LIV Golf is now more than halfway through its inaugural season after completion of play in Chicago. Making headlines both on and off the golf course, LIV Golf has taken its battle to the courtroom, social media and beyond. While the actual play in LIV Golf has been compelling at times, the overall structure, presence and future of the organization remains its most intriguing component in the context of men’s professional golf.

Plenty of questions have been answered since its inaugural event in London from June 9-11, but still more remain without a response. What will the future of this rival tour look like? How will the team aspect of the competition clash with the individual side? Will LIV Golf be able to recruit some of the best players in the world with its Official World Golf Rankings status in the air? Is a court date with the PGA Tour inevitable?

At every step along the way, answers about this league have only produced more questions and clarification has only made the future more complicated. 

The breakdown below is our attempt to share with you everything that’s known to this point as we head into the whatever LIV Golf is going to look like in the future. Whether this turns out to be a fork or bump in the road of professional golf remains to be seen (only the future will retroactively determine that), but it does feel monumental in the moment.

LIV Golf, empowered by its unlimited war chest of resources to throw at the best players, is officially at odds with the PGA Tour. It’s a period of time that has been promised for a long time, and is finally taking place. Let’s take a look at what we know and what we can expect in the weeks, months and years ahead as LIV Golf wraps up its first season at the end of October.

What is LIV Golf?

LIV Golf is a rival golf league to the PGA Tour where the tournaments consist of 54 holes, the fields are limited to 48 golfers and the purses are an astronomical $25 million. Twelve, four-man teams will compete in each event, and the individual purses will be $20 million while the other $5 million will be divided up among the best teams each week.

Who leads LIV Golf?

LIV Golf Investments runs the league, and its CEO is two-time major champion Greg Norman. It is funded by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, which is effectively the financial arm of the Saudi Arabian government. These funds are seemingly limitless as the league has paid hundreds of millions of dollars to players just to guarantee their appearances at the LIV Golf Invitational Series events.

Who is playing for LIV Golf?

It began with Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson headlining the London event and has since grown into a respectable roster. Major champions Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Reed quickly followed the lead of their fellow Americans. 

More recently, and more importantly, world No. 3 and Champion Golfer of the Year Cameron Smith made the leap after the completion of the 2022 Tour Championship. He was joined by young Chilean Joaquin Niemann as two international players who chose to forgo the Presidents Cup in lieu of playing in the LIV Golf event in Boston. While the initial demographics skewed towards older players like Ian Poulter, Lee Westwood and Mickelson, there has been an influx of younger talent with Abraham Ancer and Harold Varner III among others.

Here’s a look at the 49 men who currently play for LIV Golf and their Official World Golf Rankings (Bubba Watson is a non-playing captain and is set to compete once fully recovered from injury).

What is going on legally between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour?

Originally, 11 LIV Golf players were a part of an antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour. This suit also sought a temporary restraining order for Hudson Swafford, Matt Jones and Talor Gooch to participate in the 2021-22 FedEx Cup Playoffs — which was ultimately denied and barred them from playing in the PGA Tour postseason.

Since then, slowly but surely, more and more of the original members have removed their names from the lawsuit. Previously, Ancer, Carlos Ortiz, Jason Kokrak and Pat Perez left the suit. More recently, Talor Gooch, Mickelson, Poulter and Swafford followed in their footsteps. 

This leaves only three players seeking punitive damages in a legal battle with the PGA Tour: Bryson DeChambeau, Peter Uihlein and Jones. The trial is set to begin in January 2024.

The Tour has over and over again pointed back to its rules and regulations in this matter and remains set on keeping those who have played on LIV Golf off the PGA Tour. Commissioner Jay Monahan was asked at the Tour Championship if there was any chance LIV Golf members would be welcomed back onto the PGA Tour to which he blatantly answered, “no.”

How has the PGA Tour reacted to LIV Golf?

After a players-only meeting at the BMW Championship led by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, sweeping changes have been made to the PGA Tour schedule and the treatment of its star players. Here are the spark notes of this new-look PGA Tour starting this season.

