LPGA ends season with big payoff in Florida. PGA Tour plays final event at Sea Island

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LPGA ends season with big payoff in Florida. PGA Tour plays final event at Sea Island

2024-11-19 22:25 Last Updated At：22:31

CME GROUP TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP

Site: Naples, Florida.

Course: Tiburon GC (Gold). Yardage: 6,700. Par: 72.

Prize money: $11 million. Winner's share: $4 million.

Television: Thursday-Friday, 2-3 p.m. (NBC Sports app), 3-5 p.m. (Golf Channel); Saturday, 2-5 p.m. (NBC Sports app), 4-7 p.m. (Golf Channel-Tape Delay); Sunday, 1-4 p.m. (NBC).

Defending champion: Amy Yang.

Race to CME Globe leader: Nelly Korda.

Last week: Nelly Korda won The Annika.

Notes: The LPGA season ends with a 60-player field for the Race to CME Globe title. ... The winner of the tournament wins the Race to CME Globe and the $4 million prize, among the biggest payoffs in women's sports. ... Nelly Korda is going for her eighth win of the year, the most on the LPGA since Lorena Ochoa in 2007. ... Korda already has gone over $4 million in earnings this year. ... Amy Yang won for the first time on U.S. soil last year, and then picked up her first major this year in the KPMG Women's PGA. ... Carlota Ciganda moved up three spots to earn the 60th and final spot in the field. ... Mao Saigo of Japan has a big lead in the race for LPGA rookie of the year. She is No. 9 in the Race to CME Globe, the highest-ranked player without a victory this year. ... Lydia Ko, Hannah Green and Ruoning each have won three times this year. The other multiple winner this season is Lauren Coughlin.

Next tournament: Grant Thornton Invitational on Dec. 13-15.

Online: https://www.lpga.com/

RSM CLASSIC

Site: St. Simons Island, Georgia.

Course: Sea Island GC. Seaside (Yardage: 7,005, Par: 70) and Plantation (Yardage: 7,060, Par: 72).

Prize money: $7.6 million. Winner's share: $1,368,000.

Television: Thursday-Friday, noon to 3 p.m. (Golf Channel); Saturday-Sunday, 1-4 p.m. (Golf Channel).

Defending champion: Ludvig Aberg.

FedEx Cup champion: Scottie Scheffler.

Last week: Rafael Campos won the Butterfield Bermuda Championship.

Notes: This is the final tournament of the season that mainly determines the top 125 in the FedEx Cup and who keep full cards for next year. ... Ludvig Aberg plays for the first time since the Tour Championship at the end of August because of surgery for a torn meniscus in his left knee. ... Aberg is among six players from the top 50 in the world ranking. ... Sea Island typically gets a stronger field from players who live in the area, such as former British Open champion Brian Harman and Chris Kirk. ... Nico Echavarria is at No. 59 in the FedEx Cup. If he stays in the top 60, he will be in the first three $20 million events, including The Sentry at Kapalua. ... The winners gets in the Masters. Only 14 players already are eligible for Augusta National. ... Florida State sophomore Luke Clanton received an exemption. He has made the cut in six of his seven PGA Tour starts, with three finishes in the top 10.

Next tournament: Hero World Challenge on Dec. 5-8.

Online: https://www.pgatour.com/

BMW AUSTRALIAN PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

Site: Brisbane, Australia.

Course: Royal Queensland GC. Yardage: 7,084. Par: 71.

Prize money: A$2 million. Winner's share: A$333,333.

Television: Wednesday-Saturday, 8-9 p.m. (NBC Sports app), 9:30 p.m. to 1 a.m. (Golf Channel).

Defending champion: Min Woo Lee.

Race to Dubai champion: Rory McIlroy.

Last week: Rory McIlroy won the DP World Tour Championship.

Notes: One week after the European tour season, the new one begins. ... Defending champion Min Woo Lee (No. 48) is the only player from the top 50 in the world in the field. ... Cameron Smith is playing his third straight week in PGA Tour of Australasia tournaments. He closed with 74 last week to lose a two-shot lead. ... Former NCAA champion Fred Biondi received an exemption. He turned down a spot in the Masters last year to turn pro. ... Geoff Ogilvy is in the field. He spends much of his time in golf course architecture, most notably the renovation of Medinah No. 3 outside Chicago. ... British Amateur champion Jacob Skov Olesen made it through European tour Q-school and is playing for the first time as a European tour member. ... The tournament dates to 1929. ... The European tour has slightly reduced its fall start to the season, with two events in Australia, two in South Africa and one in Mauritius.

Next week: ISPS Handa Australian Open.

