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Bannan’s testimony is glowing, but would Rohl be able to do what Martin could not?

The German is younger, has managed significantly fewer matches, and does not have as much experience of Rangers or Scotland as the man he would succeed.

Would all that undermine his ability to handle the myriad problems the next Rangers boss will face on and off the pitch?

“Danny Rohl is 36 years old – you can be as good a coach as you want, but is he going to have the experience of handling all the fires that need to be put out at Rangers at the moment? I would suggest ‘no’,” said former Scotland midfielder Michael Stewart on Sportsound.

“They need a manager who is a genuine leader, a figurehead, and I’m not sure Danny Rohl would have the experience or wherewithal to handle the mess that Rangers are in at the minute.”

And despite’s Rohl impressive CV as a whole, former Rangers striker Billy Dodds – who was part of last season’s interim coaching team – says the optics of appointing another head coach from the English Championship would not wash with Rangers supporters.

“Most wanted Steven Gerrard, but that’s gone now,” he said on Sportsound.

“I just think if you go down that Championship route again – I am not saying Danny Rohl is not a good manager, I’ve heard he is – but it is kind of rinse and repeat, and I don’t think the Rangers fans want that.

“It’s huge that the hierarchy at Rangers take the fans into account on this.”

Given how turblent their nascent reign has been, how important is it that the new ownership get this decision absolutely right? Crucial, says Stewart.

“Can anybody tell me anything that’s happened since the new ownership has come in that’s been positive?” he asked on Sportsound.

“Russell Martin’s appointment – questionable. [Sporting director] Kevin Thelwell’s appointment – questionable. Recruitment – questionable. Hanging on to Russell Martin longer than they should – questionable. And now this Gerrard debacle.

“They are under serious pressure to make sure this appointment is on point.”

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Manchester United are too big to fail forever, and their Premier League clash with champions Liverpool at Anfield on Sunday will only serve as a reminder of what could happen if, or when, one of the world’s most powerful sporting brands finally gets it right.

Fenway Sports Group (FSG), Liverpool’s transformative American owners, celebrated 15 years in charge at Anfield this week, a period that’s seen the club win two Premier League titles and the UEFA Champions League while also building a formidable scouting and analytics network. That success, first under manager Jurgen Klopp and now Arne Slot, has put the club back at the summit of English football, but it only came after a 30-year period of prolonged failure, managerial upheaval and ownership battles, ironically endured during a long spell of United dominance under Sir Alex Ferguson.

The two clubs have now traded places and it is United who are suffering, but just like Liverpool, United will bounce back and reclaim their place alongside global heavyweights Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Barcelona. Their in-built advantages make it an inevitability and simply a matter of time — a case of sporting gravity once again working in United’s favour.

“If football success could be compared to a game of dice, Manchester United only need to roll threes and fours to be successful because of their history, commercial strength and worldwide fanbase,” a former United executive told ESPN. “The problem is that they have been continually rolling ones and twos, while Liverpool and Manchester City have been on a run of fives and sixes.

“That is ultimately down to judgement, luck, stability and, in Liverpool’s case, having a genius like [FSG president] Mike Gordon making key decisions, but eventually, United will start rolling some threes and fours and then fives and sixes.

“They simply need to get the big decisions right. Once that happens, their commercial might well propel United back to the top.”

Despite results, they have the revenue

Challenging Liverpool for the biggest prizes, the Premier League and Champions League, seems a distant speck on the horizon right now for United, whose title drought stretches back to 2013, with their last Champions League crown being won in 2008. But it took Liverpool three years under FSG stewardship to challenge for the title, when Brendan Rodgers’ team finished second to Manchester City in 2013-14, and five years before they made they hired Klopp as coach in Oct 2015 — a decision that proved the catalyst for the success to follow.

