Spurs close in on Frank as next head coach

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Tottenham are moving towards appointing Brentford boss Thomas Frank as their new head coach following the sacking of Ange Postecoglou.

Brentford are expecting a formal approach from Tottenham in the coming days but there has been no confirmation so far of dialogue between the two clubs.

The Dane, 51, has emerged as a leading contender to replace Postecoglou.

Brentford would be entitled to compensation for Frank, with sources indicating it would cost Tottenham more than £10m to extract him from his contract which runs until 2027.

That figure could rise depending on how many members of staff Frank decides to bring with him if he is named Spurs boss.

Postecoglou was sacked on Friday, 16 days after leading them to victory in the Europa League final, their first major trophy for 17 years.

However, it came towards the end of their worst Premier League season, as they finished 17th after losing 22 of their 38 matches.

Frank took over at Brentford in 2018 and guided them into the Premier League, winning the Championship play-off final at Wembley in 2021 and establishing them as a top-flight club on a small budget.

Chief football officer Munn expected to leave Spurs

Meanwhile, Tottenham are expected to confirm the departure of chief football officer Scott Munn this week.

The Australian administrator, who joined Spurs in 2023, is understood to have left the north London club amid an internal reshuffle.

Munn was a key figure in the appointment of fellow Australian Postecoglou in June 2023.

Vinai Venkatesham started in his role as new chief executive last Monday, while executive director Donna Cullen left the club.

Munn’s exit is another significant change in what is gearing up to be a crucial summer for Tottenham ahead of next season.

In addition to their search for new men’s and women’s head coaches, Fabio Paratici, the club’s former managing director of football, is in talks over a return to the club once his Fifa ban for alleged financial irregularities linked to his time at Juventus expires in July.

The Italian has been working with Spurs on a consultancy basis during his suspension, with the process towards his permanent reappointment ongoing.

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Injured Fagerson replaced by Bealham in Lions squad

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Scotland prop Zander Fagerson has been ruled out of the British and Irish Lions’ tour to Australia with a calf injury and replaced by Ireland’s Finlay Bealham.

Fagerson’s club, Glasgow Warriors, confirmed the news on X, adding: “We’re all behind you, Z – we know you’ll come back even stronger.”

The 29-year-old last featured for Glasgow in early April and was absent as they lost Saturday’s United Rugby Championship play-off semi-final to Leinster in Dublin.

Capped more than 70 times by Scotland, the tighthead toured South Africa with the Lions in 2021 and featured against Sigma Lions.

Australian-born Bealham, who qualifies for Ireland through his grandmother, moved to Ireland in 2010 and made his international debut in 2016.

With Tadhg Furlong injured, the 33-year-old Connacht prop started every game of Ireland’s 2025 Six Nations campaign, winning his 50th cap in the defeat by France in the penultimate round.

Andy Farrell’s Lions face Australia in Tests on 19 July, 26 July and 2 August and will play seven other matches on tour.

Saracens hooker Jamie George, 34, and his fellow Englishman Asher Opoku-Fordjour, 20, of Sale Sharks, will travel to Portugal to train with the squad.

‘Cruel and heartbreaking for Fagerson’

It’s a sad reality that many players achieve their ultimate goal of being selected for the Lions, only to see injury snatch that dream away before they get their hands on that famous red jersey. It happens every four years.

It’s particularly cruel that’s it’s happened to Zander Fagerson, though. He was the only Scot out of eight selected for the 2021 tour to South Africa that did not see any action in the Test series.

On the day it was announced he had been selected for this summer’s tour to Australia, Fagerson spoke to BBC Scotland of how he felt he had not done himself justice four years ago, hampered by niggling injury problems, and the drive he had to go Down Under to show the best of himself.

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‘Let the alibi artists stand aside’ – why Oakmont is toughest US Open test

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Pittsburgh, America’s historic steel city also famed for coal mining, is known as a hub for hard industrial labour.

And these qualities extend to its most famed golf course. There are few, if any, tougher more uncompromising tests than Oakmont Country Club, the home of this week’s US Open.

This is a place where players have to roll up their sleeves and get on with it despite the golfing environment’s stark harshness.

Defending champion Bryson DeChambeau summed it up for his legion of YouTube followers when he said: “This course doesn’t just challenge your game, it challenges your sanity.”

