Rory McIlroy has been known to take some sharp U-turns on his opinions over the last few years, particularly as it relates to the PGA Tour and LIV Golf. He was willing to state another position Wednesday as strong as any.
He is not playing the PGA Tour Champions when he turns 50.
“Absolutely not,” McIlroy said with a smile.
This came up during a discussion on how difficult it can be to retire from golf given the nature of the game that allows players to leave when they want. McIlroy would like to retire even when he still can win. “With a little bit left in the tank,” he said.
That's when someone brought up the 50-and-older circuit, and McIlroy drew the line.
“Look, I've said a lot of absolutes in my time that I've walked back,” he said. “But I do not envision playing Champions Tour golf. Something has went terribly wrong if I have to compete at golf at 50.”
Adam Scott had no idea when he agreed to join the Player Advisory Council for the first time just over a year ago that it would take him to the White House to meet with the president.
Scott was in meetings with PGA Tour Commissioner and President Donald Trump on Feb. 4 and Feb. 20 as the tour tries to come to an agreement with the Saudi backers of LIV Golf.
He was asked what memory he took from the experience.
“It was obvious to me very quickly when they were setting up for the Israeli delegation right after our meeting — putting the Israeli flag and the U.S. flag and getting that room ready — that our conversation was pretty low in the importance of what was happening that day,” he said.
“And really, the president had far more important things to focus on,” he said. “And I encouraged him to go and do that well for everyone’s sake after our meeting.”
Laurie Canter is a European tour player, a 36-year-old from England making his debut in The Players Championship. He stands out from the other 24 newcomers to the TPC Sawgrass.
He's the first LIV Golf player in the PGA Tour's premier event.
Canter played on the Saudi-backed circuit when it started in 2022 because the first event in the U.K. was right up the road for him. He was an alternate in 2023, and filled in one more time in 2024 in Las Vegas in early February. He pulled in just over $5.3 million.
And then he was back to the European tour, playing some of his best golf. He won the European Open last year, he won in Bahrain to start this year, and his playoff loss in the South African Open enabled him to crack the top 50 in the world ranking to get into The Players.
The PGA Tour has a policy that anyone playing in LIV must wait a year before competing in a tournament, and Canter last played one year and one month ago.
“No, I don't feel like a trailblazer,” he said with a laugh.
What helped Canter was a poor year in 2021. He had conditional status on the DP World Tour in Europe, meaning whenever he played a LIV event, he had no trouble getting a release from the tour because he wasn't eligible for the tournaments that week.
This is a big week for him, because staying in the top 50 in three weeks will get him into the Masters. This will be his first regular PGA Tour event, and he would welcome more.
“I think anyone who plays golf would,” he said. “Last week (Bay Hill) I watched and where those signature events are going, if you could play well enough to where you've got your world ranking where you've got signature events and majors ... what a year that is for a golfer to play those venues with those golfers for that amount of money. It's incredible.”
The purse this week is $25 million.
JJ Jakovac earned a piece of history Wednesday at The Players Championship. The caddie for Collin Morikawa made the first hole-in-one on the island-green 17th hole during the annual caddie competition.
Jakovac used a pitching wedge from 131 yards, the ball landing perfectly to catch the slope down to the front pin.
This wasn't a fluke swing. Jakovac played in the Palmer Cup in 2004 — he was roommates with Ryan Moore, for whom he later caddied — and won two NCAA Division II titles while playing at Cal State-Chico.
The caddie competition started to honor Tom Watson’s longtime caddie and friend, Bruce Edwards, who died in 2004 from ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf
Adam Scott, of Australia, hits from the first cut along the third fairway during the final round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill golf tournament, Sunday, March 9, 2025, in Orlando, Fla. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)
Rory McIlroy, of Northern Ireland, hits his tee shot on the sixth hole during a practice round at The Players Championship golf tournament, Wednesday, March 12, 2025, in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)
Rory McIlroy, of Northern Ireland, gestures as he speaks to the media before a practice round of The Players Championship golf tournament Wednesday, March 12, 2025, in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)
WASHINGTON (AP) — A day after the audacious U.S. military operation in Venezuela, President Donald Trump on Sunday renewed his calls for an American takeover of the Danish territory of Greenland for the sake of U.S. security interests, while his top diplomat declared the communist government in Cuba is “in a lot of trouble.”
The comments from Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio after the ouster of Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro underscore that the U.S. administration is serious about taking a more expansive role in the Western Hemisphere.
With thinly veiled threats, Trump is rattling hemispheric friends and foes alike, spurring a pointed question around the globe: Who's next?
“It’s so strategic right now. Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place," Trump told reporters as he flew back to Washington from his home in Florida. "We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it.”
