This was the fourth edition of the championship, which is conducted by the R&A and the Annika Foundation.
Clarisa Temelo earned the biggest victory of her life Sunday.
The 18-year-old from Mexico and freshman at Arkansas won the 2024 Women’s Amateur Latin America, running away from the field for a six-shot victory. Temelo finished at 9-under 275 for the week at Lima Golf Club in Peru.
“I tried to enjoy every shot,” Temelo said. “Walking down the 18th, I was thinking about what I was going to achieve and playing in three majors in 2025. It was a like a dream to me. Ela (Anacona) was at the University of Arkansas when she won last year, so it’s nice to follow her.”
With the win, Temelo earned exemptions into three major championships in 2025: the Chevron Championship, Amundi Evian Championship and the AIG Women’s Open. She also earned an exemption into the Women’s Amateur Championship next year.
“Each one of the tournaments are so important in golf,” Temelo said. “I played in a junior event at the Evian, the course is amazing and I’m looking forward to going back. Of course, the AIG Women’s Open is a dream and everyone wants to play in that one. The Chevron is also a major and I’m looking forward to playing in it.”
Clarisa Temelo won the Women’s Amateur Latin America and earned three major championship exemptions. (Photo: R&A)
She led wire-to-wire, though her margin of victory was only half as big as Anacona’s last year in Argentina.
This was the fourth edition of the championship, which is conducted by the R&A and the Annika Foundation. Next year, it heads to Mexico for the first time.
The 2028 Curtis Cup Match is headed to one of the best courses in the world.
Competitive women’s amateur golf has scored another victory, landing one of the top golf courses in the world as host of the 2028 Curtis Cup Match at Royal Dornoch in northern Scotland.
The Championship Course at Royal Dornoch is ranked by Golfweek’s Best as the No. 3 course outside the United States. Opened in 1877 as a nine-hole layout in the Scottish Highlands, the links course was extended to 18 holes in 1886 by Old Tom Morris. Other designers have contributed over the decades to the hilly seaside layout, including John Sutherland, George Duncan and most recently the team of Tom Mackenzie and Martin Ebert.
This year’s Curtis Cup Match, a biennial team event featuring top female amateurs representing the U.S. and Europe, is August 30-Sept. 1 at Sunningdale Golf Club’s Old Course in England, which Golfweek’s Best has tied for No. 9 among courses outside the United States. The 2026 match will be held from June 12-14 at Bel-Air Country Club in Los Angeles, which ties for No. 57 among all classic courses in the U.S.
The dates for the 2028 match are to be determined.
“We look forward to staging the Curtis Cup at such a historic venue in 2028,” Johnnie Cole-Hamilton, executive director of championships for the R&A, said in a media release announcing the selection of Royal Dornoch in the run-up to this year’s staging of the event. “We want to give elite amateur golfers world-class platforms to show us how well they can perform, and that will certainly be the case at Royal Dornoch. The Championship Course has earned worldwide acclaim and it promises to be a wonderful occasion in the rich history of the Curtis Cup.”
Royal Dornoch’s Championship Course in the Scottish Highlands (Courtesy of Royal Dornoch Golf Club)
Royal Dornoch has a track record of hosting top amateur events, including the 1985 British Amateur Championship and four Scottish Men’s Amateur Championships, most recently in 2023.
“The Curtis Cup is also going to be a tremendous occasion for the local area,” Neil Hampton, general manager at Royal Dornoch, said in the media release. “With the Championship Course consistently ranked highly in global standings and the investment in our infrastructure as we build a new clubhouse, a match of this standing and stature will only enhance the reputation of Royal Dornoch, the town and the local area.”
Take a look at the Open Championship host courses through 2026.
The 152nd British Open has come and gone, with Xander Schauffele coming out on top for his second career major at Royal Troon’s Old Course, the q10th time the venue hosted the oldest major in golf.
The R&A, which runs the Open, calls the tournament “nature’s test of character”, stating on its website:
“Links golf is nature in all its unforgiving force – and The Open is where nature is pitted against the very best of the very best. It’s where champions must set aside what came before. Alone, skill and years of diligent preparation are not enough.”
Unlike the U.S. Open and PGA Championship, which have a multitude of future sites announced, the Open has just two.