This is the latest in a long line of observations about a course that will stage the US Open for a record 10th time, starting on Thursday. Seven-time major winner Gene Sarazen started the trend when he said Oakmont possesses “all the charm of a sock to the head”.

‘A poor shot should be a shot lost’

Rory McIlroy hitting the ball out of the rough during a practice round for the 2016 US Open at OakmontGetty Images

Huge undulating, sloped greens are lightning fast. Another legend, Sam Snead, joked: “I put a dime down to mark my ball and the dime slipped away.”

It was seeing a Sarazen putt run off an Oakmont green at the 1935 championship that inspired Edward Stimpson to invent the measuring device known as a “Stimpmeter” to calibrate just how fast a green is running.

Six times major champion Lee Trevino noted the difficulty of the greens when he observed: “Every time I two putted at Oakmont, I was passing somebody on the leaderboard.”

The rough is thick and juicy and its 175 bunkers are harsh, penal hazards. Phil Mickelson, who this week plays his 34th and most likely final US Open, thinks it is “the hardest golf course we have ever played”.

Geoff Ogilvy, the champion in 2006 at Winged Foot – another brutal venue, said: “Playing Oakmont was like the hardest hole you have ever played on every hole.”

The course was built in the early 20th century by Henry Clay Fownes after he sold his burgeoning steel business to Andrew Carnegie. The Fownes family were among the best players in Western Pennsylvania at the time.

Now they had the wealth to indulge their sporting passion and they transformed 191 acres of farmland at a place called Plum on the outskirts of Pittsburgh into one of the most feared pieces of golfing architecture ever built.

It was the only course HC Fownes designed and it has more than stood the test of time. He did not see golf as any kind of beauty contest.

“Let the clumsy, the spineless, the alibi artists stand aside, a poor shot should be a shot irrevocably lost,” he stated.

When the course opened in 1904 it measured 6,406 yards and was par-80. This week it is stretched to 7,431 yards and the par score is 71.

Dubbed “Soakmont” when it last staged the US Open, heavy rainfall softened fairways and greens, Dustin Johnson’s winning score was still only four under, admittedly including a controversial penalty for unintentionally moving his ball on the fifth hole of the final round.

Joint runners up Shane Lowry, Jim Furyk and Scott Piercy, who were three shots behind, were the only other players to beat par.

‘Bunkers not designed to be a bail out’

Andrew Landry playing out of the 'Church Pews' bunker during the 2016 US OpenGetty Images

This time we can anticipate a similar scenario to the one that yielded Johnson’s first major nine years ago because the Pittsburgh area has suffered its wettest spring on record.

The greens will still be very quick but perhaps more likely to hold approach shots than they were in 2007. But the five-inch deep rough will be damp, lush and brutal.

And unlike most recent US Open venues it will not be ‘graduated’ with shorter grass nearer the immaculate fairways. It will be short grass and then long grass with nothing in between – classically uncompromising in the finest Oakmont tradition.

The bunkers are not designed to be a bail out. The sand is unsympathetic and forms a genuine hazard, as do strategic ditches that criss-cross the layout.

Between the third and fourth fairways lies the famous ‘Church Pews’ bunker, more than 100 yards long and up to 43 yards wide with a dozen turf islands (the pews) striped across to punish wayward tee shots.

The par-three eighth could be stretched to more than 300 yards and is the longest ‘short’ hole in championship golf. “I haven’t played it since they lengthened it to be a short par five,” Jack Nicklaus, the winner at Oakmont in 1962, recently joked.

Some hate the idea of par-three holes playing at such length. Nicklaus called it “crazy” but it is a good golf hole and par is just a number, albeit one that can mess with a player’s head.

And therein lies the ultimate aspect of US Open golf. Yes the United States Golf Association want to test every club in the bag but they also want to examine the 15th club – the one that resides between the ears.

The winner will be the player who deals best with the inevitable setbacks inflicted by a course known as “the beast” but who also plays the best golf.

That might seem an obvious statement, but accurate driving and unerring approach play can yield rich rewards. After a third-round 76, Johnny Miller fired a final-round 63 to win in 1973 with what is still regarded as one of the greatest rounds ever played.

In 2016 Lowry shot a 65 to take the 54-hole lead, so low scores are possible.

But over four long days, which may well suffer weekend weather interruption, there will be sufficient snakes to counterbalance the very few ladders afforded by this ultra-demanding course.

