The Memorial Tournament, the latest PGA Tour signature event, is set to get underway Thursday morning at Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio. This is the final event before all eyes turn to Pinehurst No. 2 in North Carolina for the U.S. Open, the third men’s major championship of the year, scheduled for June 13-16.
Defending champion Viktor Hovland is joined in the field by world No. 1 and Masters winner Scottie Scheffler, PGA Championship victor Xander Schauffele, Rory McIlroy and two-time Memorial winner Patrick Cantlay, among others.
Before the best players in the game get going Thursday morning, most are participating in the Memorial Tournament pro-am — and the field is loaded.
Check out some of the best pictures from Wednesday at Muirfield Village.
Star-Lord pairs up with Peyton Manning, Rory McIlroy in celebrity pro-am pairing.
“Guardians of the Galaxy” star Chris Pratt joined join Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning and former Ohio State wide receiver Anthony Gonzalez in a group with PGA Tour players Rory McIlroy and Jason Day at Wednesday’s Workday Golden Bear pro-am leading up to this week’s Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village Golf Club.
Pratt, Manning and Gonzalez teed off at 7 a.m. local time with McIlroy, and Day will sub in for McIlroy on the back nine.
The pro-am, which is part of Memorial Tournament week, also features a handful of other celebrities, including actor Rob Lowe playing with defending Memorial winner Viktor Hovland, and former NFL quarterback Steve Young playing with reigning U.S. Open champion Wyndham Clark.
Other current or former professional athletes teeing it up include Andre Iguodala (NBA), Buster Posey (MLB) and Harris Barton (NFL).
The trailer for The Garfield Movie just dropped, and it’s got movie fans in their feels.
The entertainment world has been trying for quite some time to recreate the magic of the original 1978 comic and animated show that was wildly popular in the late ’80s and early ’90s.
There was 2004’s Garfield: The Movie and 2009’s reimagined version, The Garfield Show,but both were met with mixed reviews, and Hollywood has been trying to figure out the secret formula ever since.
Garfield, the beloved and sarcastic lasagna-eating eating cat, is back in a new movie featuring Chris Pratt as Garfield and Samuel L. Jackson as Garfield’s father, Vic.
For now, Nintendo does not have a planned replacement for the legendary video game character. Yes, we are not talking about someone reciting a monologue from King Lear, but there is still a massive chasm of “yahoo!” and “here we go!” that someone with genuine temerity has to fill. The show must go on, and it must be delightful.
If you’re an esteemed internet purveyor, you might have seen a lot of joking suggestions that Chris Pratt — a human being with surface-level charm who would never dare turn down an easy check — should, once again, voice Mario. After all, he already has the experience of bringing nothing unique or entertaining to the table during this spring’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Why not harness that low-effort, milquetoast energy for the most popular game franchise in existence?
I’ll tell you why: We have standards here at For The Win. And we intend to uphold them. There are many better options to consider for the Mushroom Kingdom’s next lead adventurer. Take notes, Nintendo.
Yes, Peter Quill dropped this major potty word in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.
After 15 years, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has finally dropped a major swear word.
Actor Chris Pratt uttered the very first MCU f-bomb in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, making a major turn in what content is allowed in a Marvel film made by Disney.
The moment comes halfway through the film, with Pratt’s Peter Quill/Star-Lord tossing out an f-bomb in comedic frustration as he’s explaining to Nebula (Karen Gillan) how to open up a car door while on Counter-Earth.
Marvel films have included foul language before, but this latest Guardians of the Galaxy film has broken a barrier by including the harsher expletive.
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“That was not scripted, no,” Pratt told the Toronto Sun on if the f-bomb was in the script. “There’s a five or six-minute period of the film where we were trying to get a lot of laughs … I think [director James Gunn] told me to try saying that and I tried it and it made it in. But it’s not the first time I’ve tried to get an F word into the movies.”
Apparently Pratt had an emotional reaction when he found out Russell Wilson was traded to the Broncos.
The Seahawks have several celebrity superfans. One of the biggest is actor Chris Pratt, best known for his roles in the Guardians of the Galaxy series.
Apparently Pratt had an emotional reaction when he found out Russell Wilson was traded to the Broncos. Here’s the story, per Men’s Health Magazine.
Pretty funny anecdote in this @MensHealthMag profile on Chris Pratt on how Russell Wilson departing the hometown Seahawks gave him some moments of existential angst: pic.twitter.com/pSx0GoAGt5
“I couldn’t let down the people that were around me, the people that truly believed in me.”