United are still in a state of flux when it comes to managers and ownership. The club appears stuck in a doom-loop of failure: in addition to five fired managers since 2014, a succession of expensive flops in the transfer market, and their rivals Liverpool and Manchester City stacking up silverware at home and abroad, they’ve had turmoil off the field with unpopular co-owners, the Glazer family and Sir Jim Ratcliffe, overseeing deep cost-cutting measures and job cuts. But the publication of the club’s annual accounts last month shed light on just why they are a sleeping giant that will, eventually, wake from its slumber.

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United posted a loss of £33 million ($44.3m), largely due to over-paying for transfer fees and wages, but an annual revenue figure of £666.5m ($890m) was highest ever recorded by the club. Despite a disastrous 2024-25 season that saw United, who were absent from the Champions League, fire manager Erik ten Hag on the way to recording the team’s worst-ever Premier League finish — 15th place — under his successor Ruben Amorim, the club was still able to post a record revenue figure only previously eclipsed by Real Madrid (£910.8m / $1.216 billion), City (£730m / $974.4m) and Paris Saint-Germain (£702.1m / $937.3m).

All of the above teams are expected to significantly increased revenues in their next accounts due to the financial boost of participating in this summer’s FIFA Club World Cup, while Liverpool’s Premier League title win and Champions League campaign is likely to take their income for 2024-25 past the £700m ($934m) mark.

Liverpool received £174.9m ($233.5m) in Premier League prize money last season, £38.7m ($51.7m) more than United’s £136.2m ($181.9m) for finishing fifteenth. And the £82.73m ($110.5m) Slot’s team banked from their Champions League run the Round of 16 dwarfed the £30.7m ($41m) earned from reaching the Europa League final — the financial gains from being a better football team are obvious.

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Will Salah get back to his best for Liverpool vs. Man United?

Rob Dawson and Mark Ogden discuss Mohamed Salah’s form for Liverpool ahead of their clash vs. Man United.

But even after the club’s worst season since relegation from the old First Division in 1974, United continue to generate huge sums off the pitch, a testament to their latent ability to navigate a route back to the top.

“Can United bridge the gap and be successful again? Absolutely,” Casper Stylsvig, a former commercial executive at United, Barcelona, AC Milan and Chelsea told ESPN. “They have the strength of the brand and it is similar to Dallas Cowboys. They haven’t won the Super Bowl for many, many years [last win: 1995], but they’re still going from strength-to-strength as brand and I think United will get it right eventually.

“There has been a big turnaround at United and it was probably needed to some extent, but they have the brand and the following, all the fan engagement is high and some of the biggest in the world, so yes, they certainly will come back.”

United’s shirt sponsorship deal with tech company Snapdragon is worth £60m ($80.1m) a year until 2029 — the same figure earned by Real Madrid (Emirates), Barcelona (Spotify) and PSG (Qatar Airways), but their kit partnership deal with Adidas, £90m ($120m) a year until 2033, is less lucrative than those of Barcelona (Nike £127m / $170m), City (Puma, £100m / $133.5m) and Real Madrid (Adidas £95m / $128m). Despite their title success and recent success, Liverpool only secured a £60m-a-year ($80.1m) deal with Adidas earlier this year.

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“United is still a massive club,” Stylsvig said. “The fact that probably one of the very biggest buyers in the world of sport, Adidas, is renewing for £90m just shows the power of United. Adidas wouldn’t spend £90m a year for United if they didn’t see there was potential.”

United’s fall from grace as a club capable of winning the Premier League and Champions League has impacted on their earnings, however, as highlighted by Liverpool’s on-field success generating £257.63m ($344m) last season compared to United’s £166.9m ($222.9m).

If United get it right on the pitch, they could expect to boost their earnings by approximately £100m ($133.6m) a year, with success then likely to make them more attractive to star players and potential sponsors. Edward Freedman, a sports branding expert credited with transforming United’s commercial earnings in the 1990s before launching the sports memorabilia company Icons, says that the players on the pitch are as important as the commercial team off it.

