NORTH BERWICK, Scotland (AP) — Masters champion Rory McIlroy took another step toward emerging out of the doldrums with two big shots at the end of his round Saturday that led to a 4-under 66 and gave him a share of the lead with Chris Gotterup in the Scottish Open.
McIlroy kept in range of Gotterup on another gorgeous day of sunshine along the Firth of Forth and then came into everyone's view in the middle of the back nine at The Renaissance Club.
Following a 15-foot birdie on the par-3 14th, his shot from a greenside pot bunker hit the pin for a tap-in par to keep his momentum. McIlroy was in trouble again on the par-5 16th; in just a horrible lie he could advance it only some 70 yards. With the wind at his back and wispy grass beneath the golf ball, he hit sand wedge from 173 yards to 10 feet for birdie.
Two closing pars put him at 11-under 199. That was enough to catch Gotterup, a big athlete with big power who had gone 34 holes without a bogey until the second hole Saturday. He fell into a tie with a three-putt from 60 feet for bogey on the 14th and failed to birdie the 16th.
Gotterup, who tied the course record with a 61 on Friday, had to settle for a 70. He will be in the last group with McIlroy, a daunting task given McIlroy already won at The Renaissance Club and is the biggest draw in most parts in the world, particularly in Scotland, and particularly with the British Open a week away.
“I think I’m pretty close to being back to the level I was at going into the Masters,” McIlroy said. “I think I’ve had a little bit of a lull, which I feel is understandable. So I’m just getting back to the level that I know that I can play at.”
Wyndham Clark had a 66 and will join McIlroy and Gotterup in the final group. Tee times are being moved up slightly to account for a forecast of heavy fog, which threatened to move in at various times Saturday but stayed offshore.
Clark was at 9-under 201 along with Jake Knapp, who for the longest time was the closest challenger to Gotterup until a wild finish of birdies on the closing par 3s and bogeys on the other holes for a 68.
Matt Fitzpatrick and Marco Penge also were at 201, with both English players posting a 69.
Gotterup and Knapp also are in prime position to extend their stay of links golf. The leading three players not yet eligible will earn a spot at Royal Portrush next week for the British Open.
McIlroy hasn't looked the same since the great day of his career that Sunday at Augusta National, where he won a playoff to finally claim the Masters green jacket and joined the exclusive group of five other players with the career Grand Slam.
He has not seriously come close to winning since then. He arrived in Scotland off a two-week break and described his game at 80%.
McIlroy had few complaints about it after Saturday.
“Even though I scored better yesterday (a 65), I feel like I played my best golf of the week today,” McIlroy said.
He has not set foot on Royal Portrush since that Friday of the 2019 Open, where he did his best to atone for an opening 79 and wound up missing the cut by one shot. His caddie, Harry Diamond, was at the Northern Ireland links to look at some of the changes, mainly a few holes that have been lengthened.
It's a big week for McIlroy, who has never won on home soil as a professional. And Sunday would be the perfect time for him to show his game is good as ever.
“When you do something that you’ve been dreaming your whole life to do, it was a huge moment in my life, my career,” he said of his Masters victory.
“I think I just needed that little bit of time. And to be back here for last couple weeks, and feel like I could actually digest all of it, I feel like I came to this tournament with renewed enthusiasm and excitement for the rest of the year.”
Gotterup for the longest time looked collected on Saturday. After a rough start, including a bogey from a fairway bunker on the second hole, Gotterup drove into a bunker on the short par-4 fifth that led to bogey, and then nearly had a hole-in-one on the par-3 sixth with a shot that lipped out of the cup.
But that was the last of his birdies. He failed to convert on the two par 5s on the back nine. He ran out of par-saving putts when he three-putted the 14th. But he's still there with a chance to add to his Myrtle Beach Classic title he won last year.
“I'm pleased, but definitely feel like I left one or two out there that would have been important,” Gotterup said. "After 61, it doesn’t feel as easy. I hung in there tough and put myself in a good spot going into tomorrow.
“I know what I’m capable of. I’ve won before — obviously different tournament. So I know what it takes,” he said. “It’s going to take a good round for sure, and I’m going to go give it my best.”
AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf
Northern Ireland's Rory McIlroy on day three of the Scottish Open 2025 at The Renaissance Club, North Berwick, Scotland, Saturday July 12, 2025. (Malcolm Mackenzie/PA via AP)
Northern Ireland's Rory McIlroy on day three of the Scottish Open 2025 at The Renaissance Club, North Berwick, Scotland, Saturday July 12, 2025. (Malcolm Mackenzie/PA via AP)
Northern Ireland's Rory McIlroy on day three of the Scottish Open 2025 at The Renaissance Club, North Berwick, Scotland, Saturday July 12, 2025. (Malcolm Mackenzie/PA via AP)
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)
