Latest news with #U.S.Opens
USA Today
09-07-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Kipp Popert three-peats at U.S. Adaptive Open, while Kim Moore wins for a second time
England's Kipp Popert made history with a third consecutive U.S. Adaptive Open victory, trouncing the field by 12 strokes at Woodmont Country Club. Popert becomes only the fourth male to win a USGA championship three years in a row and the first since Tiger Woods won a third U.S. Amateur in 1996. Born 10 weeks early and later diagnosed with cerebral palsy, 26-year-old Popert carded a championship record 11-under 61 in the first round and never looked back, adding rounds of 66 and 65 to get to 24 under. In January, the Englishman underwent a toe fusion surgery that took longer than expected to heal. He was unable to play more than four holes of a practice round earlier in the week. "Extremely grateful for my dad," said Popert. "Many of you know, he's a doctor. He's come out the last couple U.S. Opens. Obviously my foot was sore and it really helped, you know, double-dosing and doing everything we could to keep the foot going." Simon Lee and Lachlan Wood took a share of second at 12 under. Popert, the No. 1-ranked disability golfer, will next take part in final qualifying on July 14 for a chance to compete in the U.S. Amateur this August at The Olympic Club. Kim Moore wins women's division at 2025 U.S. Adaptive Open In the women's division, Kim Moore won for a second time and the first since 2022, defeating Bailey Bish and Amanda Cunha by three strokes. Moore closed with a 75 on Wednesday and praised the championship for adding live television coverage this year for the first time, broadcasting the final round on Golf Channel. Moore, 44, was born without a right foot, a severely clubbed left foot and a slight case of spina bifida. "It's just awesome that we were able to get the live coverage this year," said Moore, head coach at Western Michigan. "I think we should be getting live coverage for all the rounds. I know it's going to be something that people would watch." A total of 96 players representing eight impairment categories competed on Woodmont's South course in Rockville, Maryland. While Popert and Moore won the overall titles, each category featured an individual winner, including Max Togisala of Utah, who won the seated division, for a third straight time, by 23 strokes. The 21-year-old – who was set to play college golf before he was paralyzed in a ski accident in February 2022 – had to re-learn the game after his accident from a seated position. "This is a great time for us to shine our light," said Togisala, who rolled in an eagle putt on the 18th to finish off his closing 71 in style.
The Star
07-07-2025
- Sport
- The Star
Tennis-Shelton gets one up on dad as he battles to Wimbledon quarter-finals
Tennis - Wimbledon - All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, London, Britain - July 7, 2025 Ben Shelton of the U.S. celebrates winning his round of 16 match against Italy's Lorenzo Sonego REUTERS/Isabel Infantes LONDON (Reuters) -American 10th seed Ben Shelton reached the Wimbledon quarter-finals for the first time on Monday when a 3-6 6-1 7-6 (1) 7-5 victory over Italian Lorenzo Sonego also gave him the family bragging rights. Thirty-one years ago Shelton's father and current coach Bryan lost 10-8 in the fifth set to Christian Bergstrom in the last 16 at Wimbledon in what proved the high-point of his Grand Slam career. Shelton junior, who has previously reached the semis at the Australian and U.S. Opens, was a little ragged as he dropped his first set of the tournament, but the powerful left-hander found his length and attacked the net more in a dominant second set, and then raced through a third-set tie-break. In a nip and tuck fourth, Shelton, sporting a Rafa Nadal-style sleeveless vest, delivered an athletic final game to break and take the match, roaring in triumph. Shelton, 22, was quick to credit his father, watching from the players' box on Number One Court. "He kind of inspires the way that I'm playing on grass, the way that I'm moving forward, how I'm cutting off angles, wanting to mix in the serve and volley vintage style of tennis every once in a while," he said. "He was a serve and volley -- I think I'm better than him from the baseline." Shelton came into the match having not only not lost a set, but having dropped only two service games in three rounds. After beating Sonego at the Australian and French Opens this year and with the Italian coming off a marathon five-hour match on Saturday, Shelton must have been in confident mood, but he was somewhat wild in the first set. Sonego, also seeking a first Wimbledon quarter-final, was unable to maintain his consistency in the second set and Shelton quickly took command with a double break. It looked like a relatively straightforward third set too as Shelton ramped up the power to grab an early break but Sonego dug in superbly to break back, only to be blown away 7-1 in the tie-break. Sonego forced a rare break point at 2-2 in the fourth but Shelton somehow scrambled a brilliant John McEnroe-style pick-up half-volley to save it and went on to hold. They then went toe to toe until the thrilling final game, highlighted by Shelton's fabulous running forehand, after which he leaped a mile off the ground to punch the air in celebration. Shelton duly completed the win to earn a probable quarter-final against another Italian, world number one Jannik Sinner, where a victory would make it three years in a row that an American had made the semi-finals after Taylor Fritz and Chris Eubanks. "It was difficult," Shelton said. "Every time I needed a big point, he comes up with a highlight shot, and maybe the same vice-versa, but it was a lot of fun. "I'm happy with the way that I played that last game. I felt like that was my best tennis, my best returning, and it's what I'm going to need to continue in this tournament. "To end the match with that sort of game gives me a lot of confidence." (Reporting by Mitch Phillips, editing by Clare Fallon)