“The commercial situation is very tied up with the performance on the field,” Freedman told ESPN. “And United haven’t had a very good run on the field at all, so that will negatively impact their commercial income.

“United have long-term contracts with their major sponsors, but once those contracts run out, no one’s going to go back in and pay the same prices that they paid before because they’re not top of the league. They’ve let Marcus Rashford and some of their best players go and brought in players that haven’t got the same charisma and are not particularly commercially valuable, so that’s a problem that United must address.”

Former United commercial director Richard Arnold once said that the club didn’t buy players to boost brand recognition because the team had “25 George Clooneys – they are all massive stars.” United are clearly no longer that, of course, but despite concerns about the lack of success and their allure to star players, Freedman admits that United can still tap into an increasingly lucrative commercial market.

“Lots of clubs have caught up with United commercially,” Freedman said. “But it’s not a shrinking pool because there is now a lot more people throwing money at the game.

“It’s still a massive market. If you think about China and the United States, football is growing and growing and the bubble shouldn’t burst, but if United are to capitalise, they need to hire somebody who really knows the commercial market and also sign a star player, because what happens on the pitch goes hand in hand with what happens off it.”

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Does Joshua Zirkzee have a future at Man United?

Gab Marcotti and Don Hutchison debate if Manchester United forward Joshua Zirkzee has a future at the club after reported loan interest from Roma.

‘United will eventually get it right’

United have challenges ahead, notably the plans to build a new stadium that could cost as much as £2 billion ($2.67bn), but sources have said that they could command a naming rights deals of least £25m ($33.4m) to sponsor the new ground, which would also significantly increase United’s current matchday income of £5m ($6.7m) a game.

Sources have said that the prospect of lucrative direct-to-consumer broadcasting packages within 5-7 years would also be a huge financial earner for United and Liverpool due to their vast global fanbases, but while Liverpool have a slick machine on and off the pitch at Anfield — “Liverpool have had a rising tide of perfection,” the former United executive said — United still need to get both arms of the operation working together at Old Trafford.

“United maybe didn’t renew themselves and innovate properly in recent years, with too much reluctance to change,” Stylsvig, who was this week appointed as executive director of the Hong Kong Jockey Club, said. “But the sheer scale of the numbers that they can produce and the way they run things is just phenomenal. It is a very, very big club, truly one of the big ones.

“The last time United won a Premier League was in 2013, but they just kept increasing revenues, even though they weren’t successful on the pitch. They could attract the best talent and you can always argue did they have the right team and right manager and so on, but the reality is United they went from strength to strength from a commercial point of view, even though the results on the pitch were not there.

“Having results off the pitch buys you the opportunity to get better players and invest more in the team, so United will eventually get it right.”

United’s next throw of the dice is against Liverpool this Sunday, and it would be the perfect time to roll a six.

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Brian Rolapp’s resume might run several pages long, but really it runs three letters.

N-F-L.

Three letters have plenty of meaning in golf, but in football they might be even more consuming. The new PGA Tour CEO’s journey into the top seat at golf’s largest professional tour ran almost exclusively through the NFL, the most profitable sports entity in the world. His agenda as the league’s leader on media rights and innovation transformed his career from an NFL intern to commissioner Roger Goodell’s right-hand man, and the NFL’s business from a few billion dollars to a few hundred billion dollars. It does not take an expert in the inner machinations of the PGA Tour to understand the appeal behind his candidacy for Tour leader: To bring a new three-letter word, NFL, to golf.

The logic is sound, if not absolute. Rolapp should want to implement some of the lessons that have made the NFL a smashing success over the last two decades. (He did, after all, help to make the NFL veryrich.) By every indication, he plans to do so. He teased “significant change” in his opening press conference as CEO.

But what kind of change is on the menu? And how much of the NFL is a good thing? As the calendar flips to the fall of 2025, that’s golf’s most important question.

