Sergio Garcia is the Masters champion, and he says nothing has changed.

That’s not entirely true.

He returns to Augusta National as a husband, having married Angela Akins last summer. He will have a slightly larger entourage with him, most notably a daughter born three weeks ago who will always remind him of the Masters, its beauty and his resiliency. They named her Azalea.

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And he has Tuesday night plans unlike any other as host of the Champions Dinner.

But that’s it.

He’ll swear by that.

”I feel very proud for being able to win a major, and to win the Masters on top of that,” Garcia said. ”But you know, like what they all tell me: `Has it changed your life?’ I don’t think and I don’t feel like it has. I’m still doing the same things. … It’s something that until it happens, you don’t know what it’s going to feel like and what it’s going to do to you. But on my regard, I’m happy that I don’t feel it has changed me. I don’t feel like I’m better than I w..

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. (AP) Lexi Thompson is smiling and having fun again at the ANA Inspiration.

A year after a rules violation cost her four strokes in regulation in an eventual playoff loss, Thompson shot a 4-under 68 on Thursday to finish three strokes behind leader Pernilla Lindberg.

”I don’t know if I would say it’s a relief,” Thompson said. ”I was just really looking forward to just playing this week. I love coming here.”

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Thompson also again overpowered Michelle Wie on a hot afternoon at Mission Hills, four years after routing her in a final-round showdown for her first major title.

Wie fought dizzy spells on the front nine in a 75 that left her in danger of missing the cut.

”I had the mad spins,” Wie said. ”I just got really dizzy. I don’t know why or how. I don’t know.”

Wearing a black dress in the mid-90s heat, she birdied the second hole, then dropped five strokes in four holes with two double bogeys and a bogey.

”I fouled five balls out th..

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. (AP) Lexi Thompson is smiling and having fun again at the ANA Inspiration.

A year after a rules violation cost her four strokes in regulation in an eventual playoff loss, Thompson shot a 4-under 68 on Thursday to finish three strokes behind leader Pernilla Lindberg.

”I don’t know if I would say it’s a relief,” Thompson said. ”I was just really looking forward to just playing this week. I love coming here.”

Article continues below …

Thompson also again overpowered Michelle Wie on a hot afternoon at Mission Hills, four years after routing her in a final-round showdown for her first major title.

Wie fought dizzy spells on the front nine in a 75 that left her in danger of missing the cut.

”I had the mad spins,” Wie said. ”I just got really dizzy. I don’t know why or how. I don’t know.”

Wearing a black dress in the mid-90s heat, she birdied the second hole, then dropped five strokes in four holes with two double bogeys and a bogey.

”I fouled five balls out th..

HUMBLE, Texas (AP) PGA Tour rookie Sam Ryder played just enough golf Thursday to get his name atop the leaderboard in the Houston Open.

Ryder holed an 8-foot birdie putt on the 15th hole to reach 8-under par before it was too dark to continue. The opening round was delayed two hours because of overnight rain that dumped more than 2 inches on the Golf Club of Houston.

But it was partly cloudy, warm and breezy for most of the day, with a forecast for more of the same through the weekend.

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Former U.S. Open champion Lucas Glover and Kevin Tway each shot 7-under 65 in the morning. They had a one-shot lead over Rickie Fowler, Rod Pampling, Ryan Armour and Julian Suri among those who completed their rounds.

Beau Hossler, another PGA Tour rookie, was at 7 under through 16 holes.

Phil Mickelson looked as if he would be among the leaders when he shot 30 on the front nine and was one shot behind. Mickelson, who won the Mexico Championship three weeks ago for his f..

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. (AP) Ayako Uehara birdied her final two holes for a 6-under 66 and a one-stroke lead halfway through the first round of the ANA Inspiration.

The Japanese player was 6 under on her final 10 holes Thursday at Mission Hills, finishing with birdies on the par-3 eighth and par-5 ninth. Stanford sophomore Albane Valenzuela, Jessica Korda and Ha Na Jang were tied for second.

Lexi Thompson and Michelle Wie were on the course in the featured afternoon pairing in the first major championship of the season. Last year, Thompson was penalized four shots with six holes to play in regulation because of a rules violation the day before, wiping out a three-stroke lead. She rallied to force a playoff that So Yeon Ryu won on the first hole.

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RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. (AP) Lexi Thompson is smiling and having fun again at the ANA Inspiration.

