Sports
Scottie Scheffler’s Dominance Overshadows Collin Morikawa’s Pebble Beach Win
Jan 25, 2026; La Quinta, California, USA; Scottie Scheffler hits his tee shot on the sixth hole during the final round of The American Express golf tournament at Pete Dye Stadium Course. Mandatory Credit: Denis Poroy-Imagn Images I like Collin Morikawa. I’ve been a fan since I watched him win his first major, in awe of his elite iron play. I waited out his awkward “I don’t owe anyone anything” shtick last year after he shunted a Sunday press conference when Russell Henley beat him with a (lucky) chip-in.
Morikawa broke a 2 1/2-year drought by winning the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am on Sunday, doing so by playing two excellent weekend rounds in windy conditions. He beat an elite field and, importantly, beat Scottie Scheffler for the first time in what feels like a long time.
Yet with all requisite kudos to Morikawa, the story of the week still somehow became Scheffler. It always seems to be Scheffler.
When people start comparing Scheffler’s dominance to Tiger Woods’, it’s time to start taking them seriously. Scheffler can’t stay away from the top of the leaderboard no matter how poor he starts a tournament, as he showed each of the past two weeks.
At the WM Phoenix Open, Scheffler struggled mightily on Thursday and shot a 1-over-par 73. His made cuts streak was in jeopardy. You’d be excused for turning your attention to football the rest of the weekend and checking the final leaderboard later. Oh, there’s Scheffler, tied for third. Wait, what?
The dude went 65-67-64 the rest of the week and nearly won in spite of his first-round stinker.
OK, but that’s TPC Scottsdale. A fine course but not the toughest ever built, with plenty of scoring opportunities. This week was Pebble Beach, a major championship venue.
Well, first of all, it sure doesn’t play like a major in February weather. The winning score has landed between 17 and 22 under every year since 2015 – including 2024, when it was shortened to three rounds! Elite players are breezing through when the course is set up by the PGA Tour rather than the USGA, but that’s a column for another time.
But again, Scheffler opened with a pedestrian round, an even-par 72. And again, he stalked up the leaderboard over the next few days. He was 11 under through three rounds, eight off Akshay Bhatia’s lead.
My dad and I had a long-running personal joke about Woods that originated when we had a golf tournament on TV many years ago and Woods was seemingly out of contention five or six shots back on Sunday. Ian Baker-Finch said, “Tiger’s lurking.” When he was in his prime, golf broadcasters always felt Tiger was lurking.
Friends, we have reached peak Scheffler lurking. The dude is simply never out of a tournament. Because he went out Sunday and shot one of the best rounds of golf in Pebble Beach history, a 9-under 63 with three eagles, including an unforgettable 3 at the par-5 18th.
When Scheffler tapped in for eagle – again, tapped in for eagle at an iconic par-5 and all that wind and the tournament in the balance – he had the lead in the clubhouse. Bhatia had long since faded, and only Morikawa, Min Woo Lee and Sepp Straka would finish ahead of Scheffler the rest of the way.
His T4 marked his 18th consecutive top-10 finish in official events dating back to last March. Nearly a calendar year’s worth of top-10s, and the longest such streak since Billy Casper had 17 in the 1960s.
Even in his most brilliant days, Woods didn’t have a streak of consistency like this. Heck, neither did Jack Nicklaus. And no offense to Casper, but frankly you could argue he was up against plumbers and milkmen like the old line about the 1960s NBA. Scheffler is doing this during the era of peak performance and athletic training teams and AI figuring out how to maximize your sleep. He’s beating other multiple-major winners week in and week out.
“I could not care any less,” Scheffler said Saturday when informed his top-10 streak was in jeopardy. Then he went out there Sunday and obliterated an iconic golf course. Maybe it is more fun for him this way. It’s certainly more fun for us when the greatest of his generation is lurking.
Sports
Are the Pittsburgh Pirates Finally Ready to Contend in 2026?
