shackelford, restored the barranca to its original appearance – and tactical purpose.

It first comes into play on the second hole, a par 4 of 497 yards, where players must make a long approach stroke over the barranca. The golfers will encounter the barranca five more times on the front nine.

On the 520-yard, par-4 17th, Hanse removed several trees so the serpentine barranca would be visible from the tee, reminding players of the danger lurking. It could test the nerves of the tournament leaders as they go into the penultimate hole of the championship in Sunday’s final round.

“The barranca just flows through,” John Bodenhamer, the chief championships officer of the United States Golf Association, which runs the US Open, said Wednesday. “There’s a sparkle to how it’s used.”

Bodenhamer added that three feet of water flowed through the barranca when he visited the site in March. Last month the water was still as high as 60 cm. But with a limited amount of rainfall in June, Shackelford said Wednesday, the barranca was now mostly sandy or dry, a condition expected and desired.

“You’ll see players play like they were meant to be,” Bodenhamer said. “You will see a lot of heroic shots, a lot of excitement. The barranca is simply stunning.”

And perhaps educational, especially for those who want to expand their vocabulary.

If ever there was a postcard of the Los Angeles Country Club, it would showcase the breathtaking view from the tee box on the par-3 11th hole. Downhill and in the distance, the towers of the city’s skyline frame an elevated, rolling greenery protected by three hogweed-shaped bunkers.

However, the hole is symbolic of more than just the view. It’s one of those five par 3s on the North Course, site of the 123rd United States Open starting Thursday. Together, these various holes form a rare sight, as the typical US Open course only has four par-3 holes.

In an era when mass drives are routine, this distinctive feature will test the accuracy of players trying to gauge par-3 flagsticks from as close as about 100 yards or from as far away as nearly 300. The holes are a prized collection of gems such as the club organizes its first major tournament.

“I think the members look at each one individually because they are so different,” said Richard Shortz, former club president and co-chair of the US Open Committee, of how club members view the holes. “They’re proud of all of them, but they’re not clustered in a way that you can classify all five.”

One, however, deserves a special rating: the 15th. That’s the hole for aces.

Last October, Shortz played on the court. The 15th hole played at just 78 yards at the 2017 Walker Cup, but on the day Shortz played, he played at 120, as the flag was further back in the green. Shortz hit a clean hit with his 9-iron and felt the ball could be close to the hole. But with the pin hidden behind the front bunker, Shortz pulled out his putter anyway.

As he approached the green, he didn’t see the ball until he peered into the cup and grinned. It was Shortz’s first hole-in-one on the 15th.

Looking ahead to the Open, he made a bold prediction for a hole that is on the tournament’s scorecard at 124 yards.

“I think at 15 we’re going to see some holes in one,” said Shortz, who is an older brother of The New York Times crossword creator Will. “It’s not like it’s going to be easy. If someone hits the right shot, well these guys are good.

There have been notable holes in one this past month: from Southern California club pro Michael Block at the PGA Championship and from Scottie Scheffler at the Charles Schwab Challenge the following week.

Scheffler, No. 1 in the world, may have an advantage as he competed as an amateur in the Walker Cup at the Los Angeles Country Club six years ago, partnering Collin Morikawa, who is scheduled to play in the Open.

Judging by the statistics, the leaders in par 3s on the PGA Tour there can also be favourites: world No. 2 Jon Rahm ranks first in this category (average 2.92 strokes), followed by Max Homa (2.94). Scheffler is in fifth place.

In 2013, Homa, then a senior at the University of California at Berkeley, shot a first-round 61 at the Los Angeles Country Club, on his way to winning the PAC-12 tournament. Rahm, then a freshman at Arizona State, finished 10th.

Yet that limited experience is no guarantee of success, says architect Gil Hanse, who designed George C. Thomas Jr. in 2010. from 1928 restored.

“The par 3s will not favor one particular type of player,” said Hanse. “Here, because you’re talking about accuracy with the wedge versus accuracy with a 3-wood, that’s a big gap to have, to allow one player to accomplish all of these things.”

Jeff Hall, the USGA championship director who built the 7,421-yard, par-70 course for the Open, marveled at the “dramatic variety” of these so-called short holes. The two longest par 3’s are the fourth at 228 meters and the eleventh at 290 meters.

“On tour week in, week out, there just aren’t many par-3 holes that play on numbers like this,” he said.

Each of the par 3s is problematic in its own way, characterized by natural hazards and firm, tricky greens.

The first par 3 – the fourth hole of 228 yards – has a barranca, a dry, sandy ravine typical of Southern California, that slides like an anaconda through the front nine. On the fourth hole, he lurks in front and then curls back behind the green. There are also two sloping bunkers on the sides of the green.