A year after a rules violation cost her four strokes in regulation in an eventual playoff loss, Thompson shot a 4-under 68 on Thursday to finish three strokes behind leader Pernilla Lindberg.

”I don’t know if I would say it’s a relief,” Thompson said. ”I was just really looking forward to just playing this week. I love coming here.”

Article continues below …

Thompson also again overpowered Michelle Wie on a hot afternoon at Mission Hills, four years after routing her in a final-round showdown for her first major title.

Wie fought dizzy spells on the front nine in a 75 that left her in danger of missing the cut.

”I had the mad spins,” Wie said. ”I just got really dizzy. I don’t know why or how. I don’t know.”

Wearing a black dress in the mid-90s heat, she birdied the second hole, then dropped five strokes in four holes with two double bogeys and a bogey.

”I fouled five balls out th..

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. (AP) Lexi Thompson is smiling and having fun again at the ANA Inspiration.

A year after a rules violation cost her four strokes in regulation in an eventual playoff loss, Thompson shot a 4-under 68 on Thursday to finish three strokes behind leader Pernilla Lindberg.

”I don’t know if I would say it’s a relief,” Thompson said. ”I was just really looking forward to just playing this week. I love coming here.”

Article continues below …

Thompson also again overpowered Michelle Wie on a hot afternoon at Mission Hills, four years after routing her in a final-round showdown for her first major title.

Wie fought dizzy spells on the front nine in a 75 that left her in danger of missing the cut.

”I had the mad spins,” Wie said. ”I just got really dizzy. I don’t know why or how. I don’t know.”

Wearing a black dress in the mid-90s heat, she birdied the second hole, then dropped five strokes in four holes with two double bogeys and a bogey.

”I fouled five balls out th..

Jennifer StewartIchiro’s hair is graying. He doesn’t run as fast as he used to. He doesn’t hit as well as he did, either—after batting .300 his first 10 seasons in our majors, he hasn’t reached that mark the past seven seasons. After re-signing with the Mariners this spring, he strained his right calf muscle and was hit in the head with a pitch.
He also is 44 years old, baseball’s oldest position player.
Yet Ichiro is not ready to retire. He not only will play this season, he wants to play until he is 50. At least that old, he says.
Well, why not keep going? There are athletes who kept going—and some succeeding—in their late 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and decades beyond that!
FacebookPinterestRick StewartIn their 40s: George Foreman won the heavyweight boxing title in 1994 at age 45. That’s not quite as old as Rocky Balboa was in “Rocky VI’’ but it’s damn impressive. Jack Nicklaus won the Masters at age 46 in 1986, the tournament’s oldest winner ever. Heck, Ichiro’s former Mariners teammate, J..

This Masters is as much about a red shirt as a green jacket.

Tiger Woods is back for only the second time in the last five years, and what makes the sight of him at Augusta National even more tantalizing is that Woods is starting to look like the player who dominated golf for nearly 15 years.

He has power. His short game is sharp. He makes putts.

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Never mind that Woods is not ranked among the top 100 players. Or that it has been 13 years since he last won the Masters in that Sunday red shirt, and four years and eight months since he last won any tournament.

The buzz following Woods since his return from a fourth back surgery has been bigger and louder than when he was No. 1 in the world, piling up 79 victories on the PGA Tour and 14 majors. The longer he was away from the game, the more his feats looked even more legendary. And the longer he was gone, the more plausible it was that Woods might never return, at least not at a competitive level.

In his la..

The Catholic Church isn't exactly big on change, but this morning Pope Francis announced a huge one: Hell—you know, the firey despair pit where thieves, cheaters, Patriots fans, and murderers are consigned to an eternity of only Trump's Twitter feed—is going the way of Toys R' Us. In its place (you didn't think they were getting rid of the stick entirely, did you?), the souls of unrepentant sinners will simply, umm, disappear. Here's what the Pope had to say of the re-brand:
Hell doesn’t exist, the disappearance of the souls of sinners exists.
So yeah, OK, not the church's most creative work. Built on a celebrated platform of infanticide, patricide, siblicide, and one [probably] allegorical man-eating whale, the acclaimed Catholic Ideation Team clearly phoned in it here, leaving their global legion of masochists wondering where to turn for a daily dose of crippling existential terror.
Thankfully, despite all this soft-atheism mumbo-jumbo, there remains amp..