Rory McIlroy was hot and tired when he finished the FedEx St. Jude Championship last year. He was No. 3 in the FedEx Cup. He beat only one player at the TPC Southwind and tied for 68th, finishing 26 shots behind. He dropped all the way to No. 5.
“I'm not even sure why I'm playing,” McIlroy said with a chuckle.
So it comes as no surprise that McIlroy has decided to sit out the start of the PGA Tour postseason, a move he has telegraphed for a year.
It adds to a peculiar season of scheduling for McIlroy, who was intent on cutting back.
He already missed two signature events at Hilton Head and Memorial (he also missed The Sentry at Kapalua, which he has played only once because he starts his year on the European Tour). But he added the RBC Canadian Open a week after the Memorial and the week before the U.S. Open. He also chose to defend his title with Shane Lowry at the Zurich Classic.
Not much should be read into McIlroy — he's No. 2 behind Scottie Scheffler — sitting out the FedEx Cup playoffs opener for only the third time.
Tiger Woods skipped the opener in 2007 and went on to win the FedEx Cup. Woods played The Barclays in 2009, only to realize during the pro-am that Wednesday that even if he had won all three playoff events, he still was not assured winning the FedEx Cup (he won, anyway).
But given the heat in Memphis in early August, it would not be surprising if more top players chose to sit this one out. There is a $5 million bonus for whoever is leading the FedEx Cup after the second playoff event at the BMW Championship.
Then again, McIlroy already is playing tournaments overseas in the fall in India and Australia. In these times, $5 million isn't much of a carrot.
Augusta National already has the state-of-the-art Berckmans Place right off the fifth fairway for high-end Masters patrons. It also as “Map and Flag," another hospitality option across from Washington Road.
Sports Business Journal reviewed a brochure for the “Official Masters Hospitality” program that takes it to a level unlike any other.
According to the brochure, the program offers a “host home” from $45,000 to more than $100,000 for the week. It also offers private transportation up to $15,000, which includes a weekly driver and either an SUV or a sprinter van.
SBJ also reports a “Full Scale, Private Home Program” as a sample that runs $219,600 for the week. It's for eight guests and three waves of packages to the golf course.
The amenities include two homes (a host home for $60,000 and a sleeper home for $38,000), which includes daily cleaning and fresh linens, transportation ($29,000), pantry stocking ($6,000), a full-time staff member ($13,000), catering ($23,500), tee times at area golf courses ($13,500) and a 20% service fee ($36,600).
Nelly Korda headed to the Paris Olympics last summer at No. 1 in the world. Jeeno Thitikul of Thailand was at No. 15, two players seemingly headed in different directions.
A year later, Thitikul is back to No. 1 in the world, largely because of Korda failing to win this year and having nine finishes out of the top 10.
Dating to the Olympics, Thitikul won three times, was runner-up four times and had 16 top 20s in 23 tournaments worldwide.
Korda won The Annika in Florida toward the end of last season. She had three runner-up finishes — two of them at majors — but she finished in the top 10 in only nine of her 18 starts. She had one stretch where she finished out of the top 10 in seven out of nine tournaments.
Korda had been at No. 1 for 71 weeks, the fourth-longest streak since the women's world ranking began in 2006.
Thitikul was previously No. 1 for all of two weeks in the fall of 2022. Thitikul and Ai Miyazato are the only women at No. 1 to have never won a major.
Xander Schauffele is assured of making his 70th consecutive cut in the FedEx St. Jude Championship, the start of the PGA Tour postseason which has no 36-hole cut.
But there's another streak on the line.
Schauffele has been slow to hit his stride since missing two months at the start of the year with a rib injury. He goes into the postseason at No. 42 in the FedEx Cup. Schauffele has reached the Tour Championship eight consecutive years dating to his rookie season in 2017.
That's tied with Tony Finau for the longest active streak getting to East Lake. Finau has an even greater sense of urgency. He starts the FedEx Cup playoffs at No. 62. Only the top 50 advance to the BMW Championship, and the top 30 reach the Tour Championship.