• Top players will commit to at least 20 PGA Tour events: These tournaments will include the eight elevated events as previously designated, four additional elevated events with purses of at least $20 million (to be announced), The Players Championship, the four major championships and three other FedEx Cup events of players’ choosing.
• The PIP will be expanded: The PIP has been increased from the top 10 players to the top 20 for 2022 and 2023. Not only has the player pool expanded, so has the prize pool, which will now total $100 million, double the $50 million previously announced. It is from these top 20 lists that “top players” will be defined.
• Modifications  made for Lifetime Membership: No longer will 15 seasons of membership be necessary. Once a player reaches 20 wins, he will be eligible. With this change, McIlroy has secured his lifetime membership with Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth only being a handful of wins away.

Will LIV Golf receive Official World Golf Rankings points?

LIV Golf is still awaiting the status of its OWGR application despite its best attempts to expedite the process. All 49 players recently sent a letter to the OWGR chairman requesting that world ranking points be retroactively applied to its events. Comparing the OWGR without LIV to college football without the SEC or FIFA without Belgium, it is unlikely this holds any merit. 

Meanwhile, players have begun to tee it up on the DP World Tour with some consistency on weeks in which there is no LIV Golf event. The top 50 players in the OWGR at the end of the calendar year will be invited to the 2023 Masters making it a mad dash for players to accumulate as many points as possible before then.

Will the majors allow golfers to play?

That’s an even better question that has at least some clarity. The answer in the short term is: yes. The major organizations — PGA of America, USGA, R&A and Augusta National — likely won’t announce suspensions or bans of players who participate. There is a potential that qualifying criterias are modified in the future, however as of now if a LIV player gains entry through previous exemptions or the adequate OWGR (points which LIV has yet to secure) he should be able to compete.

What is the LIV Golf schedule?

Five events have already taken place in 2022, with three remaining. Here’s a look at what’s left on the schedule for the inaugural season.

• Bangkok, Thailand: Oct. 7-9
• Jeddah, Saudi Arabia: Oct. 14-16
• Miami, Florida: Oct. 27-30

LIV Golf has released a tentative schedule for 2023 with 14 stops around the globe spanning Washington D.C., Spain and Australia. This is unofficial as details have yet to be confirmed.

• February: Florida (course TBD)
• February: California (course TBD)
• March: Tucson (Dove Mountain or the Gallery)
• April: Australia (Sydney or Queensland)
• April: Singapore (Sentosa)
• May: Washington D.C. (CBS Sports can confirm Trump National DC the week after PGA Championship)
• June: Philadelphia (course TBD)
• July: London (Centurion)
• July: Spain (Valderrama the week before The Open)
• August: New Jersey (Trump National Bedminster)
• August: West Virginia (The Greenbrier)
• September: Chicago (course TBD)
• September: Toronto or Mexico (course TBD)
• September: Florida (Trump National Doral)

What does LIV Golf’s season finale look like?

It will not look like the Tour Championship, that is for certain. Taking place from Oct. 28-30, the top four teams in LIV will receive a bye on the first day while teams 5-12 will compete in match-play competitions with the higher-ranked teams selecting their opponents. For each matchup, three matches consisting of two singles matches and one alternate-shot match will take place.

The same format will be used for Day 2 of competition with the four victors from Day 1 and the four teams which received a bye all playing. From there, the four winners from Day 2 will advance to the final stage which will be different.

The four winning teams will compete in stroke play on the final day of competition. All 16 players will compete and all four scores will count towards the team’s score. The lowest team score will be crowned the LIV Golf Invitational Series Team Champion.

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As he embarks on his 15th season as a professional, Rory McIlroy reflects on a year which has, to date, seen him win two PGA Tour events, but fail to contend in the majors, briefly slip outside the world’s top 10 and endure a wretched Ryder Cup which all ended in tears

A far as years go on the CVs of most professional golfers, a season that currently features two wins and seven top-ten finishes would count as a pretty decent return. Well, it would if you weren’t called Rory McIlroy.
Ever since he burst onto the professional scene in 2007, aged just 17 – and for several years before that ­– big things have been expected of Rory. And for large chunks of his career he has delivered on that promise, and some.

Four major championships before he turned 25; 23 top-10 major finishes; 19 PGA Tour victories; 14 European Tour wins; three Race to Dubai titles; two FedEx Cup titles and a grip on the world no.1 spot for over 100 weeks. Throw in six Ryder Cup appearances and you have the makings of a pretty handy record.
But dig down through all the stats, all the Ws, and all money, and there remains the nagging feeling that Rory hasn’t quite got the results that his almost unfathomable talents deserve. OK, he’s still only 32, and maybe a year or two off his absolute golfing prime, but with all the miles already under his belt and all the other distractions that are now entering his life, it’s hard to know whether McIlroy’s best golfing years are behind him or still ahead of him.
Victories at last month’s CJ Cup, and another at the Wells Fargo Championship in May, maybe point to the latter, but his last win before that came at the WGC-HSBC Champions in China back in November 2019. He lost his world No.1 status in June last year and slipped down to 14^th in the rankings – his worst position since November 2009 – before he rose back up to eighth following his win in Las Vegas last month.