Straits Times
07-07-2025
- Sport
- Straits Times
Shelton gets one up on dad as he battles to Wimbledon quarter-finals
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox Tennis - Wimbledon - All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, London, Britain - July 7, 2025 Ben Shelton of the U.S. celebrates winning his round of 16 match against Italy's Lorenzo Sonego REUTERS/Isabel Infantes LONDON -American 10th seed Ben Shelton reached the Wimbledon quarter-finals for the first time on Monday when a 3-6 6-1 7-6 (1) 7-5 victory over Italian Lorenzo Sonego also gave him the family bragging rights. Thirty-one years ago Shelton's father and current coach Bryan lost 10-8 in the fifth set to Christian Bergstrom in the last 16 at Wimbledon in what proved the high-point of his Grand Slam career. Shelton junior, who has previously reached the semis at the Australian and U.S. Opens, was a little ragged as he dropped his first set of the tournament, but the powerful left-hander found his length and attacked the net more in a dominant second set, and then raced through a third-set tie-break. Shelton, 22, who beat Sonego at the Australian and French Opens this year, completed the hat-trick after a superb final game to break, roaring in triumph. REUTERS
Straits Times
07-07-2025
- Politics
- Straits Times
Wimbledon expansion plan goes into legal tie-break
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox Tennis - Wimbledon - All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, London, Britain - July 4, 2025 General view during the third round match between Australia's Jordan Thompson and Italy's Luciano Darderi REUTERS/Toby Melville TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY LONDON - Wimbledon fans will have eyes only for the tennis this week but for those who run the world's oldest and most prestigious Grand Slam, the real high-stakes contest will unfold not on their grass, but in London's Royal Courts of Justice. On one side of the legal net is the campaign group Save Wimbledon Park, while facing them in a judicial review of their ambitious expansion plan on Tuesday and Wednesday will be the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (AELTC). It is the latest stage of a long-running fight that has split the south-west London "village", which has been home to the Championships since 1877. Last September the AELTC secured planning permission from the Greater London Authority (GLA) to treble the size of the main site to include 39 new courts including an 8,000-seat show court by redeveloping a former golf course on parkland land it already owns. The 200-million-pound ($272.92-million) expansion aims to increase daily capacity to 50,000 people from the current 42,000, upgrade facilities and move the qualifying rounds on site to mirror the Australian, French, and U.S. Opens. The plans have the backing of several leading players, including Novak Djokovic, and 62% of 10,000 residents in Merton and Wandsworth, the London boroughs that share the new site, also support the scheme, according to the AELTC. 'Our confidence in the development and the proposals that we've been working on for many years is as strong as it ever has been,' Wimbledon tournament director Jamie Baker told Reuters. 'For the championships to continue to be in the position that it is and to deliver all the benefits to stakeholders including the local community it is vital that we are able to stage the tournament on one site and bring all the grounds together." However, this week's judicial review will decide whether the GLA's decision to grant planning permission was unlawful. Opponents of the development, including Thelma Ruby, a 100-year-old former actress who lives in a flat overlooking the park, and West Hill Ward Councillor Malcolm Grimston, say the club's plans will cause environmental damage and major disruption to the area. 'It's terribly important that it does not go ahead not just for myself but for the whole planet and future generations," Ruby told Reuters. "I overlook this beautiful landscape and there are all sorts of covenants that say you mustn't build on it, and yet the tennis people have this unnecessary plan they admit will cut down all these glorious trees, which will harm wildlife. 'They're using concrete, building roads, they're going to have lorries polluting and passing my window every 10 minutes. The whole area will be in chaos as they're closing off roads,' she said. Save Wimbledon Park says the GLA failed to consider covenants that were agreed by the AELTC, including restrictions on redeveloping the land, when it bought the Wimbledon Park golf course freehold from Merton council in 1993 for 5.2 million pounds. The AELTC paid a reported 63.5 million pounds to buy the Golf Club's lease, which was due to run until 2041. The campaign group also believes the GLA failed to consider the land's statutory Public Recreation Trust status which means it should be held as "public walks or pleasure grounds". 'It is not antipathy towards the AELTC that's driving this, as some of the benefits are real, such as the extension of lake,' councillor Grimston told Reuters. 