Sports
Scottie Scheffler uses spare time to prepare title defense at The Open
Jul 14, 2026; Southport, England; Scottie Scheffler plays a bunker shot on the third hole during a practice round for The Open Championship golf tournament at Royal Birkdale. Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-Imagn Images Scottie Scheffler found himself in an unfamiliar position last weekend.
He had no work to do.
The World No. 1 missed the cut at the Genesis Scottish Open last Friday, marking the first time he failed to advance to the third round of a PGA Tour tournament in nearly four years.
He doesn’t intend to have two weekends off in a row.
Scheffler, 30, enters The Open Championship at Royal Birkdale Golf Club in Southport, England, this week as the defending champion. Last July, he finished at 17-under at Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland, defeating fellow American Harris English by four shots to take home the Claret Jug.
With a victory, he would become the first player to win The Open in two consecutive seasons since Padraig Harrington of Ireland did it nearly 20 years ago. Harrington won at Carnoustie in 2007, beating Sergio Garcia in a playoff, and topped Ian Poulter by four strokes the following year at Royal Birkdale.
Scheffler took extra time to make an early arrival at Royal Birkdale and get a look at the course, which has undergone renovation since it last hosted The Open in 2017.
“I played 18 on Sunday. Played nine holes yesterday and today, so getting used to the golf course,” he said Tuesday in his pre-tournament news conference.
“Yeah, you never want to have a weekend off, but going into a tournament when you’re defending, there’s always a bit more stuff to do. So it wasn’t the worst thing in the world, albeit it was quite frustrating.”
But the extra time allowed him to see just what course designers had done to the place.
“First impressions were really good. I think it’s pretty obvious — the one thing I found interesting is it’s so obvious as to which holes had been redone. They look like they’re not even on the same golf course,” he said. “You look at 14, 15, 16, those green complexes and the amount of slope that they have off of them are pretty severe and quite challenging. The fifth hole is kind of like that, seventh hole as well.”
“Overall, I think it’s really solid. The fairways are tight, and there’s some thinking you have to do off the tee. You’ve got to be hitting the ball, I think, really sharply around this place if you’re going to make some birdies. There’s some very, very challenging holes, especially the par-3s.”
He said his preview of the course showed him he will have a lot of decisions to make if he is to tame Royal Birkdale.
“The ball’s just going to run for forever pretty much,” Scheffler said. “The fairways this week — here’s how I would say it. The fairways this week are really tight, so you get a lot of cross-winds. They can be difficult to hold just because they’re so fast and they’re so firm. So there’s a lot of thinking off the tee on whether or not you want to just hit driver up there somewhere and kind of play from the rough most likely, or do you want to start hitting some irons, getting it in some fairways and hitting some longer shots into the greens?
“On each hole there’s a good bit of strategy; there’s a decent amount of thinking. If it wasn’t as firm as it is now, there wouldn’t be as much decision-making, but I think with the firmness, it creates a whole lot more challenges, I think, for us as players, just to try and control your ball and figure out where it’s going to end up.”
–Field Level Media
Sports
Clemson's 2026 Season Could Define Dabo Swinney's Future
It may not officially begin until September, but a very important season for Dabo Swinney’s legendary Clemson tenure ramps up on Thursday when he attends Atlantic Coast Conference Kickoff in Charlotte.
Twelve months ago, the program seemed revitalized, coming off its first College Football Playoff appearance in five years and entering the 2025 season as the No. 4 team in the preseason AP poll.
Swinney had finally succumbed after holding out as the last major coach who wasn’t bringing in any transfer additions. People thought he had the quarterback in Cade Klubnik, the defensive line anchored by Peter Woods and the good vibes back after questions had begun to emerge about if the game had passed him by.
One 7-6 season later — his worst since his second full season in 2010 — those questions are back entering the 2026 season.
After winning two national championships and nine ACC titles, can Swinney return to the Tigers back to that former glory? Or will his college football future end up elsewhere?
Because he made it clear in an On3 Sports interview this summer that he doesn’t see his time as a coach ending any time soon.
“Hell no. I mean, I’m just getting going,” Swinney said. “I’m right about the same age Nick (Saban) was when he got to Alabama. So I’m just getting going, man. I love a challenge, and again, all we’ve done is win.”
Fittingly entering a prove-it year of sorts, Swinney is getting some of the gang back together. Chad Morris, who was his offensive coordinator during the early stages of Clemson’s rise to power from 2011-14, is back as OC after Garrett Riley was fired.
There’s some new-school to this Clemson roster as well, though. Notably, Swinney and his staff have fully embraced transfers, adding 11 portal players this offseason after bringing on their first four last year.
The quarterback will be new, with Klubnik — the program’s all-time leader in pass attempts and completions — gone after appearing in 49 games over the last four seasons. While he drew criticism at times for not being at the level of former Clemson greats like Deshaun Watson and Trevor Lawrence, he brought a high level of reliability and experience.
That won’t be there no matter who wins the job, most likely redshirt sophomore Christopher Vizzina, who has been waiting in the wings.
The good news for Vizzina and the rest of the roster is that the pressure should be gone. Clemson isn’t likely to be a preseason top-25 team — which would be a first since 2011.
The bad news is that it won’t be as easy to win the ACC as it used to be with a number of other teams having closed the gap or overtaken the Tigers in the pecking order.
Miami, who Clemson hosts Oct. 3, played in the national title game last year, SMU and Louisville are trendy picks to make ACC noise and Virginia and Duke are coming off ACC championship game appearances.