And in a sport largely, and perhaps unfairly, judged by major championship wins, he’s not got his head in front in one since the PGA Championship in 2014 and he’s still agonisingly a Masters’ win away from completing the career grand slam of majors. And don’t mention that fourth place in the Tokyo Olympics, where he missed out in the seven-way play-off for bronze medal.
It’s perhaps no coincidence that Rory’s dip in form followed the start of the pandemic and arrival of his first child just over a year ago, but after the emotional turmoil caused by the heavy defeat in the Ryder Cup, it seems that the 32-yesar-old Northern Irishman is ready to reapply himself to being the best version of himself.

McIlroy, for his part, believes that despite all his past achievements, and let’s not forget, his immense wealth, he still has the desire and the hunger to return to the top of the golfing and thinks any questioning of his motivation to rediscover his best form is unfair and unwarranted.

“When I play my best, I still think I’m the best player in the world,” he boldly said ahead of his debut on the 21/22 PGA Tour at the CJ Cup, which, of course, he went on to win. “I haven’t played like that for a while, though, but I don’t feel like I need to go that far back to 18 months ago, when I was the No.1 player in the world.

“Obviously the last 18 months haven’t been what I’ve wanted them to be, but if you keep it in perspective, I’m not that far away. I’ve shown throughout my career that I care, that I want to win, that I want to be the best, and in that respect nothing has changed. Of course, there’s a ton of great players now that are playing really good golf, but you just have to try to not just keep up with that, but become better.”
There was no greater display of just how much McIlroy cares about his game than at last month’s Ryder Cup, when he broke down in tears while being interviewed moments after he had won his singles match – the only point he gained from four outings in Europe’s heavy defeat at Whistling Straits. The emotionally charged interview, which was full of home truths, went viral in minutes, and served to underline just how much the matches mean to him now, having once described the Ryder Cup as little more than an ‘exhibition’ during his youth in 2009.

Looking back on that post-match interview, McIlroy admits to being surprised by his reaction, but also said that it showed that he lets himself off the hook too often. “I don’t necessarily get that emotional about golf, so I guess in that way it surprised me. But the Ryder Cup is always a very emotionally charged week,” he said. “I said afterwards that there were so many different thoughts and emotions. There was relief that I’d won a point, but there was frustration that I didn’t get more out of myself and disappointment I didn’t do more for the team. There were so many different emotions going through me there and it was all just a little overwhelming.”

He adds: “I think sometimes I give myself too easy a time of it and I try to play it off with talk of ‘golf not defining me’ or that I’ve got balance in my life and I’m happy away from the course, and that’s obviously very true, but if I’m honest, sometimes I maybe use that as a way to lessen the blow if I don’t play good golf.

“But I think it was a good thing for me. I think I realised a couple of things about myself that I hadn’t publicly acknowledged before. I was surprised at how emotional I got, but then after a little bit of reflection over the last couple of weeks, I sort of realised why I did get that way.”

The six-time Ryder Cup player insists that Padraig Harrington couldn’t have done any more and that Europe just didn’t hit quality golf shots or hole their fair share of putts. He says: “There’s not much more Padraig could have done. Sure, the captains set the tone and they create a little bit of the culture around the team, but at the end of the day it’s the players that are out there hitting the shots and trying to hole the putts, and Europe didn’t hit the shots or hole the putts. When you look back on it, America just holed so many more putts than we did and got momentum early. And when you’re the away side and trying to fight back from that, it’s very difficult. I certainly couldn’t criticize anything that Padraig did. It was on the players to play better golf and we didn’t do that.”

Returning to his own prospects, McIlroy is adamant that getting back to basics, and not trying to beat other players at their own game, as he admits he did with Bryson DeChambeau when he came out with his new power game, will be his route back to the top.

“There was a lot of reflection the last couple weeks and this is what I need to do. I just need to play golf, I need to simplify it, I need to just be me. For the last few months I’ve been trying to be someone else to try to get better and I’ve realised that being me is enough. I know that when I do the things that I do well, I’m capable of winning a lot of events and being the best player in the world.