“I say it in America all the time: Golf doesn’t need to be the NFL,” one of the pros Rolapp will be responsible for persuading, Rory McIlroy, said Wednesday. “It doesn’t need to be these other sports. Golf is golf, and that’s fine.”

McIlroy was speaking from the kind of endeavor that Rolapp might appreciate: A paid golf ambassadorship in India, where he is playing in this week’s DP World Tour Event. McIlroy is just the latest pro to participate in an event in the world’s most populous country — an untapped market for golf that could produce the kind of “global growth” often trumpeted by its executives.

He was speaking aboutsomething mostly unrelated to Rolapp’s change agenda in pro golf: The harshness that seems to permeate fan behavior in other sports, but has remained largely removed from golf.

And yet there was something intriguing about the timing of McIlroy’s comments. He enters India after his nearest exposure to the NFL-ification of pro golf — a hotly contested Ryder Cup at Bethpage in which McIlroy and his wife were the frequent targets of crowd ridicule far beyond the typical behavior of a golf tournament. Even in the moment, McIlroy seemed perturbed by the behavior at Bethpage — and by what it represented for his sport more broadly.

Now, with the Tour’s embrace of the NFL’s ideals in progress, McIlroy seemed careful not to let his enthusiasm for golf’s growth come at the expense of its individuality.

“I think [golf] can definitely grow,” he said. “But you also want to keep traditions and the values that make golf, golf.”

Of course, there’s been no indication that Rolapp (or anyone at the PGA Tour, for that matter) has an appetite for a Ryder Cup-style crowd every week on the PGA Tour. And McIlroy has made clear his stance as an agent for positive change in golf: dedicating no shortage of his waking hours in the early-2020s to efforts aimed at maintaining the Tour’s stronghold in the wake of LIV’s incursion.

But might there have been a bit of politicking in McIlroy’s answer? Perhaps.

“You don’t want your sport to be unwelcoming to newcomers. I absolutely get that,” McIlroy said. “But you also don’t want newcomers coming into the game and ruining centuries of traditions and values of what this game represents or what it up holds, as well.”

In many ways, McIlroy’s comments embodied the tightrope Rolapp and the rest of pro golf must now walk: Innovating without overstepping, revering the past but not clutching too tightly to it.

This is the world the Tour signed up for when it ushered in the era of player equity from a group of outside investors. It’s also the mountain Rolapp knew he would have to climb at the Tour before landing the lead job.

“I think there has to be a balance,” he said. “I certainly think that golf can grow but it can grow in a way where the people that are coming into the game still respect and acknowledge that this is a little bit different than other sports.”

Golf may be different, but it’s far from the only sport to face the modernization debate. Basketball detonated its regular season to create an “in-season tournament.” Football created a brand-new kickoff from thin air. Baseball introduced a pitch clock and a ghost runner and a bigger base and a replay review.

Some of those changes were accepted or even appreciated. Many were detested. It will be Rolapp’s job to find the balance.

The goal is to multiply the size and popularity of the pro game, ensuring a considerable financial windfall for all at the time of the Tour’s next TV rights deal at the end of the decade. That’s an image most in the golf world — particularly those cashing checks on the PGA Tour — can appreciate.

But in golf, nothing is as simple as three letters. Not even close.

Allen Iverson, talking about his new memoir “Misunderstood” on ESPN’s “First Take,” discussed the lowest point of his life — and it didn’t involve anything that happened on a basketball court.

“It was self-inflicted,” Iverson told host Stephen A. Smith. “But it was when Tawanna divorced me.”

Allen Iverson has a new book, “Misunderstood,” that details the NBA superstar’s meteoric rise to success in the league, as well as his far-from-storybook childhood. Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images

Tawanna Turner and Iverson married in 2001. Iverson’s superstardom coincided with their marriage, and just like Iverson’s career, it was up and down.

The two split in 2008, and the divorce was final in 2013. That coincided with the end of Iverson’s career — he officially retired in October 2013, saying he had no desire to play anymore.

