LAS VEGAS (AP) — Reigning Player of the Year and world No. 1 Nelly Korda is back in the Las Vegas area this week to defend her T-Mobile Match Play title.
The LPGA Tour event is Las Vegas' star professional golf attraction of the year, especially since the PGA Tour won't host a tournament in the city for the first time in more than four decades.
Dropping Las Vegas from the schedule — which occurred after Shriners Children's Hospital ended its 18-year sponsorship in October — was a big blow to a city known as a golf destination for hackers and scratch players alike.
But it might not be a permanent setback.
The PGA Tour, in fact, hopes to return to the city with an early year event that attracts the sport's top names. When that happens is unknown, and it won't occur until at least 2027.
“Vegas is a market for big events,” said John Norris, senior vice president of PGA Tour tournaments. “They don’t do anything small. You got the major sports leagues there now. You’ve got the entertainers, world-class building in the Sphere. So what we thought was we want to be back in Vegas, but we want to do it with a big event.”
What that entails is uncertain.
Patrick Lindsey, the former Shriners Children's Open executive director who last month became senior vice president and general manager of Las Vegas Motor Speedway, said some kind of all-star event would be one idea.
Like Norris, Lindsey said he expects the PGA Tour to do all it can to return to Las Vegas.
“I think that all options are going to be on the table for them when they look at what they want to do in this market,” Lindsey said. “This is kind of a niche market for us to do something fun and exciting and different. I think that's how they need to look at this market, to take advantage of everything that is loud and colorful about Las Vegas.”
The calendar is a major impediment, however, and a top reason the PGA Tour is taking its time.
Shriners was played in the fall after the weather cooled in Las Vegas, but the major tournaments had been played by then and the NFL and college football seasons were in full swing. The tournament caught a break when the tour changed the schedule in 2013 to begin the season with the fall events, but the arrival of LIV Golf prompted the PGA Tour to overhaul the schedule two years ago. That included a return to starting the season in January.
Lindsey said top players routinely passed on fall events because they didn't want to take away opportunities from those who needed the points for their tour card. Shriners was then left with less-than-desirable fields, and the charitable organization also began to pivot to sponsoring more college events.
That meant a reset for Las Vegas and the PGA Tour, and Norris said there is no appetite to play in the fall again. Playing in the summer when temperatures often top 110 degrees and even higher also is no option.
So that means trying to play earlier in the season, but there are plenty of tournaments that aren't coming off schedule, such as the Masters, PGA Championship, The Players Championship and the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
“That's the tricky part,” Norris said.
The LPGA Tour is in Las Vegas for the fifth year with the Match Play, playing at the exclusive and remote Shadow Creek Golf Course that isn't built for spectators because of its narrow walking paths. But Shadow Creek, with its lush green fairways, is a world-class course that draws players and celebrities from around the world.
“I feel like just the drive in is so unique and so beautiful,” Korda said Tuesday morning. “The property is really, really pretty. When you just stand on what was originally 18 tee — we’re playing it as 9 this week — it’s really breathtaking. It’s very demanding off the tee into the greens and even on the greens, so you have to be on 24/7. It tests every part of your game.”
The LPGA Tour didn't make anyone available for a comment on its future with Las Vegas, but released a statement that said its sponsors were “all great advocates for the LPGA Tour.”
Korda hopes to repeat her tournament victory when the Match Play begins Wednesday, and the current face of women's golf likely would bring more attention to the event if she wins.
The PGA Tour has had its bright moments in Las Vegas, none greater than in 1996 when a 20-year-old Tiger Woods won his first professional tournament. The city was at the center of the golf world on that Sunday. Woods' victory even took attention away from the NFL games being played that day.
Maybe the PGA Tour will eventually be back with more such moments.
“I just believe that this city, the market, people who live here deserve a professional golf event here,” Lindsey said. “They deserve to be something maybe different than what’s going on in other markets.”
AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf
FILE - Nelly Korda hits out of a bunker at the fourth green during the final round of the LPGA T-Mobile Match Play golf tournament Sunday, April 7, 2024, in North Las Vegas, Nev. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)
FILE - Nelly Korda poses with the trophy after winning the LPGA T-Mobile Match Play golf tournament Sunday, April 7, 2024, in North Las Vegas, Nev. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Reviving a campaign pledge, President Donald Trump wants a one-year, 10% cap on credit card interest rates, a move that could save Americans tens of billions of dollars but drew immediate opposition from an industry that has been in his corner.
