Ryder Cup training camp is shaping up for the first fall PGA Tour event in Napa

PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland (AP) — So much for all the PGA Tour fall events having weak fields.

The Procore Championship in Napa, California, is shaping up to be training camp for the Ryder Cup for the American team to avoid getting rusty ahead of the Sept. 26-28 matches.

“I know I'll be there,” Scottie Scheffler said.

Ditto for Xander Schauffele, who suggested the world's No. 1 player was a strong voice in urging whoever is on the U.S. team to be at Silverado Resort on Sept. 11-14.

That was a big concern at the last Ryder Cup, held outside Rome in 2023. The PGA Tour season that year ended Aug. 27 with the Tour Championship at East Lake, and the majority of the team had a full month away from tournament golf before going to Marco Simone for the start of the Ryder Cup on Sept. 29.

Justin Thomas and Max Homa were the only players in Napa, along with U.S. captain Zach Johnson. Europe had its players at the BMW PGA Championship in England. Team Europe got out to a fast start at Marco Simone and sailed to an easy victory to win back the cup.

The Procore Championship is the only PGA Tour event on the schedule between the Tour Championship and the Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black in New York. It also is the same week as the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth.

Odds are against having all 12 of the Americans there — one of them is Bryson DeChambeau, who is banned from the PGA Tour because he's with LIV Golf.

U.S. captain Keegan Bradley told Sports Illustrated he would use one of his six picks on DeChambeau, who finished in the top 10 at three of the four majors this year.

“Bryson is going to be a very important piece to us winning the Ryder Cup,” Bradley said in a text message to SI. "He brings so much. He brings energy, passion but most importantly, he’s one of the best players on the planet.”

The LIV Golf League season ends Aug. 24 with its team championship in Michigan. The only other competition for DeChambeau would be a YouTube match or European tour stops in Switzerland, Ireland, England or France.

Justin Leonard played four rounds of competition last week for the first time in eight years, making the cut at the British Open and finishing in a tie for 59th.

Leonard, 53, stayed largely away from golf while working as a TV analyst, and this is only his third year playing a full PGA Tour Champions schedule.

He had not played in the British Open since 2016 at Royal Troon — where he won The Open in 1997 — and he was pleased to be among three players 50 and older to make the weekend at Royal Portrush. Lee Westwood and Phil Mickelson were the others.

“It's a different kind of pressure coming over here and playing as a PGA Tour Champions guy,” Leonard said. “There aren't many expectations. But still, it's nice to come over and play well and justify coming over.”

And then Leonard with his dry sense of humor found a perk to his performance.

“Plus, think of all the world ranking points I got this week,” he said “We've done a hard reset on the ranking. It's rough thinking there are more than 4,000 golfers out there better than I am. But I proved them all wrong this week.”

His world ranking going into Royal Portrush was No. 4,689. Leonard's tie for 59th moved him all the way to No. 1,436. So now there are only 1,435 players better than him.

But he has one thing going for him. Leonard has a better world ranking than Tiger Woods (No. 1,626) for the first time since the first week of 1997.

Hard reset, indeed.

The PGA Tour Champions is taking its show out of the country next year with the Portugal Invitational set for July 31 to Aug. 2. It's part of a five-year partnership and will be the first time a PGA Tour-sanctioned event for stroke play is in Portugal.

That will give the PGA Tour Champions players the chance of a three-week stay in Europe if they choose. The Senior British Open is the week before, and the Senior PGA Championship on the Legends Tour will be the week after.

The 78-man field will have players from the PGA Tour Champions and the Legends Tour in Europe, with a total purse of $3 million at The Els Club Vilamoura.

Ernie Els redesigned the course, which previously hosted the Portugal Masters from 2007 through 2022. The World Cup of Golf was held in Portugal in 2005.

“The players are going to love it, not just the golf course but this whole destination,” Els said. "It's such a beautiful part of the world.”

Xander Schauffele made it through a third consecutive year making the cut in every major, taking his total to 15 in a row dating to a weekend off in the 2022 Masters.

