If those who lead the USGA needed any reminding about why they have returned to the Pebble Beach Golf Links with their championships so frequently over the past 93 years, they only needed to look out the window on Wednesday for their big announcement on the seaside grounds. Before them were bright blue skies with wispy white clouds and the sun shimmering off Stillwater Cove beyond the most famous finishing hole in golf. On its finest days, Pebble Beach is heaven on Earth, and the USGA knows it has a great thing going there. “Arguably, the greatest walk in golf,” mused John Bodenhamer, the USGA’s chief championships officer.

There are USGA championship sites that fall in and out of favor, become obsolete or lose their luster. Pebble Beach never has and seemingly never will, and now it has the largest commitment yet from the organization that seems to cherish it the most.

At a news conference, the USGA announced its single-largest package of championships yet for Pebble. Beyond the already slated 2023 U.S. Women’s Open and 2027 U.S. Open, six more events were added to the calendar that will take Pebble Beach’s association with national championships into the 2040s.

The U.S. Opens are scheduled for 2032, 2037 and 2044. The U.S. Women’s Opens will be played in 2035, 2040 and 2048. The latter of those championships will be played nearly 120 years after the U.S. Amateur, the first USGA event at Pebble, was contested in 1929.

“John [Bodenhamer] has promised that I can be a marshal on the 18th hole in 2044, so I’m pretty excited about that,” joked David Stivers, CEO of the Pebble Beach Company.

Pebble Beach is one of the USGA’s most iconic venues, having hosted 13 championships, including six U.S. Opens. Some past champions are among the game’s greatest: Jack Nickalus in 1972, Tom Watson in ’82 and Tiger Woods in 2000. In 2019, Gary Woodland joined the winners’ group that includes Tom Kite and Graeme McDowell with a three-stroke victory over Brooks Koepka.

In addition to the tournaments added at Pebble Beach, the USGA said it would hold the U.S. Senior Open and U.S. Senior Women’s Open in back-to-back weeks just down the road, at Spyglass Hill, in 2030.

With this latest USGA announcement, it has continued its move toward identifying “anchor” sites that will host numerous USGA championships over the next several decades. Pebble Beach joins previously identified Pinehurst Resort & Country Club in North Carolina and Oakmont Country Club in Pennsylvania as anchors. Other venues that have received multiple championships in recent announcements, but have not been labeled “anchors,” are Oakland Hills Country Club in the Detroit area and Merion Golf Club outside Philadelphia.

In March, the USGA announced eight championships for Oakland Hills, including the 2034 and 2051 U.S. Opens. Last August, while the U.S. Amateur was being played at Oakmont, it was awarded seven future events, including the 2028 U.S. Women’s Open, and the U.S. Open in 2033, 2042 and 2049. At that time Merion was also awarded the 2030 and 2050 U.S. Opens and the 2034 and 2046 U.S. Women’s Opens. In September 2020, the USGA identified its first “anchor site” when Pinehurst was given four additional U.S. Opens in addition to the previously scheduled Open there in 2024.

In September 2019, then-USGA CEO Mike Davis told Golf Digest, “It’s pretty clear that we love Pebble Beach, Pinehurst, Oakmont and Shinnecock. Those four meet all our criteria: They’re great tests of golf, they set up logistically either very well or well enough, and—being honest—we’re going to make money when we go there. We’re a nonprofit, but the U.S. Open financially supports everything else we do—all our other championships and all the golf programs we sponsor—among other things.”

Shinnecock Hills, the Long Island course that has hosted five U.S. Opens, is set to stage the 2026 U.S. Open, but it has yet to be identified as a future anchor.

Asked on Wednesday about the possibility of other anchor venues, Bodenhamer demurred and said, “You never know. I think there have been so many exciting things come down the road. Every one of these long-term relationships, whether they’re an anchor site or not, are different. … You’ll see more in the not-too-distant future. I don’t know what all that will be, but we’re excited about it.”

Not to be lost in the announcement about U.S. Opens is the bigger opportunities being afforded on the women’s side of the game. While the women’s venues over the past few decades have not been as recognizable or lauded, that is quickly changing. The USGA now has 17 U.S. Women’s Opens scheduled, and most of them have been in the rota for men’s major championships: Pebble Beach, Oakmont, Pinehurst, Oakland Hills, Merion, Erin Hills in Wisconsin and Riviera in Los Angeles.