Minjee Lee is a winner for the second time of the Rolex Annika Major Award, given to the major champion who has the best record among the LPGA's five majors.
Points are awarded only to top 10s, so Lee effectively won by one position. She won the KPMG Women's PGA and tied for third in the Evian Championship. Mao Saigo won the Chevron Championship and tied for fourth in the U.S. Women's Open.
Miyu Yamashita won the AIG Women's British Open and tied for sixth in the Women's PGA.
Lee and Yamashita were the only major champions to make the cut in every major. By combined score, Lee was at 19-under par, while Yamashita was at 8 under.
Yani Tseng delivered perhaps the biggest surprise of the major championship season with her tie for 63rd in the Women's British Open. It was her first time making the cut in a major since 2017, and her first time playing the weekend at any LPGA-sanctioned event since 2018.
The former No. 1 player in women's golf and five-time major champion has been in a slump so severe, mostly because of the yips, that making the cut at Royal Porthcawl was a big deal. She also was slowed by hip surgery.
“It's been a while,” Tseng said after making the cut. “I’m fighting really hard to be here. I’m proud of myself that I didn’t give up. I gave myself a chance to come back here, and play the links course like this, it’s always a dream.”
Key to her turnaround around coach Brady Riggs was when he suggested she start putting lefthanded. Tseng said she tried it and “I'm not afraid anymore.”
She is entered in the Standard Portland Classic next week.
The LPGA Tour now has gone 20 tournaments without any player winning more than once, the longest streak to start a season in its 75-year history. The last 14 majors have been won by 14 different players. ... Blades Brown made it through Monday qualifying and the 18-year-old tied for seventh in the Utah Championship, giving him special temporary membership for the remainder of the Korn Ferry Tour season. He is 68th on the points list. The top 20 earn PGA Tour cards for 2026. ... Cameron Young at the Wyndham Championship became the 12th first-time winner on the PGA Tour this season.
Ten years ago, the LPGA Tour had nine players make at least $1 million. There are 24 players who have at least $1 million in earnings this year with 12 tournaments still on the schedule.
“He's just adding his name to the list of many guys that are hard for us to say no to.” — Webb Simpson, a Ryder Cup assistant captain, on Cameron Young.
AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf
Jeeno Thitikul of Thailand competes during the first round of the Women's British Open golf championship, at Royal Porthcawl Golf Club in Porthcawl, Wales, Thursday, July 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
Minjee Lee of Australia reacts on the 6th green during the second round of the Women's British Open golf championship, at Royal Porthcawl Golf Club in Porthcawl, Wales, Friday, Aug. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
Nelly Korda of the United States walks from the 1st tee during the third round of the Women's British Open golf championship, at Royal Porthcawl Golf Club in Porthcawl, Wales, Saturday, Aug. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
Federal immigration agents deployed to Minneapolis have used aggressive crowd-control tactics that have become a dominant concern in the aftermath of the deadly shooting of a woman in her car last week.
They have pointed rifles at demonstrators and deployed chemical irritants early in confrontations. They have broken vehicle windows and pulled occupants from cars. They have scuffled with protesters and shoved them to the ground.
The government says the actions are necessary to protect officers from violent attacks. The encounters in turn have riled up protesters even more, especially as videos of the incidents are shared widely on social media.
What is unfolding in Minneapolis reflects a broader shift in how the federal government is asserting its authority during protests, relying on immigration agents and investigators to perform crowd-management roles traditionally handled by local police who often have more training in public order tactics and de-escalating large crowds.
Experts warn the approach runs counter to de-escalation standards and risks turning volatile demonstrations into deadly encounters.
The confrontations come amid a major immigration enforcement surge ordered by the Trump administration in early December, which sent more than 2,000 officers from across the Department of Homeland Security into the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Many of the officers involved are typically tasked with arrests, deportations and criminal investigations, not managing volatile public demonstrations.
Tensions escalated after the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a 37-year-old woman killed by an immigration agent last week, an incident federal officials have defended as self-defense after they say Good weaponized her vehicle.