“There was a point in time, I’m not kidding, where I just felt like I wanted to leave the game,” Bryson DeChambeau told The New York Post during his pro-am round Wednesday before this week’s Hero World Challenge. “I just felt like, ‘I don’t need any of this. Why? Why put myself through all this torture?’ ”
It’s no secret DeChambeau is different than most. He’s built his game around science, has built his swing based on a one-plane, robotic-like motion. Which, to this point, has worked perfectly fine for him. Since putting on significant weight in an effort to add distance, DeChambeau has won the U.S. Open, the Arnold Palmer Invitational, and represented the United States at the Ryder Cup.
After testing positive for COVID-19, DeChambeau was forced to withdraw from the Olympics.
In August, he was asked about not getting vaccinated. “I’m young enough, I’d rather give it [the vaccine] to people who need it,” he said. “I don’t need it. I’m a healthy, young individual that will continue to work on my health.”
“No vaccine shortages have been reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the New York Times reported that about one million doses have gone to waste since the United States began offering it in December.” – New York Post
And after the St. Jude Invitational, DeChambeau stopped talking to the media altogether. And props to him, this decision was more than likely the only way to get his foot out of his mouth.
“I got hit pretty hard,” he said. “That’s why I kind of walked away, because people were damaging [my] character. It was all the stuff that was going on in social media,” he told the Post. “I was like, ‘I really don’t need this. I can walk away and be totally fine the rest of my life, be happy and go and hit the long ball and call it a day.’ ”
It’s tough to feel bad DeChambeau. Again, much of this criticism and “damaging of character” were provoked.
But, he decided to put all that behind him.
“I couldn’t let down the people that were around me, the people that truly believed in me,” he said. “So, I said, ‘No Bryson, you can do this for a long time.’ I had great people around me, and things changed for me. I got back to a place where I felt like I could continue.”
Chris Pratt, the Marvel movie star, was one of those people in DeChambeau’s corner.
Chris Pratt hits a ball at the driving range prior to the start of the Celebrity Cup on February 10, 2020 in Pacific Palisades, California. (Photo by Joe Scarnici/Getty Images)
“Chris Pratt told me, ‘Look, when I’m doing a movie and people are saying the movie’s terrible and I’m not a good actor, that doesn’t define me,’ ” DeChambeau said.
“I respect him, respect his opinion. He’s got a lot of great life advice from things he’s been through — some troubling times.
“He told me when I’m out on the golf course, people are going to define you and relate you to the golf. What really defines you is the person you are outside the game of golf. You’ve got to look at it as an opportunity to show people who you truly are.”
It’ll be interesting to see if DeChambeau is able to fix his relationship with the media, and maybe more importantly, the fans.
It should be noted: He refused to talk with print media on Friday at the Hero World Challenge as the 36-hole leader. Off to a good start.
There’s nothing like a surprise movie casting to generate hype for your upcoming film. Unfortunately for Nintendo, the headliner for their animated Mario movie has many scratching their heads.
As a joint project between Nintendo and Illumination (the studio behind Despicable Me and The Secret Life of Pets), an animated Mario film will be gracing the silver screen in North America on December 21, 2022. During Thursday’s Nintendo Direct, the cast list was revealed for the upcoming movie and features… Chris Pratt as Mario?
Yep, you heard that right, Pratt will be voicing the titular character for Nintendo’s upcoming Mario film. This is not a joke.
Chris Pratt as Mario Anya Taylor-Joy as Peach Charlie Day as Luigi Jack Black as Bowser Keegan-Michael Key as Toad Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong Fred Armisen as Cranky Kong Kevin Michael Richardson as Kamek Sebastian Maniscalco as Spike Surprise cameos from Charles Martinet
The cast of the upcoming animated Mario movie also features some incredibly inspired casting, such as Charlie Day voicing Luigi, Jack Black as Bowser, and Keegan-Michael Key as Toad. However, for many Nintendo fans, the choice to cast Pratt as Mario when original voice actor Charles Martinet or Italian-American Danny DeVito were right there has many… quite confused.
One Twitter user, on the other hand, seemingly predicted this outcome well over a year ago somehow.
I'm calling it now, the Mario Bros movie will NOT have Charles Martinet play Mario for no reason and cast someone like Chris Pratt
The backlash against Chris Pratt tells us a lot about what we value in celebrity.
It all started innocently enough, with a single tweet, and here we are now staring into the abyss of internet toxicity, white male fragility and celebrity fandom.
A few days ago, writer Amy Berg engaged in one of social media’s favorite games —One’s Gotta Go—and pitted four of Hollywood’s most famous Chrises—Hemsworth, Pratt, Pine and Evans—against each other.
