McKINNEY, Texas (AP) — Scottie Scheffler matched the PGA Tour’s 72-hole scoring record on Sunday, finishing at 253 and running away for an eight-shot victory at his hometown CJ Cup Byron Nelson.
Scheffler closed with an 8-under 63 to finish at 31 under par, tying the mark set by Justin Thomas at the 2017 Sony Open and equaled six years later by Ludvig Aberg at the RSM Classic.
He was poised to break the record before a flubbed chip that led to bogey on the par-3 17th hole and a par from a greenside bunker on the par-5 closing hole. His 8-foot putt for birdie and the record slid by the left side of the cup.
Scheffler tied the 54-hole Nelson record with an eight-shot lead, and nobody got closer than six during the final round. Erik van Rooyen of South Africa matched Scheffler’s 63 to finish at 23 under, three shots ahead of Sam Stevens (64) and four ahead of another hometown favorite, Jordan Spieth (62).
It was the first victory this year for Scheffler after he won a total of 10 times before May in the previous three years combined, including two Masters victories.
INCHEON, South Korea (AP) — Bryson DeChambeau held off a big charge from Charles Howell III with birdies on his last two holes for a 6-under 66 on Sunday for a two-shot victory at LIV Golf Korea, his first title since winning the U.S. Open last summer.
DeChambeau, who played in the final group at the Masters and lost a 36-hole lead at LIV Golf Mexico City last week, started the third and final round at the Jack Nicklaus Golf Club with a four-shot lead and was even par for the round through nine holes.
Howell, his Crushers teammate, closed with a 63. They were tied until Howell made a bogey on the 16th hole, and DeChambeau rolled in a long birdie putt at the 17th for a two-shot cushion going to the par-5 18th. They both birdied.
DeChambeau finished at 19-under 197 and won $4 million for his first LIV Golf League title since September 2023 and his third overall.
IVINS, Utah (AP) — Haeran Ryu made an 8-foot eagle putt during a flawless back nine that allowed her to pull away Sunday with an 8-under 64, giving her a five-shot victory at the inaugural Black Desert Championship.
Ryu had a one-shot lead going to the back nine and shot 31 to win by five shots over Esther Henseleit (66) and Ruoning Yin (67).
Ryu made a 15-foot birdie putt at the 11th, and her eagle at the 13th put her ahead by four shots. She led by at least three the rest of the way and finished at 26-under 262.
The 24-year-old South Korean is the 10th winner in 10 tournaments on the LPGA this year.
THE WOODLANDS, Texas (AP) — Stewart Cink made a late birdie for a 4-under 68 that got him into a playoff and then won the Insperity Invitational with a birdie on the first extra hole against Retief Goosen for his first PGA Tour Champions title of the year.
Goosen, who also closed with a 68, made it easy on Cink in the playoff by fanning a 6-iron into the water on the par-4 18th hole. Cink followed with a shot into 8 feet at The Woodlands Country Club. He needed two putts for the win and holed it.
Goosen missed a 10-foot birdie putt on the 18th in regulation with a chance to win. They finished regulation at 11-under 205.
The final round at one point featured a six-way tie for the lead. Miguel Angel Jimenez was tied for the lead at 11 under until getting in trouble off the tee at the 18th and three-putting from long range for bogey to finish alone in third.
TULUM, Mexico (AP) — Bryson Nimmer closed with a 4-under 68 and defeated Stuart Macdonald of England with a par on the second playoff hole Sunday to win the Tulum Championship at PGA Riviera Maya.
Nimmer had conditional status on the Korn Ferry Tour and now moves to No. 16 on the season points list with his first victory in nearly five years.
Macdonald also shot 69 — both players birdied the 18th hole in regulation to finish at 9-under 279 — but made bogey on the 18th the third time around. Both made pars at the 18th on the first playoff hole.
Nimmer won twice on the LocaliQ Series organized by the PGA Tour in 2020 to create playing opportunities during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Yana Wilson won her first professional tournament Sunday when she closed with a 4-under 68 for a two-shot victory over Mohan Du in the Reliance Matrix Championship on the Epson Tour. Wilson has received a sponsor exemption on the LPGA next week at Liberty National. ... Yosuke Asaji closed with a 1-under 69 for a one-shot victory over Hiroshi Iwata and Yusaku Miyazato in The Crowns, his first title in four years and fourth overall victory on the Japan Golf Tour. ... Doyeob Mun of South Korea overcame a six-shot deficit with six birdies on the back nine for an 8-under 63 to win the GS Caltex Maekyung Open on the Asian Tour. Jazz Janewattananond, Baekjun Kim and Junghwan Lee finished three shots behind. ... Hunter Wolcott closed with a 3-under 69 for a two-shot victory in the Diners Club Peru Open on the PGA Tour Americas. ... Nana Suganuma closed with a 3-under 69 for a one-shot victory over Momoko Osato in the Panasonic Open on the Japan LPGA. ... Jungmin Hong held on to win the KLPGA Championship despite a 4-over 76, winning by one shot over Hansol Ji and Jiyoung Park on the Korea LPGA.
AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf
Haeran Ryu, of South Korea, holds the trophy after winning the LPGA Black Desert Championship golf tournament Sunday, May 4, 2025, in Ivins, Utah. (AP Photo/Candice Ward)
Captain Bryson DeChambeau of Crushers GC hits his shot from the first tee during the second round of LIV Golf Korea at Jack Nicklaus Golf Club on Saturday, May 3, 2025 in Incheon, South Korea. (Pedro Salado//LIV Golf via AP)
Scottie Scheffler, front left, holds his son Bennett after winning the CJ Cup Byron Nelson golf tournament in McKinney, Texas, Sunday, May 4, 2025. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.
West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.
The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.
Decisions are expected by early summer.
President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.
Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.
“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”
She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.
Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.
She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.
Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.
“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.
Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.
The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.
About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.
"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”
But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.
“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”
Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”
“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.
One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.
Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”
The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.
The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.
The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.
The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.
If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.
“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)