The killing has intensified protests and scrutiny of the federal response.
On Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota asked a federal judge to intervene, filing a lawsuit on behalf of six residents seeking an emergency injunction to limit how federal agents operate during protests, including restrictions on the use of chemical agents, the pointing of firearms at non-threatening individuals and interference with lawful video recording.
“There’s so much about what’s happening now that is not a traditional approach to immigration apprehensions,” said former Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Sarah Saldaña.
Saldaña, who left the post at the beginning of 2017 as President Donald Trump's first term began, said she can't speak to how the agency currently trains its officers. When she was director, she said officers received training on how to interact with people who might be observing an apprehension or filming officers, but agents rarely had to deal with crowds or protests.
“This is different. You would hope that the agency would be responsive given the evolution of what’s happening — brought on, mind you, by the aggressive approach that has been taken coming from the top,” she said.
Ian Adams, an assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of South Carolina, said the majority of crowd-management or protest training in policing happens at the local level — usually at larger police departments that have public order units.
“It’s highly unlikely that your typical ICE agent has a great deal of experience with public order tactics or control,” Adams said.
DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a written statement that ICE officer candidates receive extensive training over eight weeks in courses that include conflict management and de-escalation. She said many of the candidates are military veterans and about 85% have previous law enforcement experience.
“All ICE candidates are subject to months of rigorous training and selection at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, where they are trained in everything from de-escalation tactics to firearms to driving training. Homeland Security Investigations candidates receive more than 100 days of specialized training," she said.
Ed Maguire, a criminology professor at Arizona State University, has written extensively about crowd-management and protest- related law enforcement training. He said while he hasn't seen the current training curriculum for ICE officers, he has reviewed recent training materials for federal officers and called it “horrifying.”
Maguire said what he's seeing in Minneapolis feels like a perfect storm for bad consequences.
“You can't even say this doesn't meet best practices. That's too high a bar. These don't seem to meet generally accepted practices,” he said.
“We’re seeing routinely substandard law enforcement practices that would just never be accepted at the local level,” he added. “Then there seems to be just an absence of standard accountability practices.”
Adams noted that police department practices have "evolved to understand that the sort of 1950s and 1960s instinct to meet every protest with force, has blowback effects that actually make the disorder worse.”
He said police departments now try to open communication with organizers, set boundaries and sometimes even show deference within reason. There's an understanding that inside of a crowd, using unnecessary force can have a domino effect that might cause escalation from protesters and from officers.
Despite training for officers responding to civil unrest dramatically shifting over the last four decades, there is no nationwide standard of best practices. For example, some departments bar officers from spraying pepper spray directly into the face of people exercising Constitutional speech. Others bar the use of tear gas or other chemical agents in residential neighborhoods.
Regardless of the specifics, experts recommend that departments have written policies they review regularly.
“Organizations and agencies aren’t always familiar with what their own policies are,” said Humberto Cardounel, senior director of training and technical assistance at the National Policing Institute.
“They go through it once in basic training then expect (officers) to know how to comport themselves two years later, five years later," he said. "We encourage them to understand and know their training, but also to simulate their training.”
Adams said part of the reason local officers are the best option for performing public order tasks is they have a compact with the community.
“I think at the heart of this is the challenge of calling what ICE is doing even policing,” he said.
"Police agencies have a relationship with their community that extends before and after any incidents. Officers know we will be here no matter what happens, and the community knows regardless of what happens today, these officers will be here tomorrow.”
Saldaña noted that both sides have increased their aggression.
“You cannot put yourself in front of an armed officer, you cannot put your hands on them certainly. That is impeding law enforcement actions,” she said.
“At this point, I’m getting concerned on both sides — the aggression from law enforcement and the increasingly aggressive behavior from protesters.”
Law enforcement officers at the scene of a reported shooting Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)
Federal immigration officers confront protesters outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)
People cover tear gas deployed by federal immigration officers outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)
A man is pushed to the ground as federal immigration officers confront protesters outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/John Locher)
A woman covers her face from tear gas as federal immigration officers confront protesters outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)
