Cameron Young reels in Rory McIlroy with pack on their tails for Masters finale

• McIlroy’s 73 leaves him tied on 11 under after Young’s 65

• Lowry, Rose and Scheffler among nine within five shots

Rory McIlroy began this Masters in the company of Cameron Young and will finish it in the company of Cameron Young. McIlroy arrived at this tournament as the holder of the Green Jacket. By Sunday night he will …? Goodness only knows. Day three proved predictions are a fool’s errand at the Masters.

Such drama played out at Augusta National on Saturday that by close of play it was extraordinary to see McIlroy’s name still atop the leaderboard, albeit now with Young for scoring company. Both are 11 under par. From holding a six-shot lead at the start of the round – and eight over Young – McIlroy inexplicably wobbled. His 73 was one involving intense struggle. “I knew today wouldn’t be easy,” said McIlroy. “I didn’t quite have it today. I’ll need to be better tomorrow.”

Published: April 11, 2026, 11:27 pm

Tyson Fury returns with unanimous points win over Makhmudov and wants Joshua next

• Fury easily defeats Russian by unanimous decision

• Joshua was ringside and initially evades Fury’s challenge

Tyson Fury completed the first stage of his latest comeback when he outclassed Arslanbek Makhmudov in an uninspiring near shutout over 12 rounds late on Saturday night. The former world heavyweight champion has retired on five previous occasions and, each time, he has been unable to resist the lure of a return to the ring. Now, even at the age of 37, he was still too fast, fluid and accurate for the lumbering Makhmudov.

The Russian from Dagestan hits hard and 17 of his previous 21 victories had featured successful stoppages within the first three rounds. But Makhmudov has never faced a heavyweight of Fury’s pedigree. The chasm between them was obvious from the second round and reflected in the scorecards as two judges had Fury winning each round, in a 120-108 victory, while the third official recorded a 119-109 margin.

Published: April 11, 2026, 10:28 pm

Lavelle and Heaps score as USA women ease past Japan to open friendly series

• Lavelle scores on landmark 100th US start

• Heaps adds winner after sweeping counter

• Emma Hayes’ side make it 10 straight wins

Rose Lavelle celebrated her 100th start with a goal and an assist to help the US women’s national team to a 2-1 win in San Jose, California, on Saturday to open a three-match series against Japan.

Lavelle, in her 119th match, scored in the ninth minute off a set piece then set up Lindsey Heaps in the 48th for the 2-0 lead.

Published: April 11, 2026, 11:55 pm

Bournemouth expose Schrödinger’s Arsenal, a team that could be either dead or alive | Paul MacInnes

Mikel Arteta urged fans to bring ‘your lunch, bring your dinner’ but when the set pieces fail to fire his side are short of a full plate

It was another one of those games where Arsenal had found it necessary to rouse the troops beforehand. Mikel Arteta, in his occasional, unusual jokey mode, had urged Arsenal fans to “bring your lunch, bring your dinner” and make this 12.30 kick-off an occasion.

The players, meanwhile, had been training under the eye of a big screen broadcasting footage of Arsenal in happy, successful moments, presumably to encourage the creation of more. “Every game, we have to be there,” Arteta said. So were they?

Published: April 11, 2026, 4:03 pm

New York Times investigates reporter Dianna Russini’s Vrabel coverage amid photo uproar

• Veteran NFL reporter sidelined during review

• Reporter, coach photographed at Sedona resort

The New York Times Company is reviewing coverage by NFL reporter Dianna Russini involving New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel after photos of the two together at an Arizona resort prompted internal concern, ESPN reported Friday citing people familiar with the matter.

Russini, who works for The Times-owned The Athletic, has been sidelined while the review is ongoing, a source said.

Published: April 11, 2026, 12:24 pm

Rio Ngumoha sparks Liverpool win over wasteful Fulham with first Anfield goal

At the end of a stormy week for Arne Slot there was respite in the form of a morale-boosting display from Rio Ngumoha. Liverpool’s 17-year-old winger marked his second Premier League start with an exquisite goal and a key role in the second from Mohamed Salah as the troubled champions celebrated a first league win since February.

Liverpool seemed vulnerable after painful cup quarter-final defeats at Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain had intensified the pressure on Slot. The ingredients were in place for Anfield to turn toxic. Fulham never put that fragility to the test. Marco Silva’s team were passive and limited in front of goal while Liverpool, re-energised by the virtuosity of Ngumoha, found the clinical touch and resolve to reach the landmark of 1,500 league wins at Anfield. It was only their second win in six games following a Champions League away trip this season and should restore some confidence before the daunting assignment against PSG on Tuesday. Ngumoha pressed his claims for inclusion from the start.