Asked during an interview with The Atlantic earlier on Sunday what the U.S.-military action in Venezuela could portend for Greenland, Trump replied: “They are going to have to view it themselves. I really don’t know.”
Trump, in his administration's National Security Strategy published last month, laid out restoring “American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere” as a central guidepost for his second go-around in the White House.
Trump has also pointed to the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, which rejects European colonialism, as well as the Roosevelt Corollary — a justification invoked by the U.S. in supporting Panama’s secession from Colombia, which helped secure the Panama Canal Zone for the U.S. — as he's made his case for an assertive approach to American neighbors and beyond.
Trump has even quipped that some now refer to the fifth U.S. president's foundational document as the “Don-roe Doctrine.”
Saturday's dead-of-night operation by U.S. forces in Caracas and Trump’s comments on Sunday heightened concerns in Denmark, which has jurisdiction over the vast mineral-rich island of Greenland.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in a statement that Trump has "no right to annex" the territory. She also reminded Trump that Denmark already provides the United States, a fellow member of NATO, broad access to Greenland through existing security agreements.
“I would therefore strongly urge the U.S. to stop threatening a historically close ally and another country and people who have made it very clear that they are not for sale,” Frederiksen said.
Denmark on Sunday also signed onto a European Union statement underscoring that “the right of the Venezuelan people to determine their future must be respected” as Trump has vowed to “run” Venezuela and pressed the acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, to get in line.
Trump on Sunday mocked Denmark’s efforts at boosting Greenland’s national security posture, saying the Danes have added “one more dog sled” to the Arctic territory’s arsenal.
Greenlanders and Danes were further rankled by a social media post following the raid by a former Trump administration official turned podcaster, Katie Miller. The post shows an illustrated map of Greenland in the colors of the Stars and Stripes accompanied by the caption: “SOON."
“And yes, we expect full respect for the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark,” Amb. Jesper Møller Sørensen, Denmark's chief envoy to Washington, said in a post responding to Miller, who is married to Trump's influential deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.
During his presidential transition and in the early months of his return to the White House, Trump repeatedly called for U.S. jurisdiction over Greenland, and has pointedly not ruled out military force to take control of the mineral-rich, strategically located Arctic island that belongs to an ally.
The issue had largely drifted out of the headlines in recent months. Then Trump put the spotlight back on Greenland less than two weeks ago when he said he would appoint Republican Gov. Jeff Landry as his special envoy to Greenland.
The Louisiana governor said in his volunteer position he would help Trump “make Greenland a part of the U.S.”
Meanwhile, concern simmered in Cuba, one of Venezuela’s most important allies and trading partners, as Rubio issued a new stern warning to the Cuban government. U.S.-Cuba relations have been hostile since the 1959 Cuban revolution.
Rubio, in an appearance on NBC's “Meet the Press,” said Cuban officials were with Maduro in Venezuela ahead of his capture.
“It was Cubans that guarded Maduro,” Rubio said. “He was not guarded by Venezuelan bodyguards. He had Cuban bodyguards.” The secretary of state added that Cuban bodyguards were also in charge of “internal intelligence” in Maduro’s government, including “who spies on who inside, to make sure there are no traitors.”
Trump said that “a lot” of Cuban guards tasked with protecting Maduro were killed in the operation. The Cuban government said in a statement read on state television on Sunday evening that 32 officers were killed in the U.S. military operation.
Trump also said that the Cuban economy, battered by years of a U.S. embargo, is in tatters and will slide further now with the ouster of Maduro, who provided the Caribbean island subsidized oil.
“It's going down,” Trump said of Cuba. “It's going down for the count.”
Cuban authorities called a rally in support of Venezuela’s government and railed against the U.S. military operation, writing in a statement: “All the nations of the region must remain alert, because the threat hangs over all of us.”
Rubio, a former Florida senator and son of Cuban immigrants, has long maintained Cuba is a dictatorship repressing its people.
“This is the Western Hemisphere. This is where we live — and we’re not going to allow the Western Hemisphere to be a base of operation for adversaries, competitors, and rivals of the United States," Rubio said.
Cubans like 55-year-old biochemical laboratory worker Bárbara Rodríguez were following developments in Venezuela. She said she worried about what she described as an “aggression against a sovereign state.”
“It can happen in any country, it can happen right here. We have always been in the crosshairs,” Rodríguez said.
AP writers Andrea Rodriguez in Havana, Cuba, and Darlene Superville traveling aboard Air Force One contributed reporting.
In this photo released by the White House, President Donald Trump monitors U.S. military operations in Venezuela, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026. (Molly Riley/The White House via AP)