“That’s when I knew I’d hit my lowest point and it was time for deep self-reevaluation,” he said. “When I’m sitting there in that courtroom, I used to watch Sixers vs. Sixers in a scrimmage, or Georgetown vs. Georgetown. Them tears started to hit the [divorce] papers when I looked down and see ‘Iverson vs. Iverson.'”

But Turner and Iverson are back together, Iverson confirmed, after their 2013 divorce.

Asked how he got Tawanna to come back, he said, “A lot of Keith Sweat. I had to beg a lot.”

As a part of that deep reevaluation of himself and rebuilding of his marriage, Iverson, 50, said he realized that alcohol was a big problem, and he was tired of fighting it. The divorce, his career’s end, all the baggage from his youth — it was all weighing on him.

“It’s a plethora of things. Ultimately, when you evaluate your maturation and what’s important and what you mean to your family and friends and the world, I just thought about the way I was supposed to be in life. And I didn’t see how [alcohol] was helping any,” he said. “All I could think about was negative experiences.”

Iverson said he realizes that a lot of young NBA players look up to him, and how he shaped this generation of players.

“I made of lot of them comfortable in their own skin and feel that they are able to express themselves,” he said. “I love everything that’s happening with our league and the betterment of the younger players. We will never be short of superstars.

“The game is in great hands.”

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The current state of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ bullpen is this: In a unit filled with veterans, some highly paid and some battle-tested across multiple postseasons, it was a 23-year-old rookie making his third career relief appearance who looked most comfortable in the wild-card series.

That would be Roki Sasaki, who pitched a 1-2-3 ninth and looked dominant doing it on Wednesday as the Dodgers swept the Cincinnati Reds. With a fastball sitting in the triple digits, Sasaki posted two strikeouts and ended the series, roughly a week after he returned from the injured list.

Overall, the Dodgers’ bullpen was awful this week. They still won, beating the Reds 8-4 on Wednesday to become the only team to sweep this round, but the eighth inning in both games illustrated how dire the situation has become.

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In Game 1, starter Blake Snell looked excellent and left the game after seven innings. By the time Alex Vesia, arguably the Dodgers’ most consistent reliever this season, entered the game, L.A. was up 10-2. And then Vesia, Edgardo Henriquez and Jack Dreyer lost the strike zone and yielded two hits, four walks and three runs before finally escaping the frame.

Together, the trio threw 59 pitches, the most in a single MLB postseason inning since pitch counts started to be tracked.

In Game 2, Yoshinobu Yamamoto looked excellent and left the game after 6 2/3 innings with the Dodgers leading 7-2. This time, Emmet Sheehan and Vesia combined to yield two hits, three walks and two runs in the eighth inning.

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How bad was it? Sheehan was ahead 0-2 against Reds pinch-hitter Will Benson until he lost his command and nearly hit the batter. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts had seen enough and lifted Sheehan, mid-at-bat, for Vesia, who got credit for the strikeout with one pitch.

Expectations were low for the Dodgers’ bullpen going into this postseason, and they met them. They got away with it because they were facing a Reds offense that ranked second-lowest among all playoff teams in wOBA. But now they get the Philadelphia Phillies in the NLDS. If the bullpen performs similarly, the Dodgers’ starting pitchers are going to have to exit games with leads much larger than five or six runs.

Ultimately, there were only two relievers used who can leave the wild-card round with a modicum of confidence. One is Blake Treinen, who had a brutal September — at one point taking the loss in five straight Dodgers losses, an unprecedented MLB feat — but managed to throw a scoreless ninth in Game 1, then finished the seventh inning for Yamamoto without issue in Game 2.

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The other is Sasaki, who has taken quite a journey to becoming a potential relief ace for the Dodgers.

