PITTSFORD, N.Y. – Rory McIlroy’s post-round press conference Tuesday was decidedly subdued and the Northern Irishman explained following his opening 1-over 71 at the PGA Championship that he’s been battling an illness.

“I'm fighting something. I thought I got a great night's sleep last night, and I look at my Whoop, and I was 22 percent recovery, and my skin temperature was 3.5 degrees higher than what it's been. I'm fighting something,” McIlroy said. “I actually feel better today than I felt yesterday, so plenty of water and a bit of rest, I'll be fine.”

Whoop's website states that for anything below 33% recovery, "Rest is likely what your body needs. It is working hard to recover, potentially from overtraining, sickness, stress, lack of sleep, or other lifestyle factors.”

It may be illness that has slowed McIlroy but there was also plenty of stress Thursday at Oak Hill, where he began his round at No. 10 and bogeyed the 15^th, 17^th and 18^th holes to turn in 3 over.

“Just not at my best. I'm just struggling with my swing. It's pretty messy out there, so just trying to make pars,” he said. “It was tough as well. There was a lot of crosswinds off tees, so it made it hard to hit fairways.”

McIlroy rebounded on his second nine, starting with a 36-footer from behind the green for par at the second hole. He added birdies at Nos. 3, 4 and 8. Still, it was another middling round following his missed cut at the Masters and his tie for 47^th two weeks ago at the Wells Fargo Championship.

“I take it hole-by-hole,” McIlroy said when asked if he was prepared for what’s shaping up to be the year’s most demanding test.

PITTSFORD, N.Y. – During simpler and more-congenial times, these practice rounds were legendary, with Phil Mickelson often leading the way. They were played at regular Tour events and majors as well, and they normally came with hushed wagers and a good amount of trash talking.

But those practice rounds that Keegan Bradley enjoyed went away with LIV Golf last year. Mickelson joined the breakaway league in June after skipping the Masters and PGA Championship and Brendan Steele, a staple of those early-week “games,” joined LIV earlier this year. Both players were promptly suspended by the Tour for violating the circuit’s conflicting-event release policy, leaving only the majors where they could rejoin Bradley for the customary rounds.

The threesome reunited this week at the PGA Championship and, at least for Bradley, it provided a spark on Day 1 at Oak Hill.

“Steeley is one of my closest friends in the entire world. It's been so great hanging with him and playing practice rounds and going to dinner and complaining about how hard the course is and stuff like that. It's been a blast,” said Bradley, who opened in 2-under 68 Thursday. “I miss seeing a lot of guys that have gone to LIV. It's fun to get to these majors and see them, but especially for me and Steeley, we are pretty close friends, so we have been looking forward to this week.”

It was a similar reunion for Dustin Johnson at last month’s Masters, where he was reunited with old friends following his jump to LIV Golf last year. Earlier this week, Jon Rahm seemed to speak for many when asked his thoughts on the LIV players in this field.

“I never got into the feud. I've never had any negative feelings towards any player that went over to LIV,” Rahm said. “In fact, I've mentioned many times I still play with many of them and still try to play practice rounds with Phil, played with Talor Gooch yesterday. Really doesn't make a difference to me.”

PITTSFORD, N.Y. – The happiest man at Oak Hill Country Club on Thursday was Bryson DeChambeau.

He missed this.

All of this.

The lead at a major championship. The fans shouting his name. The media members swarming his interviews. The irons dancing by the flag and the driver being pummeled into a clear blue sky — straight and pure and holy-s--t! far.

“It looked like Bryson to me,” Keegan Bradley said. “He hit the ball great, putted great, drove it really nice. He was smashing drives again, and he played pretty much flawless golf. Happy for him.”

It’s clear now, three humbling years later, that DeChambeau’s smashmouth victory at Winged Foot didn’t spark the revolution he’d originally intended. 

But it did lead to his own internal revolt. 