“It’s a small target for a long hole with a lot of problems around it,” Hanse said.

In 1927 and 1928, when Thomas teamed up with Billy Bell to improve upon W. Herbert Fowler’s original 1921 draft, he created some par 3s with the flexibility to play as par 4s. The seventh hole of 284 meters is one of them. It’s a par 3 for the Open, and it could also play at 264 yards depending on where the tee is, Hall said.

However, the seventh green will be particularly difficult to read due to the topography. “You feel like the putts aren’t as uphill as they actually are because your eyes fall on the barranca and think it’s more downhill,” Hanse said.

After the 547-yard par-5 eighth hole—one of three par 5s on the course, which is also one more than normal for a US Open—players come to the final par 3 on the front nine. The ninth hole measures 171 yards on the scorecard.

“It feels like it’s a flat hole, but it’s really uphill and deceptive,” Hanse said. “There are four different quadrants in green to move the pin.”

During a tournament, officials change the location of the pin not only to reduce wear on the greens, but also to challenge the players. Hall, who oversees the course set up in his role as championship director for the golf association, explained that tee boxes at the Los Angeles club also have some room for the tees to move up or back. So, depending on the tee and pin locations for any given day, golfers could be dealing with a 30-yard difference on the eighth hole, he said.

The next par 3, the 11th, will test players’ adaptability. From a distance, “it’s such a great view, sometimes you want to stand there and not take the tee off,” said Shortz, the club’s former president.

Up close, the 11th offers a history lesson. The green is modeled after Scotland’s 15th hole on the West Links Course at North Berwick Golf Club. In the 19th century, when a veteran of the Crimean War played that famous hole, he noticed that the green jutted out at the front and then sloped from right to left; the shape reminded him of a fortress from Sevastopol.

The triangle jutting out next to the fort’s entry point was called a redan. The redan has since become a feature golf course architects love to incorporate into their course designs.

For his part, Thomas turned the 11th hole at the Los Angeles Country Club into a reverse redan because the green, 125 feet deep, slopes left to right. But the descent only continues halfway down the green because it’s slightly uphill again, Hanse said.

“It was actually a pretty monumental achievement when you consider how much dirt they moved to create that,” he said. “When you look down the valley, all of a sudden you see a protrusion of a green sticking out into it, and that didn’t happen naturally.”

The final par 3, the 15th, comes after the course’s longest hole, the par-5 623-yard 14th. Since the 15th is followed by three solid par 4s, the first two averaging 531 yards and then the 18th at 492 yards, players may be tempted to be too aggressive on the 15th to birdie at the hole before facing the rigors of the next three.

Watch out: Hanse placed a slight bump between the front stretch of the green and the back portion of the 15th.

“It’s not okay to just hit the green,” Hanse said. “You have to hit the green within the green to not worry about three-putting.”

Or, like Shortz, you can just bury it in the hole and not worry at all.

AUGUSTA, Georgia – Golf’s European tour could penalize players who defected to the rival Saudi Arabian-funded LIV Golf series, an arbitration panel in London ruled in a decision made Thursday, the first day of the Masters tournament. released.

With lawsuits in the United States potentially years from a conclusion, the panel’s decision on the European series, the DP World Tour, was the subject of immense anticipation and anxiety among players and executives. All sides saw it as a crucial test to see whether long-term tours could easily discipline players who joined LIV, the league funded by billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.

The ruling in Europe has no effect on the Masters, where 18 LIV players are on the field. But it was a blow to a rebel league that had hoped the days of tournament play would be a springboard to more credibility, not a renewed debate about the appeal and risk for big pros.

The decision is also likely to affect Europe’s roster for the Ryder Cup, the hugely popular US vs. Europe competition to be held in Italy this fall. To be eligible for the European team, players must be members of the DP World Tour.

The case before the London arbitrators dealt with a limited issue: the conflicting events policy of the DP World Tour, formerly known as the European Tour, which prohibits players from participating in certain tournaments without approval. In their ruling, announced after a five-day hearing in February, the arbitrators concluded that Rebel players had committed “serious violations” of tour rules.

The arbitrators found that the violations “increase the likelihood that commercial partners would be tempted to terminate or limit the relationship with the tour.” Citing “the magnitude and significance of the potential damage” to the tour, the panel said Keith Pelley, the tour’s CEO, had acted “entirely reasonable” in denying the players’ requests to perform at LIV events. appear declined.

In a statement hours before the start of the Masters, Pelley embraced the ruling.

“We are pleased that the panel recognized that we have a responsibility to our full members to do this and also determined that the process we followed was fair and proportionate,” said Pelley.

