First Golfer: Donald Trump's relationship with golf has never been more complicated

First Golfer: Donald Trump's relationship with golf has never been more complicated

http://www.golf.com/tour-news/2017/08/01/president-donald-trump-relationship-golf-more-complicated-now

[This article appears in the Aug. 7, 2017, edition of Sports Illustrated.]

With special reporting by Michael Bamberger, Ben Baskin and Pete Madden.

Playing golf with the 45th President of the United States offers a revealing character study of him. Donald Trump's private clubs are where he feels most comfortable, and holding court with members and guests and employees is an important part of the ritual—in the pro shop, at the driving range and especially on the 1st tee, where Trump traditionally announces the teams for a friendly wager and will typically take the best player available for his partner. Some earnest person in the group will typically keep score, though the terms of the match are usually unstated and Trump's interest in the ebb and flow of the match is modest at best. Yet he somehow knows when his putt is meaningful, and he attempts those putts with a certain amount of fanfare.

SI spoke with numerous people who have teed it up with Trump over the years and all report that he doesn't play a round of golf so much as narrate it, his commentary peppered with hyperbole. "Is this not the most beautiful asphalt you've ever seen in your life?" he'll say of an ordinary cart path. At the turn he'll ask, "Have you ever had a better burger?" Years ago Trump was mid-round when he took a long call from Mark Burnett, the producer of The Apprentice. He put down his phone just long enough to play his shots, at one point saying, "Wait one second here while I blast this 250-yard 3-wood." Trump also lavishes attention on his playing partners. "We didn't talk any business because there wasn't time," says Ernie Els, who last February played golf alongside Trump and Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. "He was more focused on making sure me and the Japanese prime minister had a good time. He kept on the two of us, making sure we had a proper introduction, making conversation, just being a good host."

Top Rank Is Changing How Viewers Watch Boxing

https://www.si.com/boxing/2017/08/01/top-rank-boxing-agreement-changing-sport

For years, Todd DuBoef and his stepfather, Bob Arum, ran Top Rank Boxing under the traditional business model they helped create. They put their best fights on Pay-Per-View, scheduled their next-best bouts on HBO or Showtime and then they worried about cable television.

This system made Top Rank and other promoters boatloads of money. But it was also fundamentally flawed, because it limited their audience, restricting the top fights to those who were willing to shell out cash to watch them. They targeted boxing purists, as it were, and there seemed to be less of them each year. In order to grow boxing in the United States, DuBoef sought to broaden a model that is unlike any other business plan in sports—and not in a good way. He couldn’t rely just on HBO, in this time of dwindling budgets, burgeoning entertainment options and shrinking millennial attention spans. He saw the sport grow in international markets (Mexico, the Philippines and Germany, among others) that showed the best events on regular TV. He asked himself: what is it that we’re missing?

A partner, it turns out. The problem, as he saw it, was how boxing had limited itself in the U.S. His own company, he admits, was complicit, a major factor in restricting. That needed to change. He needed a larger platform, continuous build-up and bigger audiences. A 360-perspective, he calls it. “We were just hoping to feed or move the needle within the universe we were in,” DuBoef says. “We said Pay-Per-View is the top of the pyramid. Right below is HBO and Showtime. You guys play below them. In reality, we were offering preseason football games. Of course it’s not selling!”

Which is where ESPN came in. This summer, the network agreed with Top Rank to showcase three bouts: Manny Pacquiao vs. Jeff Horn at welterweight in July, Vasyl Lomachenko vs. Miguel Marriaga at junior lightweight this Saturday and Terence Crawford vs. Julius Indongo at junior welterweight on Aug. 19.

Into the Spotlight: It's Neymar's Time to Complete His Rise to Royalty

https://www.si.com/soccer/2017/08/01/neymar-brazil-world-cup-barcelona-psg-messi-ronaldo

This story appears in the Aug. 7, 2017, edition of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED. Subscribe to the magazine here.

If Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi has anything in common with Crash Davis—if there’s any sort of cultural crossover between the archetypes of global sports glitz and minor league baseball grime—it’ll show itself when the tape recorder starts rolling. That’s when the icons in their posh private jets heed the wisdom Davis imparted on a bumpy bus, whether they’ve seen Bull Durham or not. “You’re gonna have to learn your clichés,” Crash says in the 1988 classic. “They’re your friends.”

The galácticos have little choice but to follow this advice. Combine the fanaticism surrounding global soccer with the minimal access afforded the media covering it, and you have an environment where every crumb becomes content, where innuendo is louder than insight, where the tiniest spark can become a bombshell. In short: The less said the better; be safe, not sorry. So it’s significant, then, that in the middle of what should be the most relaxing summer of his adult life, Neymar da Silva Santos Jr. is willing to let you in, share his concerns and maybe even make a headline. He can’t hide from who he is, nor from the momentous, legacy-defining season to come. The quiet but charismatic 25-year-old Brazilian forward has never won a World Cup. He has never been named FIFA’s player of the year. And if he remains at FC Barcelona (which was up in the air as of Monday; if he’s not in Paris a week from now, it will be a surprise), he will have to wait a bit longer until he’s even considered his own team’s centerpiece. But he’s universally deemed soccer’s best player after Ronaldo and Messi, and he’s beloved in a way that neither of them ever will be. And a big reason for that is his indifference to the Book of Crash.