[Get more Los Angeles news: Dodgers team feed]

Roki Sasaki’s long, winding road to the playoffs

You might remember Sasaki signing with the Dodgers several months ago, which was seen as so unfair at the time that several people started discussing a salary cap almost purely to hobble the defending champions.

Going into the season, Sasaki was one of the most hyped pitching prospects in recent baseball history, boasting triple-digit heat and arguably the best splitter in the world. He joined a Dodgers rotation that featured two other Japanese stars in Yamamoto and Shohei Ohtani, and the expectation was that he would be the latest monster to emerge from the Dodgers’ pitching machine.

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That didn’t exactly happen. Sasaki was hyped, yes, but one thing that frequently went unnoticed last offseason was that his velocity took a downturn in 2024. Despite the Dodgers’ efforts, that continued in 2025, and the result was a nearly unusable starting pitcher. Sasaki landed on the IL due to a shoulder impingement in May after posting a 4.72 ERA and 6.19 FIP in eight starts.

Hitters had no trouble with Sasaki’s fastball when it was sitting in the mid-90s, and having only two other offerings — his otherworldly splitter and an OK slider — didn’t help, nor did an inability to regularly find the strike zone.

Sasaki remained on the IL for four-and-a-half months. When he came back, the Dodgers had little use for him as a starter. Ohtani, Yamamoto, Snell, Tyler Glasnow, Clayton Kershaw and Sheehan were doing just fine as a six-man rotation, to the point that the latter two are expected to be used only as relievers in the postseason (if at all, in Kershaw’s case).

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So Sasaki made the transition to the bullpen, and it was clear from his first appearance that he and the Dodgers had figured something out during his time off.

Roki Sasaki, Reliever looks completely different for Dodgers

In two relief appearances last week, Sasaki threw two scoreless innings and looked so good it was basically a given that he would be on the wild-card roster.

That fastball hitters were crushing? They whiffed on it three times in six swings while it sat around 99 mph. That splitter that was supposed to be a weapon from day one? Four whiffs in six swings. That iffy slider? No longer used.

It was a small sample, but the Dodgers’ bullpen looked like enough of a liability that Sasaki immediately became an attractive option. And that came to pass Wednesday, when he looked even better in his first taste of postseason action.

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That’s how you go from being a mediocre starter to prompting questions about your potential role as the closer of the current World Series favorites at BetMGM in three total relief appearances.

Per Jack Harris of the Los Angeles Times, Roberts stopped short of saying Sasaki that is the team’s closer, but he indicated the trust is there for high-leverage situations:

“I trust him, and he’s going to be pitching in leverage,†Dave Roberts said. “So the more you pitch guys and play guys, you learn more … I don’t think the moment’s going to be too big for Roki.â€

Again, we are talking about a guy with three career relief appearances that all came in the past eight days, but that just emphasizes how bad the rest of the Dodgers’ bullpen has been. The Dodgers dropped $111 million combined on Treinen, Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates to turn what was already a strength into a fortress, only for the whole thing to fall apart in September.

Sasaki almost certainly has some bad innings ahead of him as the Dodgers continue their postseason run. That’s just how relievers work. But it’s still better than the alternative for now.

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Sep 29, 2025, 10:14 AM ET

Luke Donald remained tight-lipped on his future as he soaked up the magnitude of his latest Ryder Cup victory.

The European captain followed up his team’s stunning success in Rome by overseeing their first away triumph since 2012 at Bethpage Black on Sunday.

Victory arrived in dramatic circumstances, by the narrow margin of 15-13, after the United States threatened to pull off an unlikely comeback.

The hosts, comprehensively outplayed over the first two days and trailing by seven points heading into the singles, roared back into contention with a series of thrilling wins, before Europe eventually inched over the line.

As with the Italian triumph two years ago, the calls for Donald to stay on for another term began almost immediately with celebrating players chanting “two more years” towards their inspirational leader.

Donald, however, with his place among the competition’s greats already assured, would make no such commitment.