The opposite end of that was Cameron Smith, who missed the cut in all of them. He nearly had some distinguished company. Two other major champions, Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson, missed the cut in three out of four.

Schauffele was among 17 players to make the cut in all four majors. That includes Corey Conners, who made the cut in the U.S. Open but had to withdraw in the final round with injury.

Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton were the only players from LIV Golf to make the cut in all four majors. That's a smaller sample size considering the goal for so many LIV players is to simply qualify or otherwise get into a major.

Scottie Scheffler had no such concerns at “Calamity Corner,” the notorious par-3 16th hole at Royal Portrush for the British Open.

He made birdie in the opening round and again on Friday. He began to build his lead with a third straight birdie on Saturday. And in the final round, he drilled his tee shot to 15 feet.

He missed.

“It's just a hard hole, I guess,” Scheffler said with a laugh.

Calamity Corner does not have quite the same familiarity as the 12th hole at Augusta National, so one more birdie might not have been as noteworthy as the time Scott Verplank made birdie all four rounds in the 2003 Masters.

Scheffler thought back to the first time he played it in a practice round.

“It was raining and blowing in out of the left, and I smoked a 3-wood to 30 feet, and I thought it was a pretty amazing shot,” Scheffler said. “And then I was playing against Sam Burns in a practice round, and he hit 3-wood to about 25 feet and made it.”

Even though Nelly Korda hasn't won this year, her seven-win season in 2024 gave her such a big lead that she's still No. 1 in women's golf. Korda has been No. 1 for 70 consecutive weeks, the fifth-largest streak since the women's world ranking began in 2006. ... Scottie Scheffler registered his fourth victory of at least four shots at the British Open, the most PGA Tour titles by four shots or more since Tiger Woods did it five times in 2000. ... Xander Schauffele tied for seventh in the British Open and earned $451,834, moving him past $60 million in career PGA Tour earnings. Scheffler became the fourth player to surpass $90 in career tour money.

Scottie Scheffler, Harris English and Chris Gotterup gave Americans a 1-2-3 finish in the British Open for the first time since 1998, when it was Mark O'Meara, Brian Watts and Tiger Woods.

“I’ve gotten everything I wanted out of this week apart from a claret jug, and that’s just because one person was just a little bit better than the rest of us.” — Rory McIlroy on his return home to Northern Ireland for the British Open.

AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf

Nelly Korda, of USA, plays on the 2nd hole during the last round of the Evian Championship women's golf tournament, in Evian, eastern France, Sunday, July 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani)

Xander Schauffele of the United States acknowledges the crowd on the 18th green during the final round of the British Open golf championship at the Royal Portrush Golf Club, Northern Ireland, Sunday, July 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

USA's Bryson DeChambeau on the 18th green during the final round of the British Open golf championship at the Royal Portrush Golf Club, Northern Ireland, Sunday, July 20, 2025. (Mike Egerton/PA via AP)

Scottie Scheffler of the United States play his tee shot on the 6th during the final round of the British Open golf championship at the Royal Portrush Golf Club, Northern Ireland, Sunday, July 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

The United States hit Venezuela with a “large-scale strike” early Saturday and said President Nicolás Maduro and his wife were captured and flown out of the country after months of stepped-up pressure by Washington — an extraordinary nighttime operation announced by President Donald Trump on social media hours after the attack.

Multiple explosions rang out and low-flying aircraft swept through Caracas, the capital, as Maduro’s government immediately accused the U.S. of attacking civilian and military installations. The Venezuelan government called it an “imperialist attack” and urged citizens to take to the streets.

Trump announced the developments on Truth Social shortly after 4:30 a.m. ET and said he would host a news conference at 11 a.m. ET.

Here's the latest:

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi says Maduro and his wife will face criminal charges after an indictment in New York.

Bondi vowed in a social media post that the couple will “soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.”

Maduro was indicted in 2020 in New York, but it was not previously known that his wife had been.