Published: April 11, 2026, 6:34 pm

Real talk: Chelsea punished Enzo Fernández for exposing project’s fatal flaw | Jonathan Wilson

Manchester City can brush off Rodri’s comments but Chelsea’s existential angst helps explain suspension of midfielder

Enzo Fernández and Rodri would quite like to move to Madrid; many people would. They both said as much in the international break, those special parts of the season when players join up with their national teams and give interviews while apparently unaware that media are global these days: a whisper on Luzo TV can soon become a hurricane in London. But Rodri will line up for Manchester City at Chelsea on Sunday, while Fernández will not, suspended by the club for “crossing a line”.

It’s worth, perhaps, looking at exactly what was said. Fernández expressed disappointment at Enzo Maresca’s departure on New Year’s Day. “It … hurt a lot,” he told Luzo, “because we had a lot of identity, he gave us order, but it’s the way that football is, sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad. But we always had a clear identity when it came to training, playing and obviously his departure hurt us especially in the middle of the season – it cuts everything short.” Sadness that a manager has gone surely isn’t a crime; it could even be supportive of Liam Rosenior and the difficulty of taking over a club mid-season.

Published: April 11, 2026, 7:00 pm

Gambling is easy, right? Wrong: it turns out betting on sport is designed to disturb you | Barney Ronay

Could I turn £10 into £1,000? I thought I could but was undone by the harsh reality and lost a little bit of my soul along the way

Welcome to How I Beat The Bookies: My Gambling Journey. Yes, my extreme methods can work for you. But only in the usual way. Which is to appear very briefly to work and then not to work at all.

First it is necessary to address the latest blow to English football’s otherwise watertight economy. People often talk about playing the world’s tiniest violin, a way of expressing sarcastic sympathy for bogus suffering, usually accompanied by a finger-and-thumb gesture that suggests, incorrectly, this is the size of the world’s tiniest violin.

Published: April 11, 2026, 7:00 am

European football: Bayern break Bundesliga goals record and close on title

• Goretzka hits leaders’ 102nd goal in 5-0 win at St Pauli

• Ferran Torres double helps Barcelona beat Espanyol 4-1

Bayern Munich crushed hosts St Pauli 5-0 in the Bundesliga to set an all-time season scoring record while also extending their lead at the top to 12 points with five games left to play.

The Bavarian club, who host Real Madrid on Wednesday in their Champions League quarter-final second leg after their 2-1 win in Spain, are within touching distance of the league title on 76 points, with second-placed Borussia Dortmund stuck on 64 after their 1-0 home loss to Bayer Leverkusen.

Published: April 11, 2026, 7:08 pm

Dewsbury-Hall strikes late for Everton to deny Brentford after Igor Thiago double

Two more Igor Thiago goals, yet another solitary Brentford point and a shared dream of European football that remains alive for both clubs. If a game can simultaneously prove drab and pulsating, this was somehow it – all bluster and endeavour forming a peculiar blend of incohesion in the hope of securing a rare continental prize.

A draw was, perhaps, a fair outcome, for all of Keith Andrews’ understandable disappointment at his side conceding Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall’s injury-time equaliser. Brentford have lost just one of their last nine Premier League matches, but the past four have, frustratingly, been drawn.

Published: April 11, 2026, 4:13 pm

Mats Wieffer doubles up as Brighton push Burnley closer to the drop

Mats Wieffer’s double reflected Brighton’s season, making the perfect late runs to secure the points at Championship-bound Burnley. It was their fifth win in six matches to leave them two points behind sixth-placed Chelsea.

Scott Parker was left frustrated after Jaidon Anthony and Bashir Humphreys scored but lengthy video assistant referee delays offered hope and the technology had to work hard to spot the illegalities. Ultimately, Wieffer settled the match, tripling his tally for the club, to boost Brighton’s European hopes, while leaving Burnley 12 points from safety with six games to play.

Published: April 11, 2026, 4:05 pm

Scottish Premiership: Hearts leave it late to sink Motherwell and Celtic keep up the heat

• Late double gives Hearts 3-1 win, Celtic overcome St Mirren 1-0

• Aberdeen end winless run by beating Hibernian 2-0

Celtic leapfrogged Rangers to move second in the Premiership with a 1-0 win over St Mirren but Hearts stayed clear at the top as two late goals saw them past Motherwell 3-1.

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain’s first-half strike was enough at Celtic Park, while Rangers head to Falkirk on Sunday and can reduce Hearts’ lead to one point again with victory.

Published: April 11, 2026, 4:30 pm

Championship roundup: Ipswich tighten grip on second but Coventry made to wait

• Controversial penalty sparks 2-0 Ipswich win at Norwich

• Bottom-side Wednesday draw 0-0 at leaders Coventry

Ipswich gave their hopes of automatic promotion a massive boost by recording a hard-fought 2-0 win over Norwich at Carrow Road, while Coventry must wait for another day after being held 0-0 at home by Sheffield Wednesday.