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  • Golf

‘This course challenges your sanity’ – why Oakmont is toughest US Open test

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  • 153 Comments

Pittsburgh, America’s historic steel city also famed for coal mining, is known as a hub for hard industrial labour.

And these qualities extend to its most famed golf course. There are few, if any, tougher more uncompromising tests than Oakmont Country Club, the home of this week’s US Open.

This is a place where players have to roll up their sleeves and get on with it despite the golfing environment’s stark harshness.

Defending champion Bryson DeChambeau summed it up for his legion of YouTube followers when he said: “This course doesn’t just challenge your game, it challenges your sanity.”

This is the latest in a long line of observations about a course that will stage the US Open for a record 10th time, starting on Thursday. Seven-time major winner Gene Sarazen started the trend when he said Oakmont possesses “all the charm of a sock to the head”.

‘A poor shot should be a shot lost’

Rory McIlroy hitting the ball out of the rough during a practice round for the 2016 US Open at OakmontGetty Images

Huge undulating, sloped greens are lightning fast. Another legend, Sam Snead, joked: “I put a dime down to mark my ball and the dime slipped away.”

It was seeing a Sarazen putt run off an Oakmont green at the 1935 championship that inspired Edward Stimpson to invent the measuring device known as a “Stimpmeter” to calibrate just how fast a green is running.

Six times major champion Lee Trevino noted the difficulty of the greens when he observed: “Every time I two putted at Oakmont, I was passing somebody on the leaderboard.”

The rough is thick and juicy and its 175 bunkers are harsh, penal hazards. Phil Mickelson, who this week plays his 34th and most likely final US Open, thinks it is “the hardest golf course we have ever played”.

Geoff Ogilvy, the champion in 2006 at Winged Foot – another brutal venue, said: “Playing Oakmont was like the hardest hole you have ever played on every hole.”

The course was built in the early 20th century by Henry Clay Fownes after he sold his burgeoning steel business to Andrew Carnegie. The Fownes family were among the best players in Western Pennsylvania at the time.

Now they had the wealth to indulge their sporting passion and they transformed 191 acres of farmland at a place called Plum on the outskirts of Pittsburgh into one of the most feared pieces of golfing architecture ever built.

It was the only course HC Fownes designed and it has more than stood the test of time. He did not see golf as any kind of beauty contest.

“Let the clumsy, the spineless, the alibi artists stand aside, a poor shot should be a shot irrevocably lost,” he stated.

When the course opened in 1904 it measured 6,406 yards and was par-80. This week it is stretched to 7,431 yards and the par score is 71.

Dubbed “Soakmont” when it last staged the US Open, heavy rainfall softened fairways and greens, Dustin Johnson’s winning score was still only four under, admittedly including a controversial penalty for unintentionally moving his ball on the fifth hole of the final round.

Joint runners up Shane Lowry, Jim Furyk and Scott Piercy, who were three shots behind, were the only other players to beat par.

‘Bunkers not designed to be a bail out’

Andrew Landry playing out of the 'Church Pews' bunker during the 2016 US OpenGetty Images

This time we can anticipate a similar scenario to the one that yielded Johnson’s first major nine years ago because the Pittsburgh area has suffered its wettest spring on record.

The greens will still be very quick but perhaps more likely to hold approach shots than they were in 2007. But the five-inch deep rough will be damp, lush and brutal.

And unlike most recent US Open venues it will not be ‘graduated’ with shorter grass nearer the immaculate fairways. It will be short grass and then long grass with nothing in between – classically uncompromising in the finest Oakmont tradition.

The bunkers are not designed to be a bail out. The sand is unsympathetic and forms a genuine hazard, as do strategic ditches that criss-cross the layout.

Between the third and fourth fairways lies the famous ‘Church Pews’ bunker, more than 100 yards long and up to 43 yards wide with a dozen turf islands (the pews) striped across to punish wayward tee shots.

The par-three eighth could be stretched to more than 300 yards and is the longest ‘short’ hole in championship golf. “I haven’t played it since they lengthened it to be a short par five,” Jack Nicklaus, the winner at Oakmont in 1962, recently joked.

Some hate the idea of par-three holes playing at such length. Nicklaus called it “crazy” but it is a good golf hole and par is just a number, albeit one that can mess with a player’s head.

