The New Orleans Saints are signing international kicker Charlie Smyth from Northern Ireland. He’ll have a great opportunity in black and gold:
Charlie has been illegally streaming NFL games from Northern Ireland since he was 16 years old. He sent an email to inquiries@NFL.com to pitch himself as a kicker when he was 18. And this year, the international program expanded to include kickers for the first time, so he was
Here’s some competition for Blake Grupe. The Athletic’s Kalyn Kahler reports that the New Orleans Saints are signing rookie kicker Charlie Smyth as part of the NFL’s International Pathway Program. Smyth hails from Northern Ireland and previously worked as a goalkeeper for County Down’s Gaelic football team.
He’s only been kicking an NFL football since August, but the 22-year-old is already good from distances of 60 yards in practice. He’ll have a chance to develop with a respected special teams coaching staff and possibly push Grupe. We’ll see if he can perform in a new environment over the summer.
The Saints haven’t shied away from adding international players before. Their punter Lou Hedley is Australian, and special teams coordinator Darren Rizzi values the different skill sets that players from foreign backgrounds can offer.
Because Smyth is joining the Saints as an IPP player, he will not count towards the 90-man offseason roster limit for training camp. Odds are stronger for him to hang on with the team’s practice squad after roster cuts in September than to unseat Grupe altogether, but you never know. Stranger things have happened in the NFL.
ANTRIM, Northern Ireland – A twinkle surfaced in Olivia Mehaffey’s eyes as she fondly recalled the last time her father graced the fairways at one of her events, the 2021 playing of the ISPS Handa World Invitational.
Philip Mehaffey hadn’t gotten out of bed in months after being diagnosed with colon cancer in 2020, but after a motorized scooter was delivered to his home in the small village of Scarva, Northern Ireland, he came to see his daughter make good in her first LPGA start.
Although she expected him to simply make a quick appearance, Olivia was utterly impressed by her father’s determination to see her play, and the support helped spur her on to a top-20 finish.
“I kept looking every fairway and I’m like, oh, my gosh he’s still here. I think he needs to go home,” Mehaffey said Wednesday at Galgorm Castle Golf Club as she prepared for the final playing of the ISPS Handa International, as it was announced this week the event was not included in the 2024 DP World Tour schedule.
“So just having him there every round was so nice for me. So I think probably just those memories and like how special it was to have him there beside me every shot, every hole.”
Soon after her triumphant home debut, Mehaffey’s life slipped into a dark place. Her father succumbed to the disease in December 2021, and the former Arizona State star – one of three Sun Devils to earn All-American honors in all four years of college – threw herself headfirst into the game as a means to deal with the pain.
To open the 2022 season, Mehaffey subjected herself to a golf gauntlet; an eight-week stretch of consecutive tournaments that saw her passport stamped in South Africa, Thailand, Australia and Spain. When it was over, her game was slipping and she was flirting with a dangerous mixture of exhaustion and uncertainty, both on the golf course and off. She finally had a self-diagnosed breakdown after pulling out of the Skafto Open in Sweden nearly a year ago.
That’s when Mehaffey knew she needed time to process what she’d been through. Away from the game she loves.
“Grief is the weirdest thing I’ve ever been through,” she told the Irish Times as part of a fascinating read. “I think that’s one of the reasons people don’t talk much about it. It’s because it’s so hard to explain. You don’t know when it’s going to come.
“I’ve had times when I’ve felt totally fine, and then all it’s taken is one thought to trigger it and I’m a mess. And in life, we’re basically taught that everything can be answered. But everyone’s experience is so different, it comes to different people in different ways and at different times. That’s what makes it hard for people to understand.”
Olivia Mehaffey and her father, Philip, and mother, Evelyn
She put the clubs down. She stopped thinking about attacking flags and started contemplating what made her tick. After months of reflection, Mehaffey posted on her personal blog at the beginning of 2023 that she was emerging from the depths she’d suffered through.
