In early November, Corey Conners mentioned he was on a text thread started by 2003 Masters winner Mike Weir, where the elder statesman of Canadian golf was trying to confirm details about a Tuesday practice round at this year’s Masters.
When Conners was 11 it was Weir who captured the Green Jacket and the hearts of millions of young Canadians. Conners realized that someone from small-town Canada could go on top golf’s grandest stage and in the process Weir inspired Conners to want to be a professional golfer, too.
And now, that same champion was asking him if Tuesday morning or afternoon was better for a warm-up game at Augusta?
“Oh, it’s unbelievable,” Conners said when asked if he realized what he was saying, considering what Weir’s 2003 victory meant to him. That’s the kind of impressive impact Weir has on the current generation of male Canadian PGA Tour stars.
But for the first time in more than a decade, Weir said, he feels very good about his own game heading into Masters week.
“There’s not anything that feels a little weaker than any other,” Weir told Sportsnet in an exclusive pre-tournament interview. “I’m driving it well, putting has been very good at times… I just need to be more consistent with that. But I love Augusta greens. I’ve always putted them well.”
Weir’s confidence has been buoyed by an impressive start to his PGA Tour Champions career. He turned 50 in May and made his debut on the 50-and-over circuit in the same year as Jim Furyk and Phil Mickelson.
The native of Brights Grove, Ont. has held his own on the Champions Tour through the summer schedule, with three top-10 finishes in nine tournaments. That run includes a runner-up result to Mickelson at the Dominion Energy Charity Classic in mid-October.
He said the competition on the Champions Tour has been a good motivator to keep his game tight.
“We had so many guys turn 50 in the last year – I would say three of the four best players of our generation in Phil (Mickelson), Ernie (Els), and Jim Furyk,” said Weir. “Outside of Tiger (Woods) they’re probably the best players in the last 20 years, so there is a lot of excitement around the Champions Tour and the quality of play.”
Despite Weir’s lengthy struggles, he found some rejuvenating energy once he got to 48 years old. The PGA Tour has a special category for longtime Tour members to earn starts on the Korn Ferry Tour at age 48 and 49 as they prepare for the Champions Tour and their 50th birthdays.
Weir began to find his footing competing against golf’s next generation of stars, making more cuts in the last two years on the Korn Ferry Tour than the last five on the PGA Tour.
Just over a decade ago Weir, who is an eight-time winner on the PGA Tour and to date Canada’s only male major champion, began his battle with injuries. It was a myriad of problems with his elbow and shoulder, plus his back. He went through a divorce at the same time, compounding his off-course issues.
Now, however, Weir is blossoming again as a consistent presence on Champions Tour leaderboards. It’s been a big change.
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Another change for Weir has been his embrace of leading Canada’s next generation of Tour stars. Weir has always been open and has always encouraged the guys to send him a note to ask any questions they had. But this time around it was Weir who took the reigns.
Weir said he’s admired Gary Player and other South Africans who all tee off together — Trevor Immelman, Charl Schwartzel, Ernie Els, and Louis Oosthuizen (major champions, all) would get together for a game.
“They got a chance to play with Gary and he saw the young guys up close and I always thought it was really cool,” said Weir. “So for me to be able to show the guys around the course a little bit and play with them, see their games, and have a chat about things will be very exciting. I’m really looking forward to that.”
The players, though, like Conners (Adam Hadwin and Nick Taylor are the others in the field) are likely looking even more forward to their rip around Augusta National with a past winner.
It’s one thing to fade into the background as a mentor-type and pass the jacket to Canada’s next batch of PGA Tour winners and major-champion contenders, but what does Weir think about his chances this week? His playing partners Tuesday will become his competitors on Thursday.
Weir admitted it depends on the course conditions, and he’s already going into the week knowing if his competitors are driving it past 350 yards and are holding a wedge in their hands when he has a 5-iron, it’s “not a fair fight.” But the usual pilgrimage to Augusta National takes place in April when Weir isn’t sure what his game will give him. Now, in November, he’s had a body of work on the Champions Tour — a body of work that gives him more confidence going into the Masters than he’s had in 10 years.
“I think the golf has changed so much so I don’t know where that puts me with my game, but, I’m feeling good. Could I contend or just have a great week or finish somewhere in the top-20, I’m not sure,” said Weir. “I just feel very good about my game. The best it’s felt in a long time.”
PARIS (AP) — French judicial authorities are investigating the disappearance of two Paralympic athletes from Congo who recently competed in the Paris Games, the prosecutor’s office in the Paris suburb of Bobigny confirmed on Thursday.