Take a look at the next two Open Championship host venues.
This is the biggest purse in the history of the Open Championship.
Xander Schauffele has another big pay day on the way and it made him a $50 million-man.
He won his second major title of the year Sunday, capturing the British Open at Royal Troon and taking home the first-place prize of $3.1 million, and crashing the top-20 all-time money winners on the PGA Tour. He finished at 9 under for the week, topping Justin Rose, (No. 9 on the career money list with more than $64 million) and Billy Horschel (No. 32 with $39 million) by two shots.
That pushed Schauffele’s career earnings to $54,777,483 and No. 15 on the career Tour money list, slipping ahead of Jon Rahm, Hideki Matsuyama and Rickie Fowler.
Schauffele also won the PGA Championship in May for his first major championship.
Here’s a closer look at how much each player who made the cut at the 2024 British Open earned from a purse of $17 million.
The lid is off now and Schauffele is going to try to keep stacking majors.
TROON, Scotland – After Xander Schauffele won his first major championship at the PGA Championship in May and finished all of his media obligations, he and his caddie and wife and some close friends retired to their rental house to celebrate. Nothing was open at that hour so they found two bottles of whiskey and nearly polished them off between the six of them.
“It was a rough next morning,” Schauffele’s caddie Austin Kaiser said. “But we’re having drinks afterwards and one of our buddies is like, ‘You feel lighter?’ And he smiled. He was like, ‘Yeah, I do,’ ” Kaiser recalled Schauffele saying.
Victory at Valhalla removed the proverbial monkey from his back. No longer stuck with the label of being the best golfer never to win a major, Schauffele said he felt relief. At the 152nd British Open, Schauffele doubled his pleasure and validated his major moment, shooting 6-under 65 in the final round at Royal Troon Golf Club on Sunday to win the Claret Jug by two strokes over Justin Rose and Billy Horschel.
“I mean, it’s a dream come true to win two majors in one year. It took me forever just to win one, and to have two now is something else,” Schauffele said.
In doing so, he became the first player since Brooks Koepka in 2018 to win two majors in a season. Schauffele carded four birdies on the final nine to turn a taut competition in which any of seven golfers seemed capable of hoisting the trophy to sucking all the drama out of the closing stretch and claiming his ninth career PGA Tour title with a 72-hole total of 9-under 275.
“Best round I’ve ever played,” said Schauffele, whose score was the best round of the day by two strokes and one of only two bogey-free rounds on the day.
“Now that he’s won two, it’s all up from here,” Kaiser said. “I told him, we got the lid off. Let’s just stack’em.”
Kaiser and Schauffele, 30, both transferred to San Diego State at the same time in 2012 and Kaiser has been on his bag since he turned pro in 2015. Kaiser remembers their humble beginnings when they were playing mini-tour events on the Golden State Golf Tour and traveling together in Kaiser’s Honda Accord, staying in Candlewood Suites and cooking sausage and eggs on a hot plate.
Schauffele quickly proved to be a player of great promise but as he piled up 12 top-10 finishes and six top-5s in his first 27 major starts without a victory, questions emerged whether he was a closer. In 2018, Schauffele was tied for the lead heading into the final round of the 2018 British Open at Carnoustie Golf Links in Scotland but carded a 2-over 72 in the final round and lost to Italy’s Francesco Molinari by 2.
“There’s calmness and super-stressful moments when you’re trying to win a major championship. I felt them in the past, the ones I didn’t win, and I let them get to me,” Schauffele said. “Today I felt like I did a pretty good job of weathering the storm when I needed to.”
Xander Schauffele celebrates with his caddie Austin Kaiser on the 18th green at the 152nd Open Championship at Royal Troon. (Warren Little/Getty Images)
In tricky conditions all week that turned Troon into a survival of the fittest, Schauffele was a model of plodding consistency, shooting rounds of 67-72-69 before his final-round brilliance. Conditions turned nastiest on Saturday afternoon with wind whipping and rain falling, but Schauffele managed to card four birdies in his first 10 holes before giving back shots at Nos. 11 and 18 to join a six-way logjam in second place, one stroke back.
On Sunday, with a brisk southwesterly wind blowing off the Firth of Clyde and gray skies, Schauffele showed great patience, starting with five pars before he went on the attack.