Ranking Chrises is generally a fun and much needed break from the rest of Twitter discourse because the replies are usually filled with wholesome and/or thirsty photos of some fine looking men. In this case though, the game took a hard pivot and resulted in the absolute flaming of Chris Pratt, who, the internet has decided, is the Worst Chris.
For a few years now, what’s viewed as Pratt’s religious conservatism has put him on the outs with a large segment of internet and MCU fandom. One seemingly harmless meme during a slow news cycle though was all it took to fire up people about opinions that seem to have been simmering for some time. In the replies, and quickly across the rest of Twitter, people were quick to point out Pratt’s association with an anti-lgbtq church and his possible pro-Trump leanings as a reason to knock him off the list.
Pratt, who has always maintained that he’s apolitical by nature, has never actually said pro-Trump things nor has he said anything anti-lgbtq, but his social media footprint indicates he may lean far right (he follows Ben Shapiro and Dan Crenshaw). On the outside though, Pratt has also walked a frustratingly neutral political line during a time when many view silence as complicity.
Like it or not, much of celebrity fandom is closely tied to political and social values. Fans won’t stan for anyone who doesn’t hold the same beliefs that they do. We are not, of course, talking about minor differences of opinion on policy issues here, but ideas about representation, equality and social justice. And while Pratt has maintained that he’s “apolitical,” and that he goes to a church that “opens their doors to absolutely everyone” a large swath of MCU fans see it as an attempt to duck and cover.
Part of the problem is that being apolitical is also a privilege, one that Pratt doesn’t seem to recognize. If you are Black or a person of color or LGBTQIA, or disabled or poor or a host of other things, your entire existence is political. It is a constant struggle to maintain your authenticity against systems that seek to oppress and marginalize in favor of the status quo. The type of celebrity that Pratt is trying to cling to, as a neutral and benign force, is one that fans, especially ones who are very online, not just don’t value, but will actively criticize.
As the Pratt conversation has spiraled out of control it has also revealed something much deeper about what we value in modern celebrity. It is no longer about just being a nice or beautiful or a guy with disproportionately large biceps or a woman with a taut stomach. Fans need their celebrity heroes to stand up as avatars for social and political good, and won’t tolerate anything else.
Every time the Best Chris conversation gets brought up, each actors political bonafides are also quickly mentioned as a way to gauge their overall goodness and worthiness. There’s the time Chris Pine walked around in a RGB t-shirt, all the times Chris Evans has railed against Trump on Twitter or even Hemsworth acknowledging how he messed up by cosplaying with Native American ceremonial wear. Maybe these actions are largely performative, but they matter to fans who’ll take any small indication that their personal celebrity crush is, effectively, on their side.
The Pratt conversation didn’t peter out as quickly as it has in the past and instead has reached a crescendo as Marvel actors and Pratt’s wife jump into the comments to defend one of their own. First, Katherine Schwarzenegger Pratt waded into the fray on an E News Instagram post and said “being mean is so yesterday.” Next, it was his MCU co-star Mark Ruffalo, who called him a “solid guy” and then Robert Downey Jr., who chided people for “casting stones.” It’s gone on from there, with more high profile celebrities defending the character of a man who doesn’t need defending.
It’s especially galling, and also hasn’t gone unnoticed by fans, that the MCU cast stepped up to defend Pratt when they’ve been sitting on their social media hands while Brie Larson has taken years of online abuse for pushing for more diversity in films.
Where was this energy when Brie Larson was massively harassed for months just for advocating for diversity in the industry? And they all knew about it. Suddenly Chris Pratt gets some criticism and they all come to his defense? The bar is hell. pic.twitter.com/4mmlfxFkig
There’s a part of MCU fandom that has no room for people who won’t vocally go to bat for the things they care about, and that’s what’s happening with Pratt right now. His politics are at best opaque and given he won’t clarify how he feels or what he believes (outside of espousing generic Christian values) a lot of fans have decided he’s just not worth their time. No one is canceling him, no one is harassing him and this isn’t going to stop anyone from watching the next Guardians movie.
Fandoms can turn toxic and bully people off the internet, but that’s not what’s happening here. This isn’t Star Wars nerds coming for Daisy Ridley or racist Marvel fans going after Anthony Mackie for being a Black Captain America. That’s not it at all. It’s as simple and clear as a lot of people just saying, LOL we like three people named Chris better than we like you.
![Yes, Peter Quill dropped the first [expletive] of the MCU in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3](https://feeds.usatodaysports.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/quill1-1200x675.jpeg)