Luke Donald has a perfect Ryder Cup record as player and captain. Andrew Redington/Getty Images

The 47-year-old, who also won on all four of his playing appearances, simply said: “My answer is I’m going to enjoy tonight!”

Donald left nothing to chance in his preparations for the event and his tactical decisions almost all came off.

Jon Rahm, who helped deliver three points, was one player to heap praise on the captain.

“There are so many things that Luke has done outstandingly professionally, so perfect,” the Spaniard said.

“He is the captain of this ship, and he’s led us better than I can see anybody leading us. He’s set the bar extremely high for the future captains.”

– Ryder Cup: Luke Donald says U.S. fans ‘crossed a line’
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– Bradley, Donald mixed on future of Ryder Cup injury rule

Donald gave some insight into the level of detail he had gone into during the team’s post-event press conference.

Much was made of the virtual reality headsets he used in an attempt to prepare the team for the hostile reception they duly encountered.

Yet his planning went much deeper, with even bed coverings and the scent of shampoo being considered.

He said: “My job is literally to give these guys a better chance to win. It can be as simple as some very small things.

“I’ll give you an example. The doors to our hotel rooms had a big crack that let in light. We brought things that covered the light.

“We put different shampoos that had a better smell. We changed the bedding because the beds weren’t very good.

Luke Donald celebrates winning the Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black with the 12 victorious players in Team Europe. Carl Recine/Getty Images

“We created much nicer beds so guys could sleep, they could have more energy.”

Ludvig Aberg, who beat Patrick Cantlay, was the only European player to win a singles match as the Americans finally found their game to claim six full points.

The rest of Europe’s points came in halves after the big guns of Rory McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood, Justin Rose and Rahm were all beaten.

Viktor Hovland’s match with Harris English was declared a draw after the Norwegian pulled out injured and Matt Fitzpatrick held off a charging Bryson DeChambeau at the 18th.

Shane Lowry, in match number eight, sank the vital putt to retain the cup and further halves from Tyrrell Hatton and Robert MacIntyre completed the job.

Houston Texans running back Nick Chubb appeared to score a pretty easy 25-yard touchdown during Monday’s matchup with the Tampa…

As Scottie Scheffler finished off his sixth win of the season on Sunday at the Procore Championship — a tournament he entered to stay sharp for next week’s Ryder Cup — Lanto Griffin was overcome with emotions thinking about where he has been and what could have been.

Griffin, a 37-year-old pro, ruptured his L5-S1 disc in 2020 and had to undergo a microdiscectomy in 2022. Last season, Griffin had just one top 10 in 22 starts. He finished 158th in the FedEx Cup Fall standings but won PGA Tour Q-School to retain his full PGA Tour membership.

Griffin’s 2025 season was rocky. He finished T9 at the Farmers Insurance Open and then missed four of his next six cuts.

“Sometimes when you work hard and work on the wrong stuff you get worse, and that’s kind of what happened,” Griffin said on Sunday, after he shot 65 to finish solo third. “My work ethic hasn’t changed. I kind of went down the wrong path and it went backwards.”

After withdrawing from the Corales Puntacana Championship, Griffin went back to his old coach, Todd Anderson, at TPC Sawgrass. He also started working with Alex Bennett, director of athletic performance. A T14 at the Barracuda and T23 at the season-ending Wyndham Championship put Griffin 142nd in the standings entering the FedEx Cup Fall and needing some magic to crack the top 100 to maintain his fully exempt status.

The California native opened with a seven-under 65 at the Procore Championship Thursday and followed with rounds of 70 and 71. He entered Sunday’s final round six shots off the pace set by 54-hole leader Ben Griffin, but he birdied six of his first eight holes to make the turn in 30 and put himself in the mix to win his first tournament since the 2019 Houston Open. Griffin made two more birdies on the back to finish 17 under, two shots behind the mark set by Scheffler.

Griffin’s hot Sunday vaulted him to 98th in the FedEx Cup Fall standings, just inside the number to keep his card … at the moment.