The Justice Department during Trump’s first term in office charged in the several indictments that Maduro had effectively converted Venezuela into a criminal enterprise at the service of drug traffickers and terrorist groups as he and his allies stole billions from the South American country.

The coordinated unsealing of indictments against 14 officials and government-connected individuals, and rewards of $55 million for Maduro and four others, attacked all the key planks of what then-Attorney General William Barr called the “corrupt Venezuelan regime,” including the Maduro-dominated judiciary and the powerful armed forces.

One indictment by prosecutors in New York accused Maduro and socialist party boss Diosdado Cabello, head of the rubber-stamping constitutional assembly, of conspiring with Colombian rebels and members of the military “to flood the United States with cocaine” and use the drug trade as a “weapon against America.”

Read our news report from 2020 on the charges

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau says the military action and seizure of Maduro marks “a new dawn for Venezuela,” saying that “the tyrant is gone.”

He posted on X hours after the strike. His boss, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, reposted a post from July that said Maduro “is NOT the President of Venezuela and his regime is NOT the legitimate government.”

Utah Sen. Mike Lee said Rubio informed him that “he anticipates no further action in Venezuela now that Maduro is in U.S. custody,” the lawmaker posted on social media.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, posted on X that he had spoken with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who briefed him on the strike. Rubio told Lee that Maduro “has been arrested by U.S. personnel to stand trial on criminal charges in the United States.”

The White House did not immediately respond to queries on where Maduro and his wife were being flown to. Maduro was indicted in March 2020 on “narco-terrorism” conspiracy charges in the Southern District of New York.

President Gustavo Petro of Colombia, one of Trump’s fiercest critics, said the Colombian government convened a national security meeting before dawn Saturday and sent security forces to the border in preparation for a potential “massive influx of refugees” from neighboring Venezuela.

He said he’d also call on the U.N. Security Council to consider “the aggression against the sovereignty of Venezuela and of Latin America.”

“Without sovereignty, there is no nation,” Petro wrote on social media.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry condemned what it called a U.S. “act of armed aggression” against Venezuela in a statement posted on its Telegram channel Saturday.

“Venezuela must be guaranteed the right to determine its own destiny without any destructive, let alone military, outside intervention,” the statement said.

The ministry called for dialogue to prevent further escalation and said it reaffirmed its “solidarity” with the Venezuelan people and government, adding that Russia supports calls for an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting.

The State Department issued a new travel alert early Saturday warning Americans in Venezuela urging them to “shelter in place” due to the situation.

“U.S. Embassy Bogota is aware of reports of explosions in and around Caracas, Venezuela,” it said without elaboration.

“The U.S. Embassy in Bogota, Colombia, warns U.S. citizens not to travel to Venezuela. U.S. citizens in Venezuela should shelter in place.” The embassy in Bogota has been shuttered since March, 2019 but operates remotely.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio retweeted Trump’s announcement without comment, but his deputy, Christopher Landau, posted Trump’s statement, adding that it marked “a new dawn for Venezuela!” “The tyrant is gone. He will now—finally—face justice for his crimes,” Landau said.

Venezuela's Vice President Delcy Rodríguez says, “We do not know the whereabouts of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores.” He added: “We demand proof of life.”

Trump said Maduro “has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country. This operation was done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement. Details to follow.” He set a news conference for later Saturday morning.

The explosions in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, early on the third day of 2026 — at least seven blasts — sent people rushing into the streets, while others took to social media to report hearing and seeing the explosions. It was not immediately clear if there were casualties. The apparent attack itself lasted less than 30 minutes, but it was unclear if more actions lay ahead, though Trump said in his post that the strikes were carried out “successfully.”

Pedestrians walk past the Miraflores presidential palace after explosions and low-flying aircraft were heard in Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Cristian Hernandez)

A vehicle drives along a darkened highway next to Fort Tiuna, the main military garrison in Caracas, Venezuela, after explosions and low-flying aircraft were heard, Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

Smoke raises at La Carlota airport after explosions and low-flying aircraft were heard in Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)