With nine holes to go, South Africa’s Thriston Lawrence held the lead, which was all the more remarkable given that he started the weekend 10 strokes back before shooting 65 on Saturday, tying for the low round of the week. He played his way into the final group and surged into the lead at 7 under with four more birdies on the front nine. But the 27-year-old cooled off on the back nine, losing the lead with a bogey at No. 12. The four-time winner on the DP World Tour settled for his best career finish in a major, a solo fourth that earned him a spot in next year’s Masters.
The 43-year-old Rose was attempting to win his second major more than a decade after winning the 2013 U.S. Open. He had to go through final qualifying just to make the field and put up a valiant fight until he made bogey at No. 12. He closed with a birdie at the last and posted 4-under 67.
“I left it all out there,” Rose said. “I’m super proud of how I competed.”
Horschel, the 54-hole leader, pictured himself hoisting the Claret Jug before he went to bed but hit into a pot bunker off the tee at the third, found the sand at the famed Postage Par-3 eighth and short-sided himself at No. 10, leading to bogey each time.
“Ah, Billy, Billy, Billy, you’ve made three mistakes today,” he said to himself aloud as he headed to the 11th tee. “Let’s clean it up.”
He did, signing for 68, but birdies on the final three holes came too late. Still, his T-2 finish is his best result in 43 majors.
Callum Scott won the Silver Medal for the low amateur at the Open, the first Scot to win the award since 2018.
But it was Schauffele who outshined the field, picking apart Troon’s vaunted back nine with birdies at the 11th, 13th, 14th and 16th to seal the deal. Kaiser labeled the birdie at No. 11, the second-hardest hole of the day, as the turning point. That’s where Schauffele uncorked a drive that veered left and had Kaiser praying for a good break.
“Please cut, please cut or get a good ground kick,” he recalled thinking. “Luckily it did a little bit, I guess.”
Schauffele took advantage, planting a wedge inside 3 feet and knocking in the birdie putt — he was the only player in the field to make birdie there on Sunday — to climb to 6 under. He jarred a 16-foot birdie putt at 13 to reach 7 under and never relinquished the lead once Lawrence made bogey.
“Winning the first one helped me a lot today on the back nine,” Schauffele said. “I had some feeling of calmness come through. It was very helpful on what has been one of the hardest back nines I’ve ever played in a tournament.”
Xander Schauffele celebrates on the 18th green in celebration of victory at the 152nd Open Championship at Royal Troon. (Jack Gruber-USA TODAY Sports)
Until this season, Schauffele’s most notable title had been capturing a gold medal at the Olympics held in 2021 in Toyko. In May, he canned a 5-foot birdie putt on the 72nd hole to outlast Bryson DeChambeau and win the PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky. With Scottie Scheffler, who finished T-7 after shooting 72, winning the Masters in April and DeChambeau the U.S. Open last month, this marks the first time since 1982 that all four majors were won by Americans and the first time since Tiger Woods won consecutive Opens in 2006-07 that Americans went back-to-back in the Open Championship. (Brian Harman won in 2023.) Schauffele said he watched the highlights of the last time the Open was played here in 2016 as motivation and it proved effective.
“He’s obviously now learning that the winning is easy,” said Rose, who played alongside Schauffele on Sunday. “He’s got a lot of weapons out there. I think probably one of his most unappreciated ones is his mentality. He’s such a calm guy out there. I don’t know what he’s feeling, but he certainly makes it look very easy. He plays with a freedom, which kind of tells you as a competitor that he’s probably not feeling a ton of the bad stuff. He’s got a lot of runway ahead and a lot of exciting stuff ahead, I’m sure.”
Added Rose’s caddie Mark Fulcher: “When you see a round that good you take your hat off. He didn’t put a foot wrong. It was nice to be able to watch it and not have to buy a ticket because it was fantastic…You’d almost like him to be a bit of a wanker but he really couldn’t be nicer.”
In just a matter of nine weeks, Schauffele has flipped the narrative from being the nearly man who can’t close to being a serious contender for PGA Tour Player of the Year and bona fide Hall of Fame candidate. He possesses both the Wanamaker Trophy and the Claret Jug and earned the distinction of Champion Golfer of the Year. The lid is off and now Schauffele and Kaiser are going to try to keep stacking majors.