“It’s huge,” Griffin told NBC’s Kira K. Dixon after the round. “One of my goals this week was to give myself a shot [to get into the Baycurrent Classic]. Hopefully, I’ll get in there now, and we have [six] tournaments left. Obviously, you want to win but keeping your job … I went to Q School last year and somehow won and extended the life [of my career]. This week, somehow, it all came together. Going to come up a little bit short.

“Kind of wish Scottie wasn’t here but I know all the fans enjoyed it. Just proud of myself. … Playing good golf is so much fun and playing bad golf is pretty brutal on your psyche. I’ve put a lot of hard work in these last five weeks since Wyndham, so it’s kind of nice to see it come together.”

Scheffler and runner-up Ben Griffin, the only players to finish ahead of Lanto Griffin, were two of the 10 U.S. Ryder Cup players in the field, which added juice to a normally sleepy fall event. Although Lanto Griffin’s emotional interview and his open acknowledgement that having Scheffler in the field highlights an issue the PGA Tour will eventually have to solve.

When new CEO Brian Rolapp spoke at the Tour Championship, he talked about the need for the PGA Tour to abide by his three guiding principles: competitive parity, scarcity and simplicity. Rolapp comes from the NFL, and one thing the NFL does better than every other sports league is create narratives that are easy for fans to follow and become invested in.

With that as our guide, let’s look at the FedEx Cup Fall slate, Lanto Griffin and what happened at the Procore Championship.

6 burning Ryder Cup questions you might have 1 week before Bethpage

By:

Sean Zak

As it’s currently constructed, the FedEx Cup Fall serves two purposes: it’s a vehicle for players who finished outside the top 50 in the FedEx Cup to try to play their way into the first two Signature Events of the following season, and it shapes the membership of the Tour for the following season.

If Rolapp is looking for simplicity in his product, Sunday’s affairs in Napa would have been much easier to digest and understand without Scheffler, Ben Griffin and the rest of Team USA in the field. The stakes would have been more clearly defined if those in the field were either playing to extend their careers or elevate their standing on Tour. Instead, the 2025 Procore was a mashup of the PGA Tour’s longstanding status quo and the purgatorial state it has found itself in since reshaping on the fly following LIV Golf’s arrival.

Rolapp, who hammered the importance of competing for and winning people’s attention in the doom-scrolling era, promised to make significant changes where they are needed. If he’s looking to follow his old employer’s model, cleaning up the FedEx Cup Fall slate to make it more easily digestible for the masses is a good place to head — after he finds a way to create a postseason model that all sports fans can understand and follow.

If the stakes of the FedEx Cup Fall were more clearly defined, the product would be elevated. It’s easy for people to understand that Player X needs to win to keep his job and Player Y needs to do Z to become eligible for the marquee events. But things become muddy when you have X and Y happening while top players occasionally show up to play to collect a paycheck, make good on sponsorship deals or, in this case, prep for an event that the PGA Tour doesn’t even own.

All of that leads to the question you don’t want people asking: What does this mean?

Sunday’s events in Napa could have been filled with high drama, as Griffin tried to get his second career win over the line while others trying to claw their way back up chased after him. Instead, we got a fun duel between Scheffler and Ben Griffin that ended with the World No. 1 taking home another trophy, talking about how prepared he feels for the Ryder Cup and being unwilling to commit to returning to Napa for his title defense. Which makes sense given that he normally doesn’t play the event.

Rolapp has a lot on his plate as he looks under the hood and tries to polish and fine-tune the PGA Tour product with his three principles as his guiding light. But as he starts to deliver “significant change,” the events in wine country are a good example of how pro golf can make its product easier to understand and more attractive to both the die-hard golf fan and the casual sports fan: Clearly define the stakes, craft a narrative that’s easy to follow and use the simplicity, scarcity and competitive parity of this part of the schedule to your advantage.

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