Fueled by a long-drive fascination, DeChambeau guzzled a half-dozen protein shakes a day (and 5,000 calories in all) in hopes of becoming a big, bulky, brawny bully on the course. And for a while, sure, he succeeded: He won three times in 2020-21, including his first major at the 2020 U.S. Open, and top-tenned in roughly half (18 of 39) of his starts while becoming the PGA Tour’s star attraction.

But he was also pushing his body dangerously close to the breaking point. He didn’t have the energy to support his marathon range sessions. He couldn’t recover between rounds. His joints were inflamed, his hand ached, his stomach roiled.

For a few years he experienced minor bouts of vertigo. He underwent surgery to remove a cyst in one of his sinuses. He broke a bone in his left hand after wearing down during intense speed-training sessions.

Was it a mistake, going down that path? 

“I’ll say this until the day I die: Everything I do is not a regret or a mistake,” he said Thursday. “It’s just a learning process.”

But he learned – harshly – that those choices were curtailing his career. With his future prospects uncertain, he bolted for LIV Golf last summer and began the drastic process of breaking down what he’d spent years building up.

Blood tests revealed that he was allergic to corn, wheat, gluten and dairy – pretty much everything he liked to eat – and so his chef whipped up dishes that slashed his caloric intake to about 2,900 a day. He lost 18 pounds in 24 days. Aided by LIV’s longer offseason, his bloated body slimmed down. He stopped crashing midway through the day. And yet he found that he had retained all of the speed and strength and power from his training the previous few years, his fast-twitch muscles still firing. 

“I built that,” he said. “Engrained that in.”

The DeChambeau that stands before us here at Oak Hill is about 35 pounds lighter than the one who mauled Winged Foot at the 2020 U.S. Open. That week he averaged 327 yards off the tee, bombing it all over the lot but possessing the brute strength to muscle wedge shots out of ankle-high rough. But even in the cooler conditions Thursday, a leaner DeChambeau posted a 347-yard average on the two measured holes and consistently cruised in the mid-180s in ball speed.

“He’s got the speed, and he can still move it, but he’s chipping it,” said caddie Greg Bodine. “He’s combining his feels to when his swing felt the best and the most repeatable, and he can still dial it back and swing his driver 10 mph faster than he did five or six years ago. It’s fun to see those two converge.”

Indeed, DeChambeau isn’t trying to return to the glory days of 2020. His goal is actually to recapture the feels of 2018, when he won three times, missed the fewest cuts of his career and peaked at No. 4 in the world ranking. That year he wasn’t some freak show off the tee; he ranked 25^th in distance, at 305 yards a pop, and relied on pinpoint iron play. It’s a reminder that, even amid all of his bluster and bombast, DeChambeau has always been an exceptional golfer. It didn’t matter whether he was skinny or hefty, whether he was the game’s biggest bomber or merely average.

“I just want to be stable now,” he said. “I’m tired of changing, trying different things. Could I hit it farther? Could I try and get a little stronger? Sure. But I’m not going to go full force.

“It was a fun experiment, but I definitely want to play some good golf now.”

DeChambeau’s opening 66 here at the PGA Championship certainly qualifies. He made six birdies and paced the field in ball-striking on a challenging day in which all but one of the top 10 players in the world shot over par.

“You can’t wipe that smile off your face,” one of the TV interviewers told him.

“It’s been a while,” DeChambeau grinned.

Standing away from the media crush was his caddie of just two weeks, Bodine, who previously spent six years alongside another extravagantly talented big hitter, Tony Finau. Bodine had been out of the game for two years, running a new indoor golf club in Seattle, before he got a call from DeChambeau’s team that he was looking for a new looper. Over the years they’d been friendly but hardly close; they battled a few Sundays and spent time together on the U.S. cup teams. But DeChambeau thought their mathematical approaches would mesh well, and they hooked up for the first time last week at the LIV Tulsa event. DeChambeau posted the best finish (seventh) of his LIV career there and carried that momentum into the year’s second major championship.