Online: and https://pga.org.au/

Japan Golf Tour: Casio World Open, Kochi Kuroshio CC, Kochi, Japan. Defending champion: Taichi Nabetani. Online: https://www.jgto.org/en/

Asian Tour: Link Hong Kong Open, Hong Kong GC, Hong Kong. Defending champion: Ben Campbell. Television: Wednesday-Saturday, 11:30 p.m. to 1 a.m. (NBC Sports app), 1-3:30 a.m. (Golf Channel). Online: https://asiantour.com/

Sunshine Tour: PGA Championship, St. Francis Links, St. Francis Bay, South Africa. Defending champion: Rupert Kaminski. Online: https://sunshinetour.com/

Japan LPGA: JLPGA Tour Championship Ricoh Cup, Miyazaki CC, Miyazaki, Japan. Defending champion: Miyuu Yamashita. Online: https://www.lpga.or.jp/en/

AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf

Thousands of UK farmers descend on Parliament to protest a tax they say will ruin family farms

2024-11-19 22:28 Last Updated At：22:31

LONDON (AP) — With banners, bullhorns, toy tractors and an angry message, thousands of British farmers descended on Parliament on Tuesday to protest a tax hike they say will deal a “hammer blow” to struggling family farms.

U.K. farmers are rarely as militant as their European neighbors, and Britain has not seen large-scale protests like those that have snarled cities in France and other European countries. Now, though, farmers say they will step up their action if the government doesn’t listen.

The flashpoint is the government’s decision in its budget last month to scrap a tax break dating from the 1990s that exempts agricultural property from inheritance tax. From April 2026, farms worth more than 1 million pounds ($1.3 million) face a 20% tax when the owner dies and they are passed on to the next generation.

“Everyone’s mad,” said Olly Harrison, co-organizer of a protest that flooded the streets around Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Downing Street office with angry farmers. He said many “want to take to the streets and block roads and go full French.”

Organizers urged protesters not to bring farm machinery into central London, though a handful of tractors drove past Downing Street festooned with signs saying “the final straw” and “no farmers, no food.”

They were cheered by a tightly packed crowd estimated by police at 10,000, many dressed for a wet, chilly day in in the unofficial countryside uniform of olive-green Barbour jackets. Some held signs proclaiming “Stand with a farmer, not Starmer.”

Children on toy tractors looped round Parliament Square after a rally addressed by speakers including former “Top Gear” TV host and celebrity farmer Jeremy Clarkson. Another 1,800 farmers were invited into Parliament for a “mass lobby” of lawmakers nearby organized by the National Farmers’ Union.

“The human impact of this policy is simply not acceptable, it’s wrong," NFU President Tom Bradshaw said. “It’s kicking the legs out from under British food security."

Volatile weather exacerbated by climate change, global instability and the upheaval caused by Britain’s 2020 departure from the European Union have all added to the burden on U.K. farmers. Many feel the Labour Party government’s tax change, part of an effort to raise billions of pounds to fund public services, is the last straw.

“Four out of the last five years, we’ve lost money,” said Harrison, a fifth-generation farmer who grows cereal crops on his family farm near Liverpool in northwest England. “The only thing that’s kept me going is doing it for my kids. And maybe a little bit of appreciation on the land allows you to keep borrowing, to keep going. But now that’s just disappeared overnight.”

Starmer’s center-left government says the “vast majority” of farms -– about 75% — will not have to pay inheritance tax, and various loopholes mean that a farming couple can pass on an estate worth up to 3 million pounds ($3.9 million) to their children tax-free. The 20% levy is half the 40% inheritance tax paid on other land and property in the U.K.

Supporters of the tax say it will recoup money from wealthy people who have bought up agricultural land as an investment, driving up the cost of farmland in the process.

“It’s become the most effective way for the super rich to avoid paying their inheritance tax,” Environment Secretary Steve Reed wrote in the Daily Telegraph, adding that high land prices were “robbing young farmers of the dream of owning their own farm.”

But the famers’ union says more than 60% of working farms could face a tax hit. And while farms may be worth a lot on paper, profits are often small. Government figures show that income for most types of farms fell in the year to the end of February 2024, in some cases by more than 70%. Average farm income ranged from about 17,000 pounds ($21,000) for grazing livestock farms to 143,000 pounds ($180,000) for specialist poultry farms.

The last decade has been turbulent for British farmers. Many farmers backed Brexit as a chance to get out of the EU’s complex and much-criticized Common Agricultural Policy. Since then, the U.K. has brought in changes such as paying farmers to restore nature and promote biodiversity, as well as for producing food.

Some farmers have welcomed those moves, but many feel goodwill was squandered through bureaucratic bungling — by previous Conservative governments as well as Starmer's Labour administration — alongside a failure of subsidies to keep up with inflation and new trade deals with countries including Australia and New Zealand that have opened the door to cheap imports.

National Farmers’ Union Deputy President David Exwood said the government has “completely blown their trust with the industry.”

Starmer spokeswoman Camilla Marshall said the tax decision had been “difficult” but was not being reconsidered.

Heidi Fermor, who helps run her family’s fruit, vegetable and arable farm in southeast England, said she was attending her first protest because government officials had “no idea” about the reality of farmers’ lives.

“Farming is hard. We’re very privileged, we have a lovely life, but it’s hard," she said. "We want to farm for life, for future generations, not just for today.”

She urged the government to “listen. Meet the people who want to talk to you, and listen.”

LPGA ends season with big payoff in Florida. PGA Tour plays final event at Sea Island

Sport

LPGA ends season with big payoff in Florida. PGA Tour plays final event at Sea Island

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