The Champion Golfer of the Year earns a big paycheck and of course the Claret Jug.
The Champion Golfer of the Year, aka the winner of the British Open, earns a large sum of money, many accolades and the historic Claret Jug. OK, not the Claret Jug. We can explain.
TROON, Scotland — Martin Slumbers, the outgoing CEO of the R&A, didn’t hold back his opinions on the state of the game on his way out the door, including voicing them on the growth of purses on Wednesday.
“I’ve expressed concern in recent years about financial sustainability in the men’s professional game,” he began during his press conference ahead of the 152nd British Open. “If we take a wider perspective on the game for a second, golf is in many ways riding on the crest of a wave.”
He noted that more than 100 million people experience the game in one form or another around the world and cited that the latest participation figures indicate 62.3 million played golf – not including the U.S. and other countries that the USGA govern, a rise of 1.1 million over the previous year.
“These are very encouraging figures, but we have to maintain this momentum. To do that, we must have a sustainable business model in the long term. If you look at golf as a pyramid, however strong the pyramid is at the top, it can only be sustained in the long term if the pyramid is equally strong at the base,” he explained. “We see that as our responsibility, and that is why we invest all of the proceeds from The Open back into the sport.”
That is why Slumbers said the rapid rise in tournament purses, which soared ever since the Saudi PIF started writing lucrative checks to renegade pros and the PGA Tour responded by jacking up its purses to prevent any more players from jumping ship, has to stop.
Nevertheless, Slumbers signed off on a purse increase of $500,000 to $17 million, with the Champion Golfer of the Year expected to earn $3.1 million. In 2016, the last time the Open was held at Troon, Henrik Stenson banked $1.5 million from a purse of $8.6 million. Asked to explain why that has increased so much, Slumbers said, “Inflation.”
Not even the price of eggs and gasoline have skyrocketed at the rate of golf tournaments. Of course, there’s an argument to be made that the players were underpaid and the governing bodies were keeping too large of a share of the record TV money they negotiated but earned off the back of the players. Competition, they say, is always a good thing.
“There’s clearly a market out there. We watch it week in and week out, throughout regular play as well as through the big events. So, yeah, we’re aware of what the numbers are, but we’re also aware of our own business model and the way we think about it, and as I keep saying, the importance to keep investing,” Slumbers said. “I look at this in a much bigger picture. It’s very easy to get binary and a little bit down a dark alley in this topic. If you think about a pie and that is the financial economic value of golf, and a part of that goes on development, a part of it goes on employing people, and a part of that goes into development of the game. What we’re really talking about in the whole of this is getting the balance between particularly the prize money and the investment into the game in a way that we can ensure that the pie grows, and if the pie grows, everybody does better. If you reallocate incorrectly within an existing pie, there’s a real danger that the pie will shrink.
“So that’s the way I think about it. That’s the way we try to model it, and I think it’s very important for the game to make sure that we think that way if we really want this game thriving 50 years from now.”
Brian Harman poses with outgoing CEO of The R&A and Secretary of The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, Martin Slumbers as Harman returns the Claret Jug ahead of the 152nd British Open at Royal Troon. (Andy Buchanan/AFP via Getty Images)
When Slumbers was informed that the Open ranks as the 28th highest-paying championship in golf, he responded by saying, “A, I didn’t know 28, and B, I don’t care. That’s not what this is about. Our responsibility is for what we do and for what we run is to get that balance right and get the choices to ensure the game is thriving 50 years from now. That’s the role of the R&A.”
Brian Harman, the defending Open champion, was asked if he would play if he got paid less or nothing at all.
“I would personally,” he said. “I’m not sure everyone would, but I would.”
Asked why he sensed others take their ball and go home if the purse was trimmed, he said, “Some people care more about money than I do, I suppose. I play golf for me. Like I play golf to see how good I can get at golf. I play golf because I enjoy torturing myself with things that are really hard to do. That’s just me. Most times when I get done with a tournament, I couldn’t tell you within commas of how much that I made that week.”
Slumbers stuck to his belief that the growth in prize money will flatten as it has in other sports. He’s resolute that the R&A not lose sight of the overall pyramid and the importance of both the bottom and the top for the game’s future growth.