Prosecutors opened the investigation on Sept. 7, after members of the athletes’ delegation warned authorities of their disappearance two days before.
Le Parisien newspaper reported that shot putter Mireille Nganga and Emmanuel Grace Mouambako, a visually impaired sprinter who was accompanied by a guide, went missing on Sept. 5, along with a third person.
The athletes’ suitcases were also gone but their passports remained with the Congolese delegation, according to an official with knowledge of the investigation, who asked to remain anonymous as they were not allowed to speak publicly about the case.
The Paralympic Committee of the Democratic Republic of Congo did not respond to requests for information from The Associated Press.
Nganga — who recorded no mark in the seated javelin and shot put competitions — and Mouambako were Congo’s flag bearers at the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games, organizers said.
An investigator gave the World Anti-Doping Agency a pass on its handling of the inflammatory case involving Chinese swimmers, but not without hammering away at the “curious” nature of WADA’s “silence” after examining Chinese actions that did not follow rules designed to safeguard global sports.
WADA on Thursday released the full decision from Eric Cottier, the Swiss investigator it appointed to analyze its handling of the case involving the 23 Chinese swimmers who remained eligible despite testing positive for performance enhancers in 2021.
In echoing wording from an interim report issued earlier this summer, Cottier said it was “reasonable” that WADA chose not to appeal the Chinese anti-doping agency’s explanation that the positives came from contamination.
“Taking into consideration the particularities of the case, (WADA) appears … to have acted in accordance with the rules it has itself laid out for anti-doping organizations,” Cottier wrote.
But peppered throughout his granular, 56-page analysis of the case was evidence and reminders of how WADA disregarded some of China’s violations of anti-doping protocols. Cottier concluded this happened more for the sake of expediency than to show favoritism toward the Chinese.
“In retrospect at least, the Agency’s silence is curious, in the face of a procedure that does not respect the fundamental rules, and its lack of reaction is surprising,” Cottier wrote of WADA’s lack of fealty to the world anti-doping code.
Travis Tygart, the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and one of WADA’s fiercest critics, latched onto this dynamic, saying Cottier’s information “clearly shows that China did not follow the rules, and that WADA management did nothing about it.”
One of the chief complaints over the handling of this case was that neither WADA nor the Chinese gave any public notice upon learning of the positive tests for the banned heart medication Temozolomide, known as TMZ.
The athletes also were largely kept in the dark and the burden to prove their innocence was taken up by Chinese authorities, not the athletes themselves, which runs counter to what the rulebook demands.
Despite the criticisms, WADA generally welcomed the report.
“Above all, (Cottier) reiterated that WADA showed no bias towards China and that its decision not to appeal the cases was reasonable based on the evidence,” WADA director general Olivier Niggli said. “There are however certainly lessons to be learned by WADA and others from this situation.”
Tygart said “this report validates our concerns and only raises new questions that must be answered.”
Cottier expanded on doubts WADA’s own chief scientist, Olivier Rabin, had expressed over the Chinese contamination theory — snippets of which were introduced in the interim report. Rabin was wary of the idea that “a few micrograms” of TMZ found in the kitchen at the hotel where the swimmers stayed could be enough to cause the group contamination.
“Since he was not in a position to exclude the scenario of contamination with solid evidence, he saw no other solution than to accept it, even if he continued to have doubts about the reality of contamination as described by the Chinese authorities,” Cottier wrote.
Though recommendations for changes had been expected in the report, Cottier made none, instead referring to several comments he’d made earlier in the report.
Key among them were his misgivings that a case this big was largely handled in private — a breach of custom, if not the rules themselves — both while China was investigating and after the file had been forwarded to WADA. Not until the New York Times and German broadcaster ARD reported on the positives were any details revealed.
“At the very least, the extraordinary nature of the case (23 swimmers, including top-class athletes, 28 positive tests out of 60 for a banned substance of therapeutic origin, etc.), could have led to coordinated and concerted reflection within the Agency, culminating in a formal and clearly expressed decision to take no action,” the report said.
WADA’s executive committee established a working group to address two more of Cottier’s criticisms — the first involving what he said was essentially WADA’s sloppy recordkeeping and lack of formal protocol, especially in cases this complex; and the second a need to better flesh out rules for complex cases involving group contamination.
The French league’s legal commission has ordered Paris Saint-Germain to pay Kylian Mbappé the 55 million euros ($61 million) in unpaid wages that he claims he’s entitled to, the league said Thursday.
The league confirmed the decision to The Associated Press without more details, a day after the France superstar rejected a mediation offer by the commission in his dispute with his former club.