“As I look back and reflect on the last 12 months, it is easy to only see the hurt, the hard times and the tears. I still feel the scars that 2022 has given me. But I am also able to see the progress. I know where I was, the dark places I experienced alone and felt the lowest I ever have. I also see the progress,” she said. “I recognize the work I have put into getting myself out of a dark hole and the improvements, although it still isn’t where I want it to be. I am proud of myself for stepping out of my comfort zone, for being brave to get help and for admitting to my struggles. I know 2022 has given me the ability to have new tools and strategies that I have never had before.”
To see her this week at the ISPS Handa, back in the comfort of her homeland, is to see a player who seems to have found the balance necessary to succeed. She bounced through the media center for interviews Wednesday with the wide smile and long blonde locks that made her look native to the Tempe, Arizona, campus where she spent so many successful seasons.
Mehaffey posted a best-ever third-place finish on the LET Tour at the Ladies Open By Pickala Rock Resort in Finland a few weeks ago, and she hopes that with friends and family on hand this week, she’ll be ready to again do her father proud, even if he’s not following along on each fairway.
“At the start of the year I didn’t set any goals. Normally I set where I want to finish, order of merit, world ranking, try and win tournaments. I didn’t do any of that this year,” she said. “I just wanted to come back from my break last year and really enjoy golf, and frankly I’m doing that again, which is great. So I’m just going to keep that same mentality for the rest of the year.
“I think when you’re enjoying it you’re playing good, so that’s sort of my only goal. Try not to put no pressure on myself, no expectations, which is difficult at times to manage, but I think it’s very important.”
Mehaffey prepared for a busy stretch by employing a strategy she hadn’t been comfortable with in the past – staying away from tournament golf. When she starts her first round today at Galgorm Castle, she will have been off the road for three full weeks.
The balance seems to have put her at peace.
“It’s been nice having a few weeks off. Took the first week and didn’t play. Felt like I was getting a little bit burnt out; played a lot of golf,” Mehaffey said. “And then last two weeks just working a lot with my coach. It’s been nice to prepare for this. It’s going to be a really busy finish to the rest of the year. The LET schedule is pretty busy.
“So a lot of practicing and just really get prepared for obviously Irish Open after this as well. It’s great to have two events at home in a row.”
The traditional links courses find spots of honor on this ranking of the best classic courses in Great Britain and Ireland.
Welcome to Golfweek’s Best 2023 rankings of the Top 50 classic courses in Great Britain and Ireland – built before 1960 – as determined by Golfweek’s Best raters.
The members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them based on our 10 criteria. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings on each course are averaged to produce a final rating for each course. Then each layout is ranked against others in Great Britain and Ireland to produce the final rankings.
How does St. Andrews, site of this week’s Open Championship, stack up against the rest of the course rota?
Each of the 10 layouts on the modern British Open course rota score highly in Golfweek’s Best ranking of top classic golf courses built before 1960 in Great Britain and Ireland, as would be expected. But that doesn’t mean they all are equals.
Check out the rankings of each course on the modern rota below. The hundreds of members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them based on 10 criteria on a points basis of 1 through 10. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings are averaged to produce these rankings, and they are included for each course below.
Patriotism is an easy thing to embrace in a lot of places, but not so much in Northern Ireland.
Patriotism is an easy thing to embrace in a lot of places, but not so much in Northern Ireland. Half the population identifies as British, half as Irish, and that conflict has taken thousands of lives over the years.
Rory McIlroy is of the first generation to grow up in Northern Ireland largely post conflict. So the idea that he has no nationalistic sentiments whatsoever is something that ought to be celebrated, not condemned, because a generation that isn’t motivated by warped and expedient ideas of patriotism is at least an improvement on the generations who were, and perhaps still are, hostage to it.
The latest episode of Eamon’s Corner can be watched above.
International King’s Cup amateur match postponed until 2021 because of coronavirus pandemic
The International King’s Cup, an amateur competition between the United States and Ireland and named in honor of Arnold Palmer, has been postponed until 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic. The match originally was scheduled for May 25-27 at Castlerock Golf Club in Northern Ireland, but it was rescheduled for May 26-28, 2020, at Glasson Golf Club in Westmeath, Ireland.