All of a sudden, it felt like old times – for both of them.

DeChambeau pounded driver off the tee and fired missiles into the greens, much to the delight of the crowd, while Bodine watched his in-depth preparation pay off with a smart game plan that accentuated DeChambeau’s rediscovered gifts.

“We’ve talked a lot about his journey the last few years, and that’s what’s intrigued me, too,” Bodine said. “He was ‘struggling’ in his mind, and he was still winning events.

“It’s going to be a lot of fun going forward.”

In the bowels of the Aviva Stadium on Thursday, Franco Smith was thrown a question about the respective spending power of the European Challenge Cup finalists - his own well supported but hardly filthy rich Glasgow Warriors and the mega-euros men from Toulon, replete with icons of French, South African, Italy and Fijian rugby.

"It's not about money, it's about courage, about will and want, about expressing yourself, it's about living a dream out there," said Smith.

"The winner will be the ones who don't think about what they want but act on what they want."

Smith uttered those words with a calm intensity. There was passion in his voice, for sure, but mostly it was deadpan intensity, a steely focus on what his team is playing for on Friday night.

His captain Kyle Steyn and scrum-half George Horne also came across as cool and collected before what will be the biggest game of their club careers. They did not shy away from the enormity of what will go down at the Aviva but neither did they want to exhaust their energy by cranking things up too early.

"From an emotional intelligence point of view, it would be wrong of me to excite them too much," said Smith. "Being overhyped is not what we want. The players want to be as good as they can be and it won't be necessary for me to say any more."

EPCR, the tournament organisers, say that about 35,000 tickets have been sold for the final in a stadium that holds more than 50,000. It's estimated that about 1,800 of those will be Warriors supporters, a number that most probably would have been significantly higher had one not required a small fortune - or a sellable kidney - to afford a hotel room in Dublin.

Prices are always on the eyewatering side in the capital but even more so when there's a major sports event going on and people are piling in from all corners.

That's not European rugby - as well as the Challenge Cup on Friday, local heroes Leinster face Ronan O'Gara's La Rochelle in the Champions Cup on Saturday - but the homecoming fight of the great Katie Taylor in the city that night. Taylor is as big a local hero as any sporting immortal of the past. Such is the pressure on beds, it would not have been a surprise had cardboard boxes at the side of the road gone for top dollar.

Peculiar Toulon present final obstacle for Warriors

From the Glasgow camp there was a definite air of wanting to look themselves in the mirror in the aftermath of the final and knowing that they had no regrets, win or lose. That's not something Toulon could do when they lost this final last year to Lyon, lost another Challenge Cup final to Bristol in 2020, lost another to Biarritz in 2012 and lost yet another to Cardiff in 2010.

They are the most peculiar of clubs. They have lost all four of their Challenge Cup finals and have won all three of their Champions Cup finals, when Bryan Habana, Matt Giteau, Jonny Wilkinson, Carl Hayman, Bakkies Botha and Ali Williams made them the only club in history to win three European Cups in a row.

They are still star-studded, still carrying a roster of excellence. Cheslin Kolbe is one of the great modern-day Springboks. Bill McLaren once said of the Welsh wizard Phil Bennett that if anybody caught him they got to make a wish and you could say the same thing of Jiuta Wainiqolo, the Fijian wing. He's devastating.

Toulon have enormous nous at half-back with Dan Biggar and Baptiste Serin and a gnarled pack of forwards. The driving forces are in the back row with the totemic Sergio Parisse in his final days as a rugby player of mighty repute and Charles Ollivon, the wrecking ball French Grand Slammer of 2022.

On paper, they are formidable. In reality, the whole has not been as great as the sum of the parts. Toulon have lost a lot of games in a disappointing Top 14 season. Double figures in defeats is not a good place to be. They sit eighth, which for a club of their pedigree may as well be 18th. Just as with Glasgow, their season rests on this.