“Because without one or the other, it won’t,” he said, recalling that between 2006 and 2018, golf had been in decline.
“I can remember my very first meeting with the media in my office when Peter (Dawson) was still in charge, and (a reporter) over there asked me quite rightly, ‘What are you going to do about golf participation?’ And I said, ‘There’s no silver bullet, and I don’t know the answer.’
“I don’t think we’re asking that question now. The question now is how much further can it go.”
The final men’s major championship of the year is here.
The final men’s major championship of the year is here.
The 2024 British Open is set to begin Thursday at Royal Troon in Scotland, but preparations have been underway since the weekend for the best golfers in the world. The last time the Open was at Troon in 2016, Henrik Stenson and Phil Mickelson pulled away from the field and battled it out, with Stenson coming out on top for his only major victory.
While neither is the favorite coming into this year, that would be reserved for Scottie Scheffler, Bryson DeChambeau, Xander Schauffele and Rory McIlroy, it’s going to be a fun week of links golf, and it officially kicked off Monday with practice rounds.
Here’s a look at the best photos from practice rounds at Royal Troon:
Darbon comes with a mightily impressive CV and will assume command in November.
I’ve never been particularly bothered about getting on in years. In fact, I view the aging process as a sign of continued success. Congratulations to me, I haven’t keeled over yet.
We all, of course, have to leave our youth behind at some point. Look, there it is, waving and sobbing in the rear-view mirror as you pull out of the layby you dropped it off in and accelerate away down the road towards crotchety, pained middle age and beyond. That’s quite an elaborate way of putting it, but you get the idea.
Anyway, the reason I’m waffling on about miles on the clock is that a press release arrived recently announcing the appointment of a new chief executive of the R&A, and it actually gave me something of a jolt.
The reason? Well, the new man at the helm is younger than me.
All of a sudden, my whole ‘aging doesn’t bother me’ nonchalance evaporated. I’m 48. Mark Darbon, who is the highly qualified gentleman taking over at the R&A, is a mere 45.
In my head, people like chief executives, or senior politicians for that matter, are supposed to be older than I am. Indeed, no matter how much I age, part of their job is to remain older than me. Yes, I know that’s ludicrous, but it’s the way I think.
At 45, Darbon feels too young for the world of golf administration. At 48, I now feel too bloomin’ old for the world full stop.
I’m being typically flippant, of course. Darbon comes with a mightily impressive CV and will assume command in November when Martin Slumbers leaves after nearly a decade in charge.
Darbon held key roles in the London Olympic and Paralympic Games and, most recently, was the acclaimed CEO of the Premiership rugby club, Northampton Saints.
According to our rugby scribbling brethren, the Englishman was the man the Scottish Rugby Union desperately wanted as their head honcho, but the oval ball game’s loss is the dimpled ba’ pursuit’s gain.
Darbon will come into golf at a time of ongoing tumult in the men’s professional scene and various to-ings and fro-ings in leadership. Only the other day, Seth Waugh, the main man at the PGA of America, announced that he would be stepping away.
With Slumbers departing later this season, and Keith Pelley, the former DP World Tour chief executive, already off, the changing of the golfing guard continues.
Darbon, who will also become the secretary of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club, has some fairly sizeable shoes to fill but he looks like the kind of young (there, I said it), dynamic and driven individual who will be perfectly suited to a constantly evolving R&A.
Let’s face it, the St Andrews-based governing body used to be as stuffy and austere as a taxidermist’s scullery but, over the years, has transformed itself into an extremely progressive organisation.
During a tenure that promoted innovation and inclusiveness, Slumbers has accelerated that process of modernization. I once saw him wearing a hoodie, for goodness’ sake.
A few years ago, such a sartorial statement from the head of the R&A would’ve been punishable by a public whipping with the cat o’ nine tails on the Bruce Embankment.
Chief Executive of the R&A Martin Slumbers during a press conference ahead of The Open at the Royal Liverpool, Wirral. Picture date: Wednesday July 19, 2023. (Photo by Peter Byrne/PA Images via Getty Images)
Golf has never been more focused on engaging with new audiences than it is now. It continues to be an eye-opening period.
I mean, here’s the opening paragraph from another R&A press release sent last week which just about left me choking on my own brain.