The Pittsburgh Pirates have been one of the worst teams in baseball over the last decade. They have the 5th-lowest winning percentage in baseball and have more 100-loss seasons (two) than winning seasons (one) over that period.
Bob Nutting is one of the worst owners in sports, and because of that, the Pirates are among the lowest spenders in the league. To go along with a cheap owner, they’ve been mostly incompetent from an organizational point of view, squandering the actual talent they’ve had come through PNC Park.
But it sort of feels like the Pirates are ready to be a real baseball team.
If you want to talk about the Pirates, it starts with Paul Skenes. He leads a rotation that should be one of the better position groups in the National League. Bubba Chandler should be right behind Skenes in the rotation, and many scouts feel he has number one pitcher upside to him. He had some struggles in his first few appearances at the major league level, but in his final three starts last season, he threw 16.2 innings, allowing only two runs.
Braxton Ashcraft and Mitch Keller will also be featured in a Pirates rotation that should keep the team competitive on the mound. In the bullpen, the Pirates added Gregory Soto to a group of relief pitchers needing some depth.
They’ll also lean on Dennis Santana, who had one of the best chase rates in baseball last season, Carmen Mlodzinski, who’s been quite consistent the last few years, and a lot of other arms that come with many questions. The bullpen never had much help on the offensive side of things the last few years, but the Pirates actually attempted to add some quality bats to their lineup.
O’Neil Cruz and Bryan Reynolds had career-worst seasons in the outfield last year for Pittsburgh, but I’m betting on them to bounce back with more protection around them.
The Pirates got aggressive this offseason, bringing in Brandon Lowe, Marcell Ozuna, Jhostynxon Garcia, and Ryan O’Hearn.
Lowe and O’Hearn are coming off solid All-Star seasons and should provide immediate help to the Pirates’ lineup. Ozuna is coming off a bit of a down season, but he had hit 79 homers over the prior two seasons. I like them taking a risk on Ozuna on a relatively cheap one-year deal, just to see if he can bounce back.
Lastly, Garcia had been excelling in the Boston farm system, but it was unlikely he was ever going to break through a crowded Red Sox outfield. Pittsburgh had to flip Johan Oviedo, but I still think this was a pretty savvy move for the Pirates.
The lineup will also feature infielder Spencer Horwitz, who, after struggling with injuries at the beginning of the season, finished the year strong and generated a team-leading 118 OPS+ last year for the Pirates.
However, the biggest question facing the Pirates is what they will do with Konnor Griffin. He’s seen as the best prospect in the sport, and if they’re actually serious about contending this year, he will start the season as the team’s shortstop.
Griffin is a 6’4” 19-year-old who’s built like a 10-year veteran. He murdered the ball at all three levels of minor league baseball he played in last season; he’s a plus defender and a plus athlete. He’s the no-doubt hitting prospect that the Pirates have been needing for so long now. Adding him to a lineup that could feature 5-6 above-average hitters, this team could be serious right now.
The Pirates are currently +800 to win the NL Central and +425 to make the playoffs. It might be time to trust the Pirates, because they’re going to be contenders in 2026.
Sports
Report: Seahawks unlikely to apply franchise tag to Kenneth Walker III
Feb 8, 2026; Santa Clara, CA, USA; Seattle Seahawks running back Kenneth Walker III (9) carries the ball against the New England Patriots during the fourth quarter in Super Bowl LX at Levi’s Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images The Seattle Seahawks unlikely are to apply the franchise tag to Super Bowl LX MVP Kenneth Walker III, according to a report by ESPN.
Walker, who ran for 135 yards in Seattle’s 29-13 Super Bowl victory over the New England Patriots, is not being prioritized as a retention piece, per ESPN. The Seahawks reportedly are prioritizing other pending free agents and likely will work on an extension for star receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba.