And therein lies the ultimate aspect of US Open golf. Yes the United States Golf Association want to test every club in the bag but they also want to examine the 15th club – the one that resides between the ears.

The winner will be the player who deals best with the inevitable setbacks inflicted by a course known as “the beast” but who also plays the best golf.

That might seem an obvious statement, but accurate driving and unerring approach play can yield rich rewards. After a third-round 76, Johnny Miller fired a final-round 63 to win in 1973 with what is still regarded as one of the greatest rounds ever played.

In 2016 Lowry shot a 65 to take the 54-hole lead, so low scores are possible.

But over four long days, which may well suffer weekend weather interruption, there will be sufficient snakes to counterbalance the very few ladders afforded by this ultra-demanding course.

Related topics

  • Golf

West Ham wait to make decision on Antonio’s future

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West Ham have delayed a decision on Michail Antonio’s future as the forward continues his recovery from a serious car accident in December.

The 35-year-old’s contract expires on 30 June but the club say his “unique situation” means no formal decision will be made until the time is “right and appropriate”.

Antonio’s Ferrari skidded off the road and struck a tree in Epping Forest six months ago, resulting in a broken leg which required a three-week stay in hospital.

In a statement, West Ham said the Jamaica international will be listed as a free transfer for the purposes of Premier League procedure.

Antonio joined West Ham from Nottingham Forest for an undisclosed fee, reported to be £7m, in 2015.

He is the club’s record Premier League goalscorer, scoring 68 goals in 268 top-flight appearances.

Meanwhile, France international Kurt Zouma, 30, who joined the the club four years ago and is on loan at Al-Orobah FC in the Saudi Pro League, will leave West Ham at the end of the month.

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Phoenix investor Wagner has ‘confidence’ in deal

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Birmingham Phoenix’s US investor Tom Wagner says he has “every confidence” a deal for the Hundred franchise will be finalised, and he remains “committed” to the purchase.

Sales of shares in the eight teams, worth around £520m, were announced by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) in February.

But an eight-week exclusivity period to agree terms was extended in March, and there remains no clarity on when contracts will be signed.

Wagner’s Knighthead Capital agreed to pay £40m for a 49% share in the Phoenix.

And speaking publicly about the reasons behind the delay for the first time, the American told BBC Sport: “What everybody wants is the ability to make The Hundred even more commercially viable and to grow the product.

“It really should see more exposure globally, so I think a number of the conversations are around how that happens and what timeframe, how that moves forward.

“There’s a good alignment of interests and, as is the case with any negotiations, there’s always a bit of back and forth.”

There is no suggestion that any of the deals will fall through, however there is the possibility they will not be completed before this year’s edition begins on 5 August.

The ECB confirmed the extension of the exclusivity period more than two months ago.

At the time, the prospective buyers of the two London franchises raised concerns over the competition’s participation agreement.

There have also been discussions over the sale of future TV rights. The current United Kingdom TV deal, principally held by Sky, expires in 2028. When it is renegotiated, rights for The Hundred will again be sold as a complete package, rather than separated from international and other domestic cricket.

International TV rights, seen as a key area of growth, are piecemeal. Deals for separate competitions or series arise at different intervals.

Wagner added: “I won’t comment on the specific negotiations but what I will say is we’re very excited at the prospect of investing in the Phoenix.

“We’re committed to it, we’re excited by it and I have every confidence we’ll get to closing.”

The Knighthead Group also includes legendary NFL quarterback Tom Brady. They are already owners of Birmingham City, and last week the prospect of a new 62,000-seater stadium as part of a £3 billion ‘Sports Quarter’ took a significant step forward when the government confirmed £2.4bn investment in transport infrastructure.

Wagner, who founded Knighthead, said: “We think it’s a fantastic opportunity. It shows our commitment to Birmingham, beyond simply Birmingham City Football Club.

“We really, genuinely want to see Birmingham continue to develop and grow. The Phoenix is a great way to expand the exposure of the city to a broader, more global audience. It’s also a way for us to tie-in to the substantial south Asian community that is here in Birmingham.”

Proceeds from the sales will be shared among the 18 first-class counties, Marylebone Cricket Club and the domestic game in England and Wales.

The ECB will retain overall control of the competition, but investors could change the name, colours and branding of their teams. The American investor in Welsh Fire has already said he would prefer The Hundred to switch to a T20 format.

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