“It’s just a matter of getting back to playing golf my way. That starts with being creative and being visual and not being so technical with it. To get to 20 wins out here is a big achievement. I didn’t know if it was going to be this week, but I knew if I just kept my head down and kept playing well and doing the right things, eventually I’d get there. I want to get back to that point where I’m knocking off four or five wins a year.”

With 20 wins comes lifetime membership on the PGA Tour, once you’ve played 15 seasons. For McIlroy that will become official at the beginning of the 2023-24 season. “It’s pretty significant, not having to worry about minimums on Tour and being able to really set a schedule, and especially at that point when kids will be getting to school age and maybe wanting to spend a little bit more time at home, that’s important. When you look to the bigger things in life, getting to that level, I can pick and choose where I play nowadays anyway, but that makes it even better and less of a burden.”

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After making his professional debut in 2010, Tommy Fleetwood has been a permanent fixture in the world’s top events over the last decade. Still only 30, the proud Lancastrian is confident that he has the game and the mentality to add to his winning tally and bag that elusive major title

How would you some up your performances in 2021 and where you are in the game right now?

It’s been a tough year, no question. Your game ebbs and flows and you find form and you lose form. I think the standard of golf on tour at the moment is a joke – in a good way. I remember shooting five-under during the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth this year and moved up just two places on what was a hard golf course. I think when you aren’t playing well, it’s just getting highlighted more – courses are tough, the margins for error are getting smaller, and it’s hard to get momentum when it’s like that.

I’m happy that I started to play well again towards the end of the season, but the honest answer is that I simply haven’t managed to string four good rounds together in the same week. I was almost there at the Italian Open in September, where I put in three-and-a-half decent rounds and finished second, and I had a couple of top-10 finishes last month, but you’ve got to do it over 72 holes to stand any chance of winning or being in contention these days. Being up there and hitting shots under pressure was great, but I just need to be up there more often.

At the end of the day, for what’s been a bit of a struggle of a year, I played well in The Open, I played in the Olympics, and I earned an automatic place in the Ryder Cup team, so it wasn’t all bad. Having said that, my world ranking has slipped this year and I need to get that back up to ensure I’m in all the big events next season.

It was obviously disappointing to be on the receiving end of such a heavy defeat in the Ryder Cup, but from a personal viewpoint was it frustrating not to be involved in more matches?

Of course I would have loved to have played in every match, but I also I felt like I could do a good job in the fourballs. I thought the pairings that Padraig put out in all formats were great. We had 12 amazing players. We had good strength in depth, so it was not surprising that Padraig didn’t ask me to play five matches.

I would have loved to have done better in the fourballs, and I think the foursomes pairings that went out were right, and they were really good. We weren’t that far away in each match, but, as you say, we ended up on the receiving end of a heavy defeat. It seemed like all the crucial moments went against us. They holed a lot more putts than we did and that made the difference.

We really didn’t perform as badly as a team as the final score suggests, but still getting thumped really hurt us and it brought us very close together, and I think motivated us all to hopefully come back in two years’ time and win it back in Rome.

Given the strength in depth of the young Americans currently on tour, there has been some talk about how the US college system is creating a stronger pathway into professional golf than the route that many European players are experiencing coming through the amateur ranks. Was going over to the US college system ever an option for you or something you looked at?

I obviously thought about it, because you get to that age where you do think about it, but at the same time, I enjoyed my time playing amateur golf for England and got to travel alot and experience lots of different places. When I turned pro, I was in a situation where I needed to start earning money for my family, so I turned pro at 19 and that was it. I was on my way. 

But I’m really interested in the US college system. I think it produces a lot of amazing players and it is clearly a successful system. I think England Golf, or the English Golf Union, as it was when I was an amateur, have put together a fantastic system, and we produce good players as well. 

Both are good options, and both put you in a strong, competitive environment, and it’s what you then do with that information, and what you take from it, that move you forward, really. There are always going to be talented players either side who come through, but right now the US system is certainly producing some very talented young players. But like everything, it goes in cycles.

Did you miss playing in front of crowds when Covid restrictions didn’t allow fans in? Are you the type of personality that needs to feed off the energy of the galleries?