“The Gang, a full-service gaming studio building best-in-class branded immersive activations, has partnered with The R&A to launch ‘Just Swing’, a new virtual golf experience on Roblox designed to reach new, diverse audiences and drive engagement and participation in the sport.”
Forget the Royal & Ancient. It’s the Radical & Awesome. I was trying to be down with the kids there but have probably only heightened my own crushing irrelevance. Radical & Awesome? Dear me.
In a game that often embraces change with about as much gusto as the three-toed pygmy sloth embarking on a ponderous and reluctant mating ritual, Slumbers helped haul it into a bold new era.
The merger of the R&A and Ladies Golf Union was a major milestone while a modernizing of the rules of golf, the implementation of the World Handicapping System – yes, I know that has divided opinion – and the collaborative yet contentious Distance Insights Project, which will usher in a rolled back golf ball, were all done on Slumbers’ watch.
The 63-year-old has championed disabled golf, through the G4D Open, and helped the AIG Women’s Open grow into a hugely lucrative showpiece while his hands-on approach to the development of the pioneering, community-based, family-focussed Golf It facility in Glasgow underlined his passion and commitment to the grassroots.
Darbon, then, has plenty to build on. There will be plenty on his plate, too. Who knows what state the fractured men’s game will be in when he starts in November. The rollback of the ball, meanwhile, still faces strident opposition from the big-hitting PGA Tour and the PGA of America.
There will be bountiful challenges ahead, but Darbon seems up for them. Now, how old is he again?
“We were greatly impressed with Mark’s knowledge and experience of the global sport industry.”
Mark Darbon has been appointed chief executive of The R&A and secretary of The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews.
Darbon will succeed Martin Slumbers in November in the role leading the governing body and the organization that runs the British Open and AIG Women’s British Open and invests in developing golf around the world. He also will become secretary of the 270-year-old club, which has a global membership of more than 2,400.
A former senior member of the team leading the London Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games in 2012 and executive with Tough Mudder, Darbon is leaving his role as CEO of Northampton Saints, the Premiership Rugby club, to take up the St. Andrews, Scotland-based position.
Darbon, 45, led Northampton Saints to their first Premiership title since 2014 last month and implemented a commercial strategy that enabled the rugby union club to bounce back from the pandemic to achieve record revenues in consecutive seasons.
“I am thrilled and honored to be taking up these positions with The R&A and The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews and to be moving into golf, a sport I have always loved,” he said in a press release. “The R&A is a globally renowned organization and does so much to ensure that golf prospers from grassroots through to the professional game.”
Niall Farquharson, chairman of The R&A said, “We were greatly impressed with Mark’s knowledge and experience of the global sport industry and his ability to develop successful teams and deliver fantastic events. We believe he will be an excellent leader for The R&A and The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews and will play a key role in helping us to achieve our goal of ensuring a prosperous and sustainable future for golf.”
Darbon started his career as a management consultant at Marakon Associates before joining Diageo plc, where he held a number of strategic and commercial roles, living and working in markets all over the world, including the U.S., Russia, China and Australia.
Having transitioned into sports-event organization in 2009, Darbon held several senior roles with the London Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games and was latterly head of Olympic Park Operations, overseeing the Olympic Park which housed nine competition venues with 20,000 employees and welcomed 250,000 spectators a day throughout the 2012 games. He went on to serve as an expert adviser to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) from 2013 to 2018.
Following London 2012, Darbon was senior vice president of Tough Mudder Inc. in New York and was involved in planning, promoting and staging mass-participation events in North America, Latin America, Europe and Australasia.
Before joining Northampton Saints as CEO in 2017, Darbon served as CEO of Madison Sports Group, a sports-events and content company that created an award-winning international series of professional track cycling events and, in doing so, brought a series of new sponsorship arrangements and media rights deals to the sport.
Darbon is a graduate of Worcester College, Oxford University.
As well as being a keen golfer, playing to a handicap index of 3.1 as a member of Northamptonshire County Golf Club and Saunton Golf Club, Darbon is a former Under-21 England hockey international and a Full Blue for hockey at Oxford University. He is a non-executive director of England Hockey and Women’s Premiership Rugby. Darbon is married with two children and plans to move his family to St. Andrews when he takes up his new role.