'The problem is that it will treble the footprint of the current Championship and turn what currently has very much a feel of being rural England and a gentle pace of life into an industrial complex that would dominate the views of the lake. 'That's why it's classified as Metropolitan Open Land, which is the urban equivalent of the green belt that has been protected for many decades in planning law in the UK and rightly so,' he said. The AELTC say the plans will improve the biodiversity of the park, as well as bringing parts of it back into public use. 'The London Wildlife trust have endorsed the plans, they've spent many hours scrutinising our analysis and our expert views," the AELTC's head of corporate affairs Dominic Foster said. "We know that this expansion will deliver a very significant benefit to biodiversity, whereas golf courses are not good for biodiversity.' REUTERS
Yahoo
16-06-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
U.S. Open 2025: J.J. Spaun hits the shots of his life to win his first major
OAKMONT, Pa. — Some major championships are exquisite exhibitions of athletic grace and mental tenacity, symphonies conducted on fairways. You watch them, and you feel thrilled, energized, even inspired by the generational talent on display. The 2025 U.S. Open at Oakmont was none of that. J.J. Spaun won the tournament with a score of -1, but the better way to put it might be he survived the tournament. This was a down-in-the-mud fistfight, a battle against the elements, the course, the field and the self. Advertisement With six holes remaining and rain falling, five players were tied for the lead: Sam Burns, Adam Scott, Tyrrell Hatton, Carlos Ortiz and J.J. Spaun. One stroke behind them: Viktor Hovland and Robert MacIntyre. MacIntyre, with a birdies at 14 and 17, got himself to 1-under. Playing ahead of the pack, MacIntyre stood over a par putt at 18 to set the mark, and he drained it. He was in the clubhouse at +1. Would it hold? Ortiz bowed out with a double bogey at 15, Hovland with a bogey there, and Hatton with bogeys at 17 and 18. Burns ejected with a brutal break at 15 when he wasn't granted relief from what he believed was standing water. Forced to hit it where it sat, he hooked it into the rough, leading to a double bogey. Advertisement Scott, trying to win his first major since 2013, found the rough on just about every hole coming home, and he was done. And then J.J. Spaun hit the shot of his life. Or maybe, the second greatest: That led to a birdie, a one-stroke lead and one par on 18 for the U.S. Open championship. He didn't get par. He drained the putt for birdie ... from 64 feet. "Just to finish it off like that is just a dream," Spaun said after. "You watch other people do it. You see the Tiger chip, you see Nick Taylor's putt, you see crazy moments. To have my own moment like that at this championship, I'll never forget this moment for the rest of my life." Advertisement This was a vintage U.S. Open, brutal and uncompromising and requiring everything the leaders had to give. Those who couldn't bring it home will remember this one for a long, long time, and Spaun will remember it forever. Oakmont plays the starring role At most majors, the course is a supporting character, taking a couple key lines here and there but deferring to the stars. Oakmont thundered onto the national stage, its history of hurling around the game's best like dirty laundry making for a sinister overture heading into the tournament. Oakmont's quirks — greased-mercury greens, abandon-all-hope rough, the Church Pew bunkers, the highway that cuts through the heart of the course — all combined to make the course itself the star of the show. No course has hosted more U.S. Opens than Oakmont, and virtually every one of the nine prior to this year featured drama, controversy and gritty, muddy scrambles for the trophy. Advertisement So in retrospect, the entire golf world was pretty naive in thinking that Scottie Scheffler would come in here and ransack the joint, that Bryson DeChambeau would overpower the old warhorse, that Xander Schauffele or Collin Morikawa or Rory McIlroy would use some of their modern wizardry to take down a course that's been humbling champions longer than their grandfathers have been alive. 'When you're in the fairway, there's opportunity,' Scheffler said on Tuesday, 'but what's so special about this place is pretty much every time you're off the fairway it's going to be very difficult for you to get the ball to the green.' Advertisement (This is what is known as foreshadowing.) J.J. Spaun, best known prior to this week as McIlroy's playoff victim in this year's Players Championship, leaped out to the Thursday lead with a bogey-free 66. 'I kind of came out here with no prior history at Oakmont, not really knowing what to expect even U.S. Open-wise. This is only my second one. I don't know if that freed me up in any aspect,' he said. 'I'm just overly pleased with how I started the tournament.' Others, not so much. McIlroy struggled to a +4 first round and left without speaking to the media. DeChambeau, completely twisted up by the greens, made a mental mistake in dropping his ball on the 12th, but was saved from a penalty by a friendly official. Advertisement 'This golf course can come up and get you pretty quick and you've just got to be on your game, and it got me, and I wasn't fully on my game,' DeChambeau said after his Thursday round. 'Pretty disappointed with how I played.' Si Woo Kim offered up the most direct perspective: 'Honestly, I don't even know what I'm doing on the course,' he said. 