No, I don’t think so. I wouldn’t say I’m a show-off in any way, but I think what I do is I love the game, and I love trying to get better, and I want to get the most out of myself. If the crowds are there or not, I’m still trying to do the same things.

     I do agree that there are definitely certain times, certain moments, where crowds bring the best out in sportsmen and women, but there are probably some that benefit from there being no crowds, as well.

In particular, if you look at a major championship and the added element of you’re not just controlling your emotions, you’re controlling what’s happening with the crowd and their energy, as well, listening to cheers going on, whether it’s you or whether it’s somebody else, listening to groans. There’s a lot of added elements, so it does bring a different skill set when there are thousands of people watching.

Personally, the only one I like to be in control of my game is me. So, whether there’s one person watching, no people, or 60,000, I’m just trying to be as good as I can possibly be, and that will always stay the same until I stop playing.

You finished second behind Shane Lowry in The Open at Portrush in 2019. Does that seem like a lifetime ago now, and what did you learn from that week? Did you see it as a failure not to come away with the jug?
I didn’t see it as failure, but I was certainly very disappointed. I think using the word ‘failure’ can sometimes sound a bit harsh. Finishing runner-up at the Open equalled my best-ever finish in a major. It also depends on how you finish second, as well. It wasn’t like I was three shots clear and threw it away. Elite sport is all about small margins, and you win some and you lose some. I guess it’s how you bounce back from those disappointments that counts.

Judging by some of your best performances, are you at your most comfortable on a links layout?

Yes, links golf is something I feel very comfortable with. I grew up in a links town, and although I wasn’t like a member of one of the links courses, I’ve played on it a lot. When I’m at home I will go and play Hillside quite a bit with my dad, things like that, so links golf is more part of whom I am as a golfer that a lot of other players. It takes a different kind of preparation, but as soon as I’m a links course I feel pretty comfortable with what is needed.

The Open returns to Hoylake in 2023. Could that be a good opportunity to become the first English winner of an Open on English soil since Tony Jacklin’s victory at Lytham in 1969?

Yeah, I think it’s just an amazing opportunity. The Open at Hoylake is very special. I’ve said it many times. For me personally there’s three Opens: there’s Birkdale, there’s Hoylake, there’s Royal Lytham. They’re all within 30-40 minutes of where I grew up. People go their whole lives without playing any kind of event that close to home, and there’s three chances there of the biggest event in the world being that close for me.

It’s very special for me, and I completely see it as opportunity. It’s nerve-racking, yeah. It’s like a different element to the event, but I love it, I really do. I consider myself very lucky that I get to play this tournament as one of the home favourites and to get the support that I do, and I always look forward to it.

You’ve won all over the world, but you haven’t won on the PGA Tour yet. Is that something you’re keen to tick off the bucket list?

Yeah, thanks for reminding me! I think any European player would be lying if they said winning in America wasn’t the next step for them in their career, and I’m no different. I haven’t done it. In the grand scheme of things, winning in America is something that I need to do. 

I’ve had chances and sometimes somebody’s played better than me, and there’s been times when I’ve hit the wrong shot at the wrong time. It is what it is, but I think at the present moment I am pretty happy with where my game is trending and I like the work that I’m doing, so hopefully things will fall into place and I’ll get over that hurdle one day. 

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Golfers using the the Arccos shot tracking system were most likely to be found playing golf courses around London and the South East so far this year, according to data revealed by the company. 

Courses located in the southern part of the country dominated the ‘Most Played’ rankings for golfers playing in Britain, with Arccos Smart Sensors between January and June this year, with five of the top 10 courses located in Surrey alone.

Leading the way was the scenic heathland course at The Addington Golf Club in Croydon – just ten miles from central London – where a total of 318 rounds were played using Arccos Smart Sensors to detect each shot – equating to over 50 rounds each month or 12 rounds per week.

Dating back to 1913 and designed by J.F Abercromby, who also created Worplesdon, the par 69, 6300-yard course is in the middle of a full restoration project under the guidance of world-renowned architects Mike Clayton, Mike DeVries and Frank Pont (CDP). The 230-yard par 3 13th and 515-yard par 5 16th  are the best of many memorable, challenging, and spectacular holes with expansive views of the capital city from its hilltop tees.

“It’s great that so many of our members and visitors are using Arccos Caddie data to understand and improve their game and I’m looking to utilise the system more within my own coaching sessions,” said Phil Womack, Head Professional at The Addington Club.