Serious rugby man Smith targets history

What a road the Warriors have travelled, from self-doubt and almost self-loathing at the end of last season, to a rebirth under Smith, a quirky character whose sayings sometimes crack his players up but who, at his heart, is a very serious rugby man.

He was not exactly what the Glasgow fans were looking for in the summer - and he knows it. They wanted a name, a bit of glamour, a guy with trophies and charisma dripping off him. They got an intelligent campaigner who knew how to problem solve on the hoof.

"I want to be significant, not just successful," he told The Guardian recently. "The fact that critics wrote me off from the start shows how success is down to perception. But perception is fickle. I do hope the naysayers now won't judge a book by its cover any more."

If that book has an image of Steyn, as captain, lifting the Challenge Cup on the front then Smith, as his coach, will be judged all right. He will go down in history as the first man to lead a Scottish side to a European crown.

He has a steadfast air, a refusal to talk too much ahead of the big night, but he knows that the stakes have never been bigger for Glasgow. They are underdogs, yes. Looking at it coldly, Toulon should probably win, but nobody in France is fooling themselves about the threat Glasgow pose.

"Since the arrival of Franco Smith, they have changed their face," wrote the French rugby website Rugbyrama. At their best, they said of the Warriors, "they are somewhat terrifying".

This could be their greatest day.

TAMPERE, Finland -- Sweden routed newcomer Hungary 7-1 Thursday for its fourth victory at the ice hockey world championship.

Jacob de la Rose scored twice for Sweden at the Nokia Arena. The Swedes are second in Group A with 11 points, one point behind the United States.

John Peterka and Nico Sturm scored a goal and had an assist each to help Germany beat Denmark 6-4 in Group A for the team's first victory at the tournament.

In the Latvian capital of Riga, Switzerland beat Slovakia 4-2 to make it four wins from four and move to the top of Group B with 12 points, a point ahead of Canada in second.

Also in Group B, the Czech Republic had to come from two goals down to beat another newcomer, Slovenia, 6-2. Dominik Kubalik led the Czech rally with a hat trick and an assist. The Detroit Red Wings forward leads the tournament scoring table with six goals.

Kenny Pigman, one of 20 PGA professionals competing alongside the touring pros at this week's PGA Championship, was preparing to tee off on Oak Hill Country Club's par-4 18th hole on Thursday when he heard someone yell, "Fore!"

That someone was apparently Bryson DeChambeau, who from the group behind had just hit his approach on the par-4 17th.

One problem: DeChambeau's second shot flared out some 40 yards wide and struck Pigman. Luckily, DeChambeau's warning allowed Pigman enough time to duck, and the ball appeared to narrowly miss Pigman's head before hitting him in the upper back.

“Coming out of the rough, you don’t know exactly what the ball is gonna do. He wasn’t aiming for me,” Pigman told a few reporters, including Golf Channel's Ryan Lavner. “It stung pretty bad.”

This is the second straight year that a competitor was hit by a shot at the PGA. Last year at Southern Hills, Aaron Wise was hit in the head by a Cam Smith drive. ESPN's Sage Steele was also hit that week in Tulsa, Oklahoma, though she was hospitalized after being hit in the face by a Jon Rahm drive.

DeChambeau would bogey No. 17, and Pigman bogeyed No. 18 as well. But DeChambeau bounced back with a birdie at No. 18, making the turn at 1 under, just two shots off the lead, before finishing off a 4-under 66, good for the early lead.

Pigman, meanwhile, equaled Shaun Micheel for worst score of the day, an 11-over 81.

“Oh yeah, it’s sore,” Pigman said of his welt. “It’s sore, but it doesn’t hurt my swing. Now there’s an excuse.”

Jon Rahm has now played 23 career rounds in PGA Championships. Only once before had he endured a day like Thursday.