Trump was not clear in his social media post Friday night whether a cap might take effect through executive action or legislation, though one Republican senator said he had spoken with the president and would work on a bill with his “full support.” Trump said he hoped it would be in place Jan. 20, one year after he took office.
Strong opposition is certain from Wall Street in addition to the credit card companies, which donated heavily to his 2024 campaign and have supported Trump's second-term agenda. Banks are making the argument that such a plan would most hurt poor people, at a time of economic concern, by curtailing or eliminating credit lines, driving them to high-cost alternatives like payday loans or pawnshops.
“We will no longer let the American Public be ripped off by Credit Card Companies that are charging Interest Rates of 20 to 30%,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Researchers who studied Trump’s campaign pledge after it was first announced found that Americans would save roughly $100 billion in interest a year if credit card rates were capped at 10%. The same researchers found that while the credit card industry would take a major hit, it would still be profitable, although credit card rewards and other perks might be scaled back.
About 195 million people in the United States had credit cards in 2024 and were assessed $160 billion in interest charges, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says. Americans are now carrying more credit card debt than ever, to the tune of about $1.23 trillion, according to figures from the New York Federal Reserve for the third quarter last year.
Further, Americans are paying, on average, between 19.65% and 21.5% in interest on credit cards according to the Federal Reserve and other industry tracking sources. That has come down in the past year as the central bank lowered benchmark rates, but is near the highs since federal regulators started tracking credit card rates in the mid-1990s. That’s significantly higher than a decade ago, when the average credit card interest rate was roughly 12%.
The Republican administration has proved particularly friendly until now to the credit card industry.
Capital One got little resistance from the White House when it finalized its purchase and merger with Discover Financial in early 2025, a deal that created the nation’s largest credit card company. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is largely tasked with going after credit card companies for alleged wrongdoing, has been largely nonfunctional since Trump took office.
In a joint statement, the banking industry was opposed to Trump's proposal.
“If enacted, this cap would only drive consumers toward less regulated, more costly alternatives," the American Bankers Association and allied groups said.
Bank lobbyists have long argued that lowering interest rates on their credit card products would require the banks to lend less to high-risk borrowers. When Congress enacted a cap on the fee that stores pay large banks when customers use a debit card, banks responded by removing all rewards and perks from those cards. Debit card rewards only recently have trickled back into consumers' hands. For example, United Airlines now has a debit card that gives miles with purchases.
The U.S. already places interest rate caps on some financial products and for some demographics. The Military Lending Act makes it illegal to charge active-duty service members more than 36% for any financial product. The national regulator for credit unions has capped interest rates on credit union credit cards at 18%.
Credit card companies earn three streams of revenue from their products: fees charged to merchants, fees charged to customers and the interest charged on balances. The argument from some researchers and left-leaning policymakers is that the banks earn enough revenue from merchants to keep them profitable if interest rates were capped.
"A 10% credit card interest cap would save Americans $100 billion a year without causing massive account closures, as banks claim. That’s because the few large banks that dominate the credit card market are making absolutely massive profits on customers at all income levels," said Brian Shearer, director of competition and regulatory policy at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator, who wrote the research on the industry's impact of Trump's proposal last year.
There are some historic examples that interest rate caps do cut off the less creditworthy to financial products because banks are not able to price risk correctly. Arkansas has a strictly enforced interest rate cap of 17% and evidence points to the poor and less creditworthy being cut out of consumer credit markets in the state. Shearer's research showed that an interest rate cap of 10% would likely result in banks lending less to those with credit scores below 600.
The White House did not respond to questions about how the president seeks to cap the rate or whether he has spoken with credit card companies about the idea.
Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., who said he talked with Trump on Friday night, said the effort is meant to “lower costs for American families and to reign in greedy credit card companies who have been ripping off hardworking Americans for too long."
Legislation in both the House and the Senate would do what Trump is seeking.
Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., released a plan in February that would immediately cap interest rates at 10% for five years, hoping to use Trump’s campaign promise to build momentum for their measure.
Hours before Trump's post, Sanders said that the president, rather than working to cap interest rates, had taken steps to deregulate big banks that allowed them to charge much higher credit card fees.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., have proposed similar legislation. Ocasio-Cortez is a frequent political target of Trump, while Luna is a close ally of the president.
Seung Min Kim reported from West Palm Beach, Fla.
President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport, Friday, Jan. 9, 2025, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
FILE - Visa and Mastercard credit cards are shown in Buffalo Grove, Ill., Feb. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)