Once the season finally arrives, Clemson won’t have to wait long for its chance to make a statement that it is back.
The Tigers kick things off Sept. 5 at LSU in Lane Kiffin’s first game in Death Valley.
Sports
Conor McGregor Should Never Fight in the UFC Again After Latest Injury
LAS VEGAS – If you haven’t seen it by now, Conor McGregor’s attempt at a comeback after a five-year layoff ended in nightmarish fashion on Saturday. The once Notorious Irishman went out in humiliation, suffering a knee injury on his very first action of the fight.
Afterwards, a distraught McGregor took to social media to convey his heartbreak and deny rumblings that he was entering with a pre-existing injury. On Monday, McGregor posted on Instagram that he plans to get surgery and that he’ll fight out the last remaining fight on his contract.
Let me just say it in no uncertain terms: McGregor absolutely, positively should never step foot in the Octagon again. His last two attempts have ended in catastrophic injury, and he has just one win that occurred after the end of the Barack Obama administration. McGregor was never the insurmountable foe he was often made out to be in his prime, and he hasn’t even been close to that level as a fighter on this side of the 2020s.
How Dana White could save McGregor’s future
Fortunately for McGregor, Dana White’s new Zuffa Boxing project could potentially present some intriguing options for his final contracted fight with UFC and the TKO organization. Perhaps it’s a boxing match against an enigma like Jake Paul, which would almost certainly find itself in Mayweather-McGregor territory in terms of hype and handle. And on the topic of Mayweather-McGregor, could you even rule out the possibility of running that back a second time.
The reality of McGregor’s situation is that he simply can’t be trusted to sell a high-level MMA fight again. Fans were already reluctant to buy into any pre-fight hype this time around, and it feels like a near impossible task to once again try and sell the fact that a man who’s spent the better part of the last decade destroying his own body and mind can fight at a high level.
If McGregor attempts to box once again, it almost certainly removes another catastrophic leg injury from the equation. Despite the fact that he lost to Mayweather in 2017, his performance in that bout showed that has the hands to seriously contend with the best boxers on the planet. I’d expect him to have an even better performance against Mayweather if he did go down the path of that second fight.
If McGregor and TKO/Zuffa attempt to pivot to a Jake Paul fight, the fireworks that will come from those promotional press conferences and face-offs would likely make the bout the most viral fight in history. McGregor would certainly have to find an answer for Paul’s size and power, but the fact that Paul’s jaw is so severely compromised from the Anthony Joshua fight gives McGregor a window for an early stoppage.
In reality, the idea that either Mayweather or Paul are next for McGregor seems far-fetched. Admittedly, I don’t know the legal logistics that would be required to move his contract from UFC to Zuffa boxing either, though I imagine it’s something that can be done. As it stands, I would expect to see McGregor finish out his contract in the Octagon against either Michael Chandler or Max Holloway once again.
Sports
Jon Rahm: 'Confidence is always high' ahead of The Open
Jul 17, 2025; Portrush, IRL; Jon Rahm tees off on the first hole during the first round of The 153rd Open Championship golf tournament at Royal Portrush. Mandatory Credit: Mike Frey-Imagn Images Three years have passed since Jon Rahm won a major, the most recent celebration coming at the 2023 Masters when Scottie Scheffler put the green jacket on the Spaniard at Augusta National.
Rahm won the U.S. Open in 2021, and has ties for second at the PGA Championship (2026) and The Open Championship (2023) also high on his resume. While he said he enters The Open on Thursday at Royal Birkdale with plenty of confidence, he knows just how difficult it will be to hoist the Claret Jug on Sunday.
“God, it’s hard. It’s very hard,” Rahm said of winning a major in his pre-tournament news conference on Tuesday in Southport, England.
His attitude is far from defeated, however.
“Confidence is always high,” said Rahm, 31. “I think as a player you have to have that belief in yourself, that things are always going to be good, so feeling good. Very excited to be here.”
Royal Birkdale last hosted The Open in 2017, when Jordan Spieth (12-under) finished three strokes ahead of Matt Kuchar.
The next champion will have different challenges than those Spieth faced. Since then, the course has been re-imagined.
But one challenge remains constant: the wind, which is going to impact club selection.
“It’s one of the venues that I remember as being a fantastic championship venue, historically very difficult one,” Rahm said. “Weather-wise, very unusual week. Looking forward to see what the challenge presents because I think we’re going to see a bit of everything, see 6-irons off tees, drivers and long irons into par-4s. It should be a really fun one.”
Rahm has just one more day to review the course before teeing off Thursday at 5:09 a.m., paired with Spieth and Tommy Fleetwood of England. They follow the star-studded group of Scheffler, Bryson DeChambeau and Englishman Tyrrell Hatton.
There will be a lot of eyes on those two groups. Rahm’s eyes will be on factors such as pin placement, the speed of the greens and how the flag whips in the wind.
Rahm, a former World No. 1, now competes in the LIV Golf League and on the DP World Tour. Given those experiences of worldwide travel, he was asked if he’d like to see the PGA Tour add another major abroad.
“I wouldn’t know the logistics of that. I don’t know who can decide what a new major becomes or is now a major, he said. “That would be interesting to see a major happen in other parts of the world, in other continents, I mean. Golf being a global game and as big as it is, it’s something that could be explored for sure.”
–Field Level Media
Clemson's 2026 Season Could Define Dabo Swinney's Future
Conor McGregor Should Never Fight in the UFC Again After Latest Injury