Foxhills Club & Resort in Chertsey accounted for places 2 and 5 in the top-10 Arccos usage ratings, with both championship parkland courses – the Bernard Hunt (293) and Longcross (275) – proving popular with tech-orientated golfers.

Knole Park Golf Club the Kent (279) squeezed into third spot, with two other Surrey courses at Hampton Court Palace Golf Club (277) and the Hoebridge Golf Centre in Old Woking (261) completing the top six.

Also making a strong start to the year with market-leading Arccos Caddie members were three more locations in Kent – Pedham Place Golf Centre (247), Newbury & Crookham Golf Club (244) and the Cave Hotel & Golf Resort in Faversham (244) – plus the Skylark Golf & Country Club (232) in Hampshire.

Notable courses to feature in the top 50 included Cotswold Hills, The Oxfordshire, Bearwood Lakes, Gog Magog, Celtic Manor, Royal North Devon, The Grove, Formby Hall, The Goodwood Club, Royal Blackheath, Burhill, Sunningdale, Silvermere and Royal Mid-Surrey.

“This course location data over the first six months of the year demonstrates just how committed our British Arccos Caddie members are in pursuit of game improvement, particularly those in London and the southeast region,” said Andrew Turner, Vice President of Sales at Arccos Golf. “We’re now able to extract data from our dataset more easily and have plans to introduce a host of game enhancing insights that will help all golfers take their game from guessing to knowing.”

Recent Arccos innovations include Gen3+ Smart Sensors and the Link Gen 2 wearable device, plus Enhanced Putting Stats that provides amateur players with putting data previously the preserve of elite Tour players.

Arccos Caddie automatically tracks your shots while delivering in-round insights and personalised Strokes Gained analytics for every game aspect. The system is highlighted by an A.I.-powered rangefinder, smart club distances and caddie advice for every golf hole. These innovations helped new Arccos Caddie members who played at least 10 rounds lower their handicap index by an average of 5.78 strokes in 2021.

Arccos members have now recorded more than 550 million shots during 11.5 million rounds in 162 countries. This feeds the world’s largest on-course dataset, now including over 350 billion individual data points, which powers Arccos’ industry-leading Strokes Gained engine that allows a player to select their personal handicap goal, then provides personalised analysis for every game aspect and each club in the bag.

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While there are numerous amateur golfers who have won their home club championship in two, three and sometimes four different decades, few are able to produce the goods on the day consistently enough to win consecutive championships over extended periods.

While sporting records are there to be broken, and often are, it’s hard to imagine any golfer being able to eclipse the achievements of Sussex legend RWH ‘Bunny’ Taylor, who, between the years of 1937 and 1962, and the ages of 24 and 50, managed to win the club championship at the Dyke Golf Club in Brighton a barely believable 20 times in a row.

After bagging his third title on the trot in 1939, he broke off hostilities with his fellow club members – and his job as a branch manager at a London-based milliner’s firm – to battle with the Bosch, before resuming normal service with victory in the championship in 1946. He then extended his unbeaten run for 16 more years until he generously decided, aged 50, to give someone else a go when retiring after securing his 20th and final title in 1962.

Word has it that Mr Taylor’s doctor told him that it was time to be taking it ‘easy’, although I doubt that was word that the patient in question had much truck with given his unrelenting desire to win.

His lowest score for the 36-hole competition was the 146 strokes he took when taking the title in 1953, aged 41, and the highest was a 161 in 1951. For the final defence of his title in 1962, Taylor attacked the course like a man possessed. Known for his unerring iron play and brilliant short game, he one-putted the 6^th, 7^th and 8^th holes to turn in 37, and then came home in 36 after bagging four more one-putt pars, including a 12-footer at the last, for a one-over-par 73.

After opening up an eight-shot lead at the half-way point, Taylor took his foot off the gas in the afternoon, and a cold putter saw him coast to a second round 83 and an aggregate winning score of 156, seven shots ahead of his nearest challenger.

“The greens were a good deal faster than in the morning round, but although 83 sounds like a lot, I was never in trouble all day,” said Taylor, with the confident air of a man for whom winning club champs was like shelling peas.

Asked about his achievement of winning 20 consecutive club championships, Taylor said: “I’ve had a letter from the people who publish the Guinness Book of Records that they will treat this is a world’s best performance. I have certainly never heard of anything better anywhere in the world.”

And nor have we, Bunny, nor have we.

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