'Kind of hitting good, but feel like this course is too hard for me.' As tough as Thursday was, Friday proved even more difficult. Spaun surrendered two strokes off his total and gave up the lead to Burns, who finished the day at -3. DeChambeau imploded, missing the cut by three strokes. Phil Mickelson, so often frustrated by the U.S. Open, suffered one last indignity when he melted down on his final three holes and missed a chance to play the weekend by mere inches. Shortly after a disappointed Mickelson left the course, the skies opened up, dousing the few players left on the course and halting the second round early. That led directly to one of the few feelgood stories of this brutal weekend: qualifier Philip Barbaree, with his wife Chloe caddying for him, came back on Saturday morning needing a par on the tough ninth to make the cut. He pulled it off and celebrated; who cares if he finished the tournament at +24? He had a once-in-a-lifetime moment on one of the toughest courses on the planet. 'Knowing that I pretty much had to come out and make par on one of the hardest holes on the course, and then to actually do it, that's what you practice for, that's what you care about,' Barbaree said. 'To be able to pull off a shot like that when it matters, and then with her on the bag, it's special.' Stars exit stage right and left and into the fescue Burns reached -4 on Saturday but couldn't extend his lead; Spaun stuck right with him to finish at -3. Also at -3, and checking in from 2013: Scott, competing in his 97th major. The overnight rains softened the course up; the field averaged two strokes better on Saturday than on the two days prior. Advertisement Meanwhile, stars flickered and fizzled. Scheffler, McIlroy, Rahm, Schauffele … none of the game's best could keep up with the pace set by Burns, Spaun and Scott. (Yes, that is a real sentence.) McIlroy, in particular, remained frustrated at his inability to capitalize on his epic Masters win, and unloaded his frustrations on the media by speaking for the first time after a major round since Augusta. 'I feel like I've earned the right to do whatever I want to do,' McIlroy said, when pressed about his decision not to speak after his rounds. He later declared that all he wanted out of Sunday was 'hopefully a round in under four-and-a-half hours and get out of here.' McIlroy's frustrations continued on Sunday, though on the positive side he pulled off one of the most impressive club tosses you'll ever see: But McIlroy, like most of the other superstars, was irrelevant to the tournament's final outcome. Burns (-4) and Scott (-3) made up the final pairing, with Spaun (-3) and Viktor Hovland (-1) just ahead of them, and Carlos Ortiz (E) and Tyrrell Hatton (+1) in the third-to-last group. Advertisement 'If I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times, but this golf course is difficult,' Burns said Saturday evening. 'It takes a lot of patience.' He had no idea how right he would be. Survival Sunday The carnage began early for the leaders. Scott bogeyed the first and third holes, while Burns bogeyed the second and fifth. Ahead of them, Ortiz, Hatton and Hovland all struggled. Spaun, in particular, surrendered five strokes in his first six holes … which, under normal conditions, would have ejected him from the tournament. But these were not normal conditions. Not all of it was his fault. He would later have a ball hit a rake, another spin off the green, and when he made the turn, he had five bogeys on his card and had dropped from the top of the leaderboard. Advertisement Soon thereafter, the weather arrived. At 4:01 p.m., with Burns and Scott standing on the tee at the 8th, the soaking rains returned, washing out the entire field for a full 96 minutes. The course flooded, requiring a squeegee-wielding maintenance crew to attempt to get Oakmont playable once again. Play resumed at 5:40, and almost immediately Burns and Scott both got into trouble off the tee at the par-3 8th, the longest par-3 in U.S. Open history, Burns off the edge of the green and Scott into the rough. Burns was able to get up and down for his par, but Scott dropped a shot to fall back to even. Ahead of them, Hatton and Hovland both fell to +2. Advertisement More critically, Burns surrendered a stroke at the 9th when his tee shot found some of the longest hay on the property on the left side of the hole. Scott's tee shot ended up on a cart path along the right side of the hole, but he was able to convert his birdie. Burns thus turned at -1, Scott at even par, and Ortiz, Hatton, Spaun and Hovland all at +2. And right about then, the rains started up again. This time around, though, there was no thunder, meaning the players were getting doused but continued to play. On the first hole of the inward nine, Burns extended his lead with a birdie to get back to -2. Ahead of him, Ortiz was able to chop his way back into the hunt with a birdie on 11 that dropped him to +1. The tournament turned at No. 15 for both Burns and Scott. Burns, standing in a puddle, asked for relief. He wasn't given it, then hooked his shot over the green, leading to a double bogey. From there, everyone but Spaun and MacIntyre fell off. Advertisement Playing ahead of Spaun, all MacIntyre could do was wait in the clubhouse, where he watched Spaun produce the two most magical shots of his life. Earlier this year, Spaun lost The Players Championship to Rory McIlroy in a playoff. It was a crushing defeat for a player who had one PGA Tour victory on his resume. Three months later, he's a major champion.