The United States Golf Challenge, which is owned and operated by Medalist Events, runs the event and announced the delay this month.
The 2020 U.S. team was finalized at the USGC National Championship in September at Legends Resort in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. That team will remain intact for the 2021 matches. There also will be a new U.S. 2021 team selected at this year’s National Championship on Sept. 10-12 at Legends Resort.
Both U.S. teams will compete against an Irish squad to be selected at the Irish National Championship in the spring.
Eight two-person teams from two age divisions and four flights qualify from local qualifying sites across both the U.S. and Ireland and compete in a national qualifier for a spot on their respective team.
Jamel Herring reportedly will be one of the first big-name opponents to return to the ring amid the coronavirus threat.
Jamel Herring reportedly will be one of the first big-name opponents to return to the ring amid the coronavirus threat.
The junior lightweight titleholder will defend his title on July 2 in Las Vegas, he told ESPN. No opponent has been selected. Herring had been tentatively set to face former two-division beltholder Carl Frampton in Northern Ireland but that fight fell out because of the pandemic.
The site also hasn’t been finalized, although it will be a MGM Resorts property.
“It’s fluid,” said Carl Moretti, director of boxing operations for Top Rank. “We’re on calls every day with stuff. So what we thought was happening on Tuesday is not, and what we thought was happening on Wednesday is now happening. So it just changes and changes.”
Herring (21-2, 10 KOs) won his title by outpointing Masayuki Ito in May of last year. He successfully defended with a decision over Lamont Roach in November.
The 2012 U.S. Olympian is working with trainer Brian McIntyre in Omaha, Nebraska, according to ESPN. He said he doesn’t expect to be rusty when he steps back into the ring.
“It’s funny, I actually felt good for my first sparring session,” Herring said. “So that tells you that even though I haven’t been in a gym setting, the workouts I had been doing at home during my free time, they’ve been paying off.
“So when I got back into the swing of things, it wasn’t a hard adjustment. It’s only one week, and this gives me almost a full eight weeks until the fight arrives.”
Herring won’t face Frampton in July but still wants that fight.
“That’s still the No. 1 priority, for sure,” he said. “I’m still actually shocked from the latest story that I’ve seen, where he’s not willing to fight unless he’s fighting me. If it comes around the December time frame, he will have been out for like an entire year.
“But for me, I just want to stay as busy as much as possible. I’m not getting younger as it is. So why risk coming into big fights with the ring rust on you still.”
Carl Frampton and Jamel Herring have an agreement to fight but they don’t have a date or a place because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Jamel Herring and Carl Frampton have an agreement. But they don’t have a date or a place.
Welcome to a new way of doing business. Tentative is the operative word for as long as the coronavirus pandemic forces the world into quarantine.
Frank Warren, of Queensberry Promotions, announced the deal Wednesday on his Twitter account, saying: Terms are agreed. … News on date and venue coming soon.’’
But the date and place are subject to when the contagious virus subsides. There are no reliable odds on that. Just fears that it will continue.
Warren is hoping to stage the bout on June 13 in Belfast, Ireland, Frampton’s hometown.
Herring-Frampton, for Herring’s junior lightweight belt, has been speculated for months. At first, there were questions about whether it would ever happen because of injuries to Frampton (27-2, 15 KOs), a former junior featherweight and featherweight champion who underwent surgery for fractures in both hands after his decision unanimous over Tyler McCreary on Nov. 30 in Las Vegas.
Herring (21-2, 10 KOs), a Marine and Iraq war veteran, is coming off a unanimous decision over Lamont Roach in his first title defense on Nov. 9 in Fresno, California.
Carl Frampton said reports that he’ll have to delay a planned fight against Jamel Herring in May are wrong.
Carl Frampton dismissed speculation that recovery from hand surgery will force a postponement of his planned fight in May against junior lightweight champion Jamel Herring in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Frampton’s hometown.
Frampton underwent surgery during the week before Christmas for fractures he sustained in both hands in a unanimous decision over Tyler McCreary on Nov. 30 in Las Vegas.