“It’s not an accident,” Bodenhamer said. “Leading up to today, we see a number of things. We see a long-term nature to what we’re doing. There’s a strategy behind it. Five years ago, we re-thought our strategy. People ask why would we go out that far [on dates]? There’s some intentional reason to that.”

Robert Garrigus confirmed that he has requested a conflicting event release from the PGA Tour to play in the first LIV Golf invitational tournament in June.

Garrigus, who is playing this week’s Zurich Classic of New Orleans alongside Tommy Gainey, declined to further comment about his decision to play the LIV Golf event, which will be held outside of London in early June.

“I am grateful to have been given a sponsor exemption into this week’s event and I just want to focus on playing the best I can,” he said.

Garrigus, who played his last full season on the PGA Tour in 2018, is the first player to commit to the invitational series, which will feature eight events played around the globe with $25 million purses and a team component.

Under the Tour’s regulations, players must request a competing event release 45 days before the first round of the tournament they wish to play and the Tour has until 30 days before the competing event begins (May 10) to either grant or deny the request.

The Saudi-backed invitational series is a scaled-down version of what LIV Golf had planned, with rumors of an 18-event schedule with lucrative purses and a Formula 1-type team component. That concept appeared to fall flat in February when the game’s top players committed themselves to the PGA Tour. Instead, the invitational series is seen by many as an attempt to chip away at those commitments by creating a rival circuit with massive paydays.

The Tour regularly grants conflicting event releases, including more than a dozen requests earlier this year for members to play the Saudi International, which is part of the Asian Tour schedule.

“The commissioner shall be entitled, but not obligated, to grant additional releases when he determines that to do so would not unreasonably harm PGA Tour or the sponsor involved,” the regulation reads.

The Tour declined to comment on Garrigus’ request, which was first reported by Golfweek.

Although it seems likely Garrigus would be granted the release based on the circuit’s historic rulings, the Tour’s regulations do prohibit any member from playing a competing event held in North America. The next four events on the LIV Golf invitational schedule are set to be played in Oregon, New Jersey, Boston and Chicago.

AUGUSTA: Rory McIlroy says experience has taught him that he must play against his golfing nature to have his best chance at winning the Masters to complete a career Grand Slam.

The four-time major champion from Northern Ireland seeks his first major title since 2014 this week at Augusta National in his 14th Masters start.

Experience has taught McIlroy to value discipline and patience on the famed course in a different manner than he usually would.

“It feels like playing very negatively, playing away from trouble, not firing at flagsticks, not being aggressive,” McIlroy said Tuesday.

“It feels like a negative game plan, but it’s not. It’s just a smart game plan. It’s playing the percentages.

“Sunday, if you need to take risks, you take risks, but for the first 54 holes, you just have to stay as disciplined as possible.

“That goes against my nature a little bit, so it’s something I have to really work hard on.”

McIlroy said the mental challenge posed by the Masters puts the pressure on the shotmaking, pointing to Dustin Johnson’s 2020 victory as an example of the shots Augusta National makes you play.

“He basically did everything that this golf course asks of you,” said McIlroy. “That’s what this place is all about. It’s as much of a chess game as anything else, and it’s just about putting yourself in the right positions and being disciplined and being patient and knowing that pars are good.

“Even if you make a couple of pars on the par-5s, that’s OK and you just keep moving forward.”

For all of the spectacular shots the Masters has produced, McIlroy says winning comes from making routine ones well before the great ones.

“I think that’s what wins you Masters,” McIlroy said. “You see the highlights of people hitting heroic golf shots around here, but that’s just one golf shot. The rest of the time, they’re doing the right things and being patient, being disciplined, and that’s what wins you green jackets.

“It’s about playing to the fat part of the green, being somewhat conservative. You don’t have to do anything spectacular.

“You just have to be solid and play your game and execute your shots and stay out of trouble and avoid the big numbers.”

A victory this week would make McIlroy only the sixth golfer to complete career Grand Slam, joining Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Gene Sarazen and Ben Hogan.