Walker, 25, would be given a one-year, $14.1 million contract if the franchise tag was applied to him. The former second-round pick is at the end of his four-year rookie contract which saw the Seahawks pay him a total of $8.4 million.
After rushing for 1,027 yards and five touchdowns in the regular season, Walker amassed 313 yards and four scores over the Seahawks’ three playoff games. He took over the majority of the reps in the wake of Zach Charbonnet’s season-ending knee injury sustained in Seattle’s divisional-round win over San Francisco.
Over four seasons with the Seahawks, Walker has rushed for 3,555 yards and 29 touchdowns while catching 133 passes for 1,005 yards and two more scores in 58 regular-season games (54 starts).
–Field Level Media
Sports
Super-vet and rookie combine for US in search of bobsleigh gold
Feb 16, 2026; Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy; Elana Meyers Taylor of the United States celebrates after winning the women’s bobsleigh monobob competition during the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games at Cortina Sliding Centre. Mandatory Credit: Michael Madrid-Imagn Images CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — Medal-laden Elana Meyers Taylor is in her fifth Olympics while Jadin O’Brien had barely seen, let alone touched, a bobsleigh until late last year, but this week that unlikely U.S. pairing will be targeting gold in the Two-Woman event in Cortina.
Meyers Taylor, 41, arrived with two silver and two bronze medals from the Two-Woman event, starting in 2010.
She got another silver with the first running of Monobob four years ago and then, on Monday, finally topped the podium with a dramatic Monobob gold.
There is nothing she does not know about the sport.
The same cannot be said for O’Brien, who was competing at the USA Track & Field championships as a heptathlete last August with no thought of getting into a bobsleigh.
That was until Meyers Taylor, always on the lookout for the sort of powerful sprinters necessary for success, contacted her.
“It has been a whirlwind,” O’Brien, 23, told journalists in Cortina ahead of her event that begins on Friday.
“I finished my last track meet August 2nd and started training for bobsled August 4th. Ten days after that, I was in Lake Placid doing the rookie camp. Two weeks after, I made the World Cup team and now we are in Europe.
“I could never have predicted my life would turn out this way, but I’m incredibly grateful, and I’ve loved every second of it.”
Not quite every second.
SPECTACULAR CRASH
A month ago, O’Brien and Meyers Taylor were involved in a spectacular crash in St. Moritz, Switzerland that the veteran pilot described as one of the most violent she had ever seen.
“It was not easy getting back on the line to race in St. Moritz after that,” O’Brien said. “I was in a lot of pain, I couldn’t really move and we were both very, very beat up.
“But in a weird way I think it brought us together as a pair. I decided to put my body on the line for ‘E’ because I felt that I had the best chance of getting her in a top 10 finish. We did place in the top 10 and I think that was a testament to who we are as athletes and what we’re capable of doing together.
“Honestly, the sky is the limit for both of us.”
At the start of the Games, Meyers Taylor sat alongside O’Brien looking more like a proud parent than a teammate and said that though she was going all out for the gold that had proved just out of reach at four Olympics, her vast experience has given her something of a Zen approach.
“It would mean everything and it would mean nothing all at the same time,” the mother of two deaf sons said of the prospect of topping the podium.
“I wanted to approach this sport with joy and integrity. I am going to give it everything I’ve got and see what happens, but, at the end of the day, a gold medal is not going to change who I am.”
Unchanged or not, she now has that gold, saying the fact she wanted, rather than needed it helped her achieve it and now she will be pouring all her experience and energy into helping O’Brien get the same feeling.
One of the women trying to spoil that dream is teammate Kaillie Humphries, twice a gold medalist in the event for Canada but now representing the U.S. at the age of 40.
Germany remains the favorite, in the form of Laura Nolte and Deborah Levi, who were crowned World Cup champions last month after winning five of the seven races.
Nolte had looked nailed on for gold after three runs in the Monobob final but wobbled on her last run to drop to silver and will be desperate to make amends.
–Reuters, special to Field Level Media
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