Rahm fired a 6-over 76 in the opening round at Oak Hill Country Club to match his worst career PGA Championship score, tying the 6-over 76 that he carded in last year's third round at Southern Hills, where Rahm ultimately tied for 48th.

The day actually started well, as Rahm birdied his opening hole, the par-4 10th. He followed with five straight pars before the mistakes began. Rahm bogeyed five of his next six holes. Rahm capped his round with a bogey-double-birdie-par stretch.

"The main thing on this course is hitting the fairway," Rahm explained afterward. "If you put the ball in the fairway you can actually give yourself a lot of good chances. Even 18 today was playing downwind, so if you put it on the fairway, you can have a good look at maybe hitting it close and that's what I didn't do. Obviously the first six holes of the day I played really good. Put myself in a good spot and after that I found myself battling. Couldn't find the fairway and the fairways that I missed cost me bogeys.

"The only thing I can look back on myself is the three short putts I missed on the back nine, I'm between 3 to 5 feet, if I make those putts, I shoot 3 over, which is not the worst-case scenario."

He ranked outside the top 100 in the field in strokes gained approach and putting at the time his round ended. He also was in the negative in strokes gained off the tee.

"It wasn't my best swings on the last two holes and made a birdie and a par," Rahm added, "so there's many ways to do this. You don't need to play perfect."

For his PGA career, Rahm has just two top-10s in six appearances. But there's still hope for this week, Rahm says.

"If I can somehow manage to put a low one tomorrow," Rahm said, "and find myself close to even par going into Sunday, I think I'll have a decent chance."

So, does Tiger Woods really not take divots? Or does he?

Scottie Scheffler appears to still be a little unsure of the answer.

Surely by now you've seen the viral TaylorMade video that shows Tiger Woods explaining to a befuddled Scheffler, who's looking down at the clean patch of grass at Woods' feet, how he doesn't take divots when he's "flushing it." If not, here's the exchange during a company-sponsored shoot:

Scheffler: "Hey, what's up with the no divots?"

Woods: "What?"

Scheffler: "No divots."

Woods: "Why do you take a divot?"

Scheffler: "I don't know, I'm asking you."

Woods: "Just picking it."

Scheffler: "Do you do that always when you warm up?

Woods: "When I'm swinging well, I don't take divots."

Scheffler: "Have you always been like that, or are you just practicing?"

Woods: "No, when I'm flushing it, I don't take divots. It just is what it is. It is what is."

On Thursday after Scheffler shot 3-under 67, he was asked about the video. First, a reporter playfully inquired whether Woods had inspired Scheffler to rethink his divot-taking strategy.

"No," Scheffler said.

A second question followed: Are you surprised at how much people have gotten a kick out of that video?

"I haven't actually watched it, but I do remember that day," Scheffler said. "That was one of the first things we did that day, so I was just trying to wake up. I look over, and he hadn't made any divots, and I was, like, a little bit confused. So the look on my face probably said it all. But I don't know, I think he was doing some sort of drill or something like that and maybe didn't want to tell me because the cameras were on.

"Who knows? Maybe he really doesn't take divots. Ask JT."

The mystery continues...

PITTSFORD, N.Y. – Scottie Scheffler has a well-earned reputation as one of the PGA Tour’s most even-keeled players, but it didn’t take a thorough examination to interpret his body language at last month’s Masters.

“He was pissy during the Masters and I don’t blame him one bit. He just does not appreciate that,” Scheffler’s swing coach Randy Smith said.

For the week he was among the top ball-strikers at Augusta National, finishing first in greens in regulation, but ranked 53^rd out of 53 players who made the cut in putting. Although the performance was surprising considering Scheffler’s status as one of the game’s top players around the greens, it didn’t lead to any wholesale changes or concern.

Smith explained that the only adjustment they made since Augusta National was to create more room between the golf ball and his body at address. “Sometimes it looks like he doesn’t have room for his arms to work,” Smith said. “It looks a lot better now through the shoulders through his neck and head.”