“I’ve always said time is on my side, and I’ll keep saying that until it isn’t, whenever that is,” McIlroy said. “I’m 32 with a ton of experience… I’ve got a few more gray hairs than I used to, but I’m still young at heart.”

Seeing Woods, Lee Westwood and others playing deep into their 40s gives McIlroy a sense that he will have many more chances to claim a green jacket.

“When I’m their age, I’ll have been on tour 30 years,” he said. “You can have an unbelievably long career if you keep yourself healthy.”

Ninth-ranked McIlroy won his 20th PGA title at the CJ Cup last year in Las Vegas. He missed the cut last week at the Texas Open but said he benefitted more from two days of weekend practice at home.

“My game is in good shape,” he said. “It has felt better than the results have maybe suggested the last few weeks.”

McIlroy had his best Masters showing with a fourth-place finish in 2015 in his first bid to complete the Slam at Augusta National.

In 2011 he led for three rounds but stumbled to a final-round 80 and shared 15th, only to win his first major title two months later at the US Open.

Speculation over whether Tiger Woods would play at the Masters next week in Augusta, Georgia, ramped up when his plane was spotted at a local airport and he reportedly took part in an 18-hole practice round.

While Woods has been seen on the golf course multiple times — even taking part at the PNC Championship in December — he has yet to compete in an event this year and has said he wouldn’t compete on the PGA Tour full time as he once did.

Woods has had back issues over the last decade and broke a leg in a February 2021 car crash in Los Angeles. Board-certified orthopedic surgeon Dr. Rahul Shah told Fox News Digital in a recent interview Woods’ injury history is “definitely eye-opening” but each injury and recovery process is different.

“The truth is you have to take each injury one step at a time. If you kind of chronicle his injuries, you start with multiple bumps and bruises growing up and then he had the significant torquing injury to his back where he blew out one of his discs,” said Shah, who specializes in complex spine conditions and minimally invasive surgeries.

“That gave him a problem, and he had to shave that down. Then it happened again, so they did another shave down. But it wasn’t enough, so then they had to do a surgery to basically get all of the area where that disc wasn’t working well to basically have it fused together.

“He recovers from that and all of these, of course, are salvages to try and get him on his wing. What this really speaks to is the amount of prior runway he had, the amount of ability he had because all of these (injuries) are basically whittling away at his skill.

“Then he gets into this unfortunate (car) accident and what I can tell from what was leaked to the media, it seemed like it was going to be a while before he came back, and he’s made a significant recovery even faster than expected.”

Shah said it’s clear Woods is back in the mindset of being focused on his recovery and getting back on the course. He said playing in smaller competitions could help him ramp up for the bigger tournaments.

“Additionally, he’s made some significant progress with regards to playing small games,” Shah said. “There’s nothing like making progress in smaller arenas just to make sure you’re going to be able to make progress in bigger arenas. He recently had that father-son golf game, and he did well.

“I think that, overall, things are going to be more difficult, but he clearly has the skill set and wherewithal and the mental memory (and) the muscle memory that he’s cultivated to be able to at least give him the ability to make progress in some of these tournaments that are coming up.”

Woods’ last PGA Tour tournament was the Masters in November 2020, which was pushed back due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He hasn’t played a PGA Tour competition since. And while there is always a risk of injury, it’s the little steps he’s made in getting back into a rhythm that will help him.

“I think his likelihood for injury is higher. Is it catastrophic? The answer is no,” Shah said. “And the reason is because he’s basically gone through some smaller venues and has made progress and has been able to hold up. That tells you he has the stamina and ability to make progress.

“The real question is will he be able to hit the ball in the way he was able to prior to be able to get to where needs to be. And I think that may not be the perfect comparison or starting point. I think what we need to do is see how he makes progress and use his current games as his new baseline.”

Shah, a former team doctor for the Orlando Magic and partner with Premier Orthopaedic Associates in New Jersey, expressed optimism Woods would be able to play the full four rounds.

“I think there’s a significant possibility that he will, particularly because he’s been training for it. We don’t see the training that he’s done behind the scenes. So, I do think that there is a really reasonable chance,” Shah said. “I would put it better than say 80% he can make all four days.”

The first round of the Masters begins April 7 and runs through April 10. Hideki Matsuyama is the reigning champion. He beat Will Zalatoris by one stroke in 2021.