“Everything is going where it needs to be and I’m looking forward to getting back to training,’’ Frampton (27-2, 15 KOs) told MTK Global, an international agency that represents about 100 fighters. “I’m itching to get back in there.”
A story in the Irish Times reported that the fight would be delayed until June or July because Frampton would not be ready. The newspaper quoted Herring as saying he didn’t foresee “a fight happening in Belfast any time soon.”
The newspaper speculated that Herring (21-2, 10 KOs) would take a possible interim fight on March 15 in New York.
“Someone showed me an article that said sources had told them the hands won’t be ready for May,’’ Frampton said. “I don’t know where these sources are coming from, but they’ve got it wrong.
“I’ve had both hands operated on, and they’re sore, but the surgeon was happy with how the operations went. He said I’ve got plenty of time. He said I could be punching within six weeks after the surgery.
“Even if I waited 10 weeks to start punching, it would still be plenty of time to get ready for May. I have another appointment with the specialist at the end of the month, and we’ll know more after that, but the pain is easing every day, and I’ve got more movement in both hands every day.’’
At least two clubs have distanced themselves from Prince Andrew in the wake of his reputed involvement in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
Royal Portrush Golf Club, site of this year’s British Open in July, is considering seeking a new patron after Prince Andrew stepped back from public life and his royal duties in the wake of his reputed involvement in the Jeffrey Epstein sex-abuse scandal.
The Daily Telegraph reported that Royal Portrush plans to discuss the Duke of York’s involvement at the club in Northern Ireland at its next meeting. His patron role at Royal Portrush was largely as a publicity figurehead.
“The allegations surrounding Prince Andrew, and especially the trauma and distress suffered by the victims of Jeffrey Epstein is a matter of deep regret,” the club said in a statement obtained by the Daily Telegraph. “Royal Portrush will continue to monitor the ongoing investigative process. There are no scheduled plans for him to return to the club.
“The council of Royal Portrush is acutely aware of the widespread public concern about these allegations, and Prince Andrew’s decision to step away from public duties will be discussed at our next meeting.”
Prince Andrew, Duke of York (center) watches the third round of the British Open at Royal Portrush on July 20, 2019. (Stuart Franklin/Getty Images)
Prince Andrew also has ties to Royal Liverpool Golf Club, host site for the 2022 British Open. The Daily Telegraph also reported that club will “not call upon” Andrew’s services during his exile.
Andrew is also a member of the R&A, the ruling body for golf in much of the world and the organization that puts on the British Open. The R&A would confirm only that he was a member to the Daily Telegraph. Andrew was captain of that club in 2003 during its 250th anniversary.
USA TODAY reported that Virginia Roberts Giuffre has repeatedly said she was groomed by Epstein and his associates to sexually service Epstein’s powerful friends, including Prince Andrew, when she was a teen. Andrew has denied the accusation, but he announced Wednesday that he was halting his public duties because “my former association with Jeffrey Epstein has become a major disruption to my family’s work.”
“Therefore, I have asked Her Majesty if I may step back from public duties for the foreseeable future, and she has given her permission,” Queen Elizabeth II’s second son said in a statement released Wednesday by Buckingham Palace.
USA TODAY also reported that Andrew’s resignation comes on the heels of a recent controversial interview with the BBC in which he said he doesn’t remember meeting Giuffre, despite a picture of the two, he with his arm around her waist, that has been floating around the internet since at least 2011.
“Our clients welcome Prince Andrew’s decision to withdraw from public life as a member of England’s royal family,” read a statement to USA TODAY from Sigrid McCawley and the law firm Boies Schiller, which is representing Giuffre and other women. “It is a positive first step towards taking responsibility for his actions.”
USA TODAY also reported that as Andrew’s connection to Epstein made headlines in recent months, corporate sponsors started to pull their support and distance themselves from the prince’s Pitch@Palace networking initiative, which connects entrepreneurs with various business leaders. Companies that have ditched Andrew include Cisco Systems, KPMG and AstraZeneca.