From those simple adjustments the world No. 2’s improved play on the greens can be easily quantified. The next week at the RBC Heritage he enjoyed a breakthrough on Day 2 when he picked up 3.32 shots on the field in strokes gained: putting on his way to a tie for 11^th and last week he again added shots on the greens (.49 in strokes gained: putting) at the AT&T Byron Nelson, where he tied for fifth.

Thursday was more of the same at the PGA Championship, where he carded a bogey-free 67 and was one shot off the early lead at the frost-delayed event. He converted clutch putts from 7 feet at No. 2 and 4 feet at Nos. 4 and 6 for par and added a 15-footer at No. 5 for birdie to close out his round and keep pace with front-runner Bryson DeChambeau.

“The up-and-down on 2, that was probably a pretty important one. That was a really good putt,” Scheffler said. “I hit a lot of good putts today. I feel like I did a lot of things really well. I think there was a few putts that could have gone in, and my score could have been even lower. I'm just happy to get through it no bogeys and good momentum going into tomorrow.”

Scheffler said he hasn’t changed anything with his putting since Augusta National, either with his routine or mechanics, and he largely dismissed his performance at the Masters with a familiar cliché – it’s just golf.

“Golf is a hard game. You can't play perfect every week. The more free and loose I can play, especially on the greens, it's usually the better off I am,” he said.

It’s ironic that Scheffler’s turnaround on the greens started at Augusta National, Smith explained. “That 6-footer he made for par at the last, it gave him a top-10 [finish], you have that in the back of your head,” Smith said. “That made things feel better.”

Newcastle United claimed an emphatic 4-1 home victory over Brighton & Hove Albion to take a massive step towards clinching a top-four finish in the Premier League on Thursday.

An own goal by Deniz Undav and a Dan Burn header before the interval put third-placed Newcastle in command.

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But sixth-placed Brighton, themselves seeking to qualify for Europe for the first time, pulled a goal back through Undav.

There were plenty of nerves around St James' Park as Newcastle squandered chances and Brighton threatened an equaliser but late goals by Callum Wilson and Bruno Guimaraes sparked a party mood inside the stadium.

Newcastle's players milked the applause after the final whistle and while a top-four finish is still not guaranteed they only need one win from their last two games to be sure.

Eddie Howe's side have 69 points with fourth-placed Manchester United on 66 with three games still to play. Liverpool, who only have two games left, have 65.

Victory at home against relegation-threatened Leicester City on Monday will guarantee Newcastle Champions League football for the first time in two decades.

"We were outstanding tonight," Howe told Sky Sports. "That first period was us at our best. I thought we were relentless. It is very difficult to maintain that for the full game.

"The crowd helped get us over the line. The third goal was crucial. It would be incredible if we could (qualify for the Champions League). This is the Premier League and we take nothing for granted.

"We know how good Leicester are, they are fighting at the other end of the table."

After Newcastle had picked up only one point from their last two games, and with Brighton fresh off the back of a 3-0 win at Arsenal, the match looked like a tricky hurdle for the hosts.

But they dominated the opening exchanges and took the lead after 22 minutes when Kieran Trippier's inswinging corner skimmed off the head of Undav and into his own net.

Newcastle's second goal came from a more likely source as former Brighton defender Burn rose to power in another Trippier delivery in first-half stoppage time.

Brighton goalkeeper Jason Steel kept his side in it soon after the break with a reflex save to deny Miguel Almiron and seconds later the visitors halved the deficit as Billy Gilmour split Newcastle's defence and Undav slotted past Nick Pope.

Wilson took his league tally for the season to 18 in the last minute after being sent racing clear by Almiron and Guimaraes fired home from close-range in stoppage time.

Brighton need two wins from their last three games to ensure they will play in Europe next season, although one of those matches is against champions-elect Manchester City.