Matthew Schwartz, an attorney for LIV, complained in a statement that the arbitrators’ opinion “failed to reasonably indicate why competitive forces should be maintained.”

“By penalizing players for playing golf, the DPWT is trying to unreasonably control players and it is the sport and the fans that suffer,” he added, referring to the European tour. “There are no winners.”

While the case only concerned a specific tour policy, many sports lawyers predicted its outcome could shape ambitions to create alternatives to major leagues, tours and federations. A win for the tour, it was thought, would lend new support to the kind of rules leading sports organizers have put in place to protect their television rights deals and market power. A ruling for the players could have encouraged athletes — and not just in golf — to weigh up more serious overtures from upstart leagues and leagues with richer paydays.

The topic has cropped up repeatedly in recent years, with particularly fraught cases involving soccer, skating and swimming, and could become more prevalent as athletes claim more autonomy and wealthy Persian Gulf states look to invest more in sports. For example, in the women’s golf world, speculation is rampant that Saudi Arabia will eventually endorse a women’s league similar to the LIV, a league that has broken the men’s game.

That split became noticeable at a track near London last June, when longtime tour players like Ian Poulter, Charl Schwartzel and Lee Westwood showed up at LIV’s inaugural event. The tournament offered a first glimpse of how much money golfers could make if they eschewed traditional tours in favor of the Saudi-backed circuit: Schwartzel won $4.75 million in the three-day event, thanks to his individual and team performances. He had earned nearly 17.7 million euros, or more than $19 million, during his touring career, where he scored his first win in 2004.

Tour officials, wary of allowing individual golfers to undermine their multimillion-dollar television contracts and sponsorship deals, responded with suspensions and fines. However, Poulter was one of the players who won a stay of penalties, pending the ruling of the referees. This week’s decision ultimately involved 12 players – four others having given up their appeals – competing in either the LIV event in Great Britain or a subsequent event in the United States, a group consisting of Poulter, Westwood, Martin Kaymer, Graeme McDowell and Patrick Reed. Schwartzel and Sergio García were two of the players who had withdrawn from the case.

García, Reed and Schwartzel, who are all former Masters winners, are among the LIV players competing in Augusta this week.

LIV’s skeptics routinely view the circuit, with its 54-hole no-cut tournaments, as promoting a watered-down version of golf and as a way for Saudi Arabia to distance itself from its track record. of human rights. LIV executives insist they are merely trying to electrify and repopularize a sport they see as stagnant, and the league’s players, many of whom signed contracts guaranteeing them tens of millions of dollars, see themselves as independent contractors free to should be to compete wherever and whenever they choose.

“It doesn’t matter if I’m on the PGA Tour or LIV, I’ve always played two tours,” Reed said in a January interview at a DP World Tour event in Dubai, wearing a LIV hat on a driving range. “So all those guys saying you can’t actually double-dip, you can’t — What’s that cake phrase they like to use?” Make your own cake and eat it, or something? – well, Rory, myself, all these guys have played on multiple tours. (Rory McIlroy, a star of the PGA Tour and DP World Tour, was one of LIV’s most outspoken detractors.)

In their decision, the arbitrators emphatically said that the independent contractor’s argument was “exaggerated.”

“Individual players must accept any restrictions on their freedoms inherent in tour membership,” the panel said. No player, the arbitrators noted, “suggested that he had given up his independence by signing up for onerous (albeit rewarding) obligations to LIV.”

The tour, the arbitrators ruled, had not violated any competition or trade restriction laws.

“It is not part of competition law to require incumbents not to resist – they have a right to react and retaliate even if they are dominant,” the panel added.

The arbitrators’ ruling is unlikely to have a direct effect on the legal battle in the United States, where LIV and the PGA Tour are embroiled in bitter and expanding litigation. The US dispute will not come to court until next year.

British newspaper The Times had reported on Tuesday that the arbitrators had ruled in favor of the DP World Tour, sparking a flurry of chatter around the Augusta National grounds. With the text of the ruling unreleased at the time, McIlroy largely postponed comment, but said, “If that’s the outcome, it certainly changes the dynamic of everything.”

If LIV players resign from the tour, their chances of making the Ryder Cup squad will disappear under the eligibility rules. Sticking around may not guarantee a place on the roster either.

“I can only do what I can, which is play the tournaments that I can play, try to play them in the best way I can, and then everything else is out of my hands,” García said on Tuesday. “So the decisions of whether we can get picked or will get picked or anything like that, it doesn’t come down to me.”

Instead, he said, his fate in the Ryder Cup could be determined by whether Europe’s captain, Luke Donald, “thinks I’m good enough.” We will see.”