PAK CHONG, Thailand (AP) Kiradech Aphibarnrat has withdrawn from an Asian Tour satellite event with a back injury, meaning the Thai golfer will finish the year at No. 49 in the world and earn an invitation to the Masters.

The top 50 in the final world ranking of 2017 earn spots at Augusta National.

Kiradech is No. 51 this week and was projected to move to No. 49 provided he didn’t play. However, he qualified for the Boonchu Ruangkit Championship, named after an esteemed player and pioneer in the development of Thai golf. By adding the tournament, Kiradech would have needed a top-10 finish to secure his spot in the Masters.

Article continues below …

The Asian Development Tour said he withdrew before the first round.

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. (AP) The Puerto Rico Open won’t be played next year because of the damage from Hurricane Maria. It will be replaced by an unofficial PGA Tour event for players, other athletes and celebrities to help with recovery work.

The PGA Tour and the Puerto Rico Tourism Company said the Puerto Rico Open will return as a 72-hole, official tournament in 2019 and 2020.

PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan made the announcement Thursday, saying he hopes the special event in March will help the island rebuild and celebrate Puerto Rico as a golf and travel destination. Tournament organizers hope to raise $500,000.

Article continues below …

The event will be held at TPC Dorado Beach.

The Puerto Rico Open, held opposite a World Golf Championship in March, has been part of the tour schedule for 10 years and has raised $690,000 for charity groups working with children and health issues.

D.A. Points won this year’s tournament.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) Most golfers like short par 3s, but West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice probably wishes No. 18 at the Greenbrier Classic in 2015 was a little longer – 33 yards longer to be exact.

In 2015, Justice’s charity promised fans at the 18th hole $100 for the first hole-in-one and $500 for the second in 2015. Professionals George McNeill and Justin Thomas aced the 137-yard hole, forcing the charity to give almost $200,000 to fans around the green.

The charity took out an insurance policy on the payouts, but a federal appeals court says the policy only covered holes at least 170 yards long.

Article continues below …

Old White Charities Inc. accused the insurer of breach of contract for not covering the payout, but the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected that claim.

Palm Springs city council officially apologized to Crossley Tract residents, promising to remove the trees as soon as possible.

YouraPechkinSnowy view in Carpathian Mountains, winter landscapes series.It’s the Winter Solstice, which, for those of you who aren’t attuned to astrophysics / don’t pray to the ancient Wiccan gods, means today is the shortest day of the year. Well, that’s actually wrong — the day’s still 24 hours long, but those 24 hours contain the year’s least amount of daylight, so people say “shortest” because they like to be intentionally confusing, and I’m not sure all this math holds true in places like Antarctica or Iceland anyway. You know what, it’s gonna get dark fast, let’s just leave it at that.
But even with scant daylight, the day doesn’t have to be a total waste! Here are some fine suggestions for how to spend the shortest and most depressing day of the year. (Ha! Just kidding, 2017 provided at least 175 Most Depressing Days of the Year, but this one is definitely the darkest.)
• Tell your wife that sure, you would be happy to spend the day shopping with her, then chuckle smugly to you..

Lots of shit—from the good to the bad to the disturbingly bizarre—takes place on reddit on a daily basis. One second your cruising last night's hot dunk highlights and the next your plunking against the bottom of a Ken Bone-moderated anime fetish thread trying to remember your name. Thankfully, today's best reddit export falls firmly in the former category:
Ugly sweater-inspired NBA Christmas jerseys (designed by reddit user Swizzay). Gaze upon their beauty and despair, simple mortal.
FacebookPinterestFacebookPinterestFacebookPinterestFacebookPinterestFacebookPinterestFacebookPinterestIn fact, these festive holiday alternates are so great, the only thing that can possibly spoil them is the fact the NBA hasn't immediately severed ties with some lame company called Nike in order to Prime these bad boys to their NYHQ by Monday. Alas, it looks we will just to wait until Christmas morning to see what the NBA actually has in store for their annual Xmas alternates, because unli..

Stanley Chou/Getty ImagesPat Perez celebrates on the 18th hole after winning the 2017 CIMB Classic at TPC Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.Pat Perez has enjoyed a marvelous late-career rejuvenation the last two seasons. After finding the winner's circle just once in his first 378 career starts, Perez has logged two victories in his last 28 appearances. Given Perez will turn 42 this March, his play has been proof that, while golf's ranks may be dominated by youth, it's still a game for all ages.
In that same breath, Perez is not exactly a transcendent talent, with only one career top-10 finish at a major championship. That hasn't stopped him, however, from making a particularly bold prediction about himself for 2018: he's going to win the Grand Slam.
https://twitter.com/SiriusXMPGATOUR/status/943302302370291712/photo/1
Clearly the man's an advocate of Bob Rotella's “Golf is a game of confidence” mantra.
At least give Perez credit for consistency. Looking at yo..

In 2016, the New Jersey Devils held a contest to design a custom set of pads for goaltender Keith Kincaid. Amidst the avalanche of adorable crayon scribbles from six-year-olds across the Tri-State, one submission from the Devils' own Adam Henrique caught the attention of the judges: Kincaid's head roughly photoshopped onto the prone, half-naked body of one George Costanza.
Unfortunately, before these almost unthinkably preposterous pads could be commissioned, Henrique was shipped off to the Anaheim Ducks and the joke, as it were, went with him. Or, at least, that's what Henrique thought until Tuesday night, when, returning to the Prudential Center for a battle against his old team, he was presented with a little Festivus miracle:
LoadingView on Instagram
Now there are plenty of great pad designs butterflying around the NHL right now (see: the Winter Classic beauties Hank Lundqvist literally just unveiled), but these bad boys are head and five-hole above the rest, restori..

The 16th hole of the TPC Scottsdale’s Stadium Course is not architecturally memorable or artistically appealing, but it is unique in two ways now.
Already renowned as the only hole in golf enclosed inside a stadium, as it is during the annual Waste Management Phoenix Open, it now is the only hole in golf to have its own logo, the numeral 16 inside an outline of the stadium.
FacebookPinterestIt probably was inevitable, and in hindsight, considering the merchandising possibilities, raises this question: What took it so long?
“The 16th hole has become a bucket list for people all over the world,” tournament chairman Carlos Sugich said. “And it’s obviously our signature hole. We call it our coliseum or our stadium and it every day it hosts close to 16,000 of the greatest fans in golf. We couldn’t make it any bigger. We thought, ‘why not give it its own logo?’ It kind of has a life of its own now, in addition to the tournament.”
The tournament is not yet marketing merchandise featuring the ..

I don't why the world has to be like this, but it is. In a year defined by pervasive sadness, simmering mortal terror, and fast food brands with big, creative marketing budgets, sliced beef merchants Arby's have saved the most blatant sign of the coming apocalypse—actual, limited-edition “Meat Sweats”—for last and drafted post-civilization meat-man Mike Golic Jr. as their spokesman/model/Meat-Sweat-beta-tester. If you've ever wondered what staring into the void would be like, well, step up to the rim and take a gander:
FacebookPinterestFacebookPinterestFacebookPinterestAccording to Arby's, each pair of set of Meat Sweats boasts bacon-patterned warming pockets, a vented hood for temperature control, and an adjustable waistline “for post-meal comfort,” so you can rest easy when your last usable artery collapses like a dying star. But since not everyone can survive the power surge that comes with slipping into a pair of Arby's Meat Sweats, there is a bit of a catc..