Ipswich moved into the top two, with at least a game in hand on their nearest rivals, as first-half goals from Jaden Philogene, with a harsh penalty, and George Hirst completed a long overdue double over their East Anglian rivals.

Published: April 11, 2026, 4:34 pm

‘His car stunk of fish for weeks’: Elliot Anderson on practical jokes and his World Cup dream

Midfielder on the prank-fuelled promotion at Bristol Rovers that kickstarted his career, confidence in Nottingham Forest’s survival and modelling for England

‘It was a brand-new car as well,” says Elliot Anderson, grinning as he relives the Gazza-inspired prank that sticks in the memory from his fruitful loan at Bristol Rovers. It is four years since a reserved teenager from Whitley Bay walked into a dressing room of big personalities after signing on January deadline day and turbocharged the club to promotion. His soaring header was the last and decisive goal in an exhilarating 7-0 win on the final day of the League Two season.

A lot has happened in Anderson’s world since that incredible climax, when Rovers pipped Northampton to third on goals scored. At the end of that four months, he was well versed in the culture of capers. Fridays meant forfeits and spinning the “wheel of fortune”. Practical jokes were never in short supply and on one occasion, as when Paul Gascoigne famously haunted Gordon Durie with trout, players planted fish in the boot and on the back seats of a teammate’s car. The analysts used training-ground CCTV to present a “Panorama” investigation and find the culprits.

Published: April 11, 2026, 7:00 am

Gout Gout smashes 20-second barrier to set new 200m national record

• Sprint sensation clocks 19.67sec with legal +1.7m/s tailwind in final

• Aidan Murphy runs second best time by an Australian with 19.88sec

Teenage sprint phenomenon Gout Gout has smashed his own national 200m record and become the first Australian to break the 20-second barrier in legal conditions as he sprinted to victory in 19.67sec at the athletics championships in Sydney.

Aidan Murphy pushed the 18-year-old deep into the straight and finished with the second best 200m time by an Australian of 19.88sec, with a tailwind of +1.7m/s.

Published: April 12, 2026, 4:18 am

Tyson Fury beats Arslanbek Makhmudov by unanimous decision – as it happened

Tyson Fury dominated Arslanbek Makhmudov over 12 rounds, then called out a ringside Anthony Joshua, who offered a lukewarm response

It’s pretty cold out here in Tottenham tonight but at least the atmosphere is starting to heat up. The arena is around 80% full and a sign that the once magnetic power of Tyson Fury is just fading a little as, at various promotional events this week, they were reduced to plugging ticket availability. Clearly, the fact that Arslanbek Makhmudov is not a stellar name has contributed to Fury’s failure to sell out the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium tonight. But time is also ticking for Fury and his latest return follows two narrow defeats in a row to the mighty Oleksandr Usyk.

Conor Benn v Regis Prograis is about to start. I’ve been close to Prograis over the years and was in his locker room for one of the great world title nights of his career. But Prograis is 37 now and this could be a hard night…

Published: April 11, 2026, 10:35 pm

County cricket: Northants make history with four hundreds as Leics frustrate Surrey – as it happened

Leicestershire refused to collapse against Surrey as Luke Procter hit 261 for Northants against Kent

The weather in Manchester is frisking around but there’s still play at OT, where Derbyshire have built back after losing a wicket to yesterday’s last ball. Derbyshire 37-1, 314 behind.

After a semi-epic super-sub trip from Abergavenny. And he is dropped on nought at first slip by Dean Elgar, who fumbles it in the tummy region. Shane Snater slumps back to his mark. Somerset 213-6, lead Essex by 64.

Published: April 11, 2026, 7:05 pm

Leinster blow away Sale to set up Champions Cup semi-final with Toulon

• Leinster 43-13 Sale

• Leinster host Toulon at Aviva Stadium on 2/3 May

Semi-final number 17 beckons for Leinster. The one-time serial champions of this competition will take another, against Toulon, back at the Aviva in a couple of weeks’ time. Sounds epic. Probably will be. But Leinster are still not quite convincing.

This was a Sale team missing a host of their best players. No one gave them a chance, but they made a real nuisance of themselves for a good 50 minutes before yielding to the inevitable. Four Leinster tries in the last half-hour put them away, but after the home team’s struggle to do the same here against Edinburgh last week Toulon, who are hardly a study in eloquence themselves at the moment, will fancy their chances.

Published: April 11, 2026, 6:54 pm

Liverpool 2-0 Fulham: Premier League – as it happened

Rio Ngumoha, 17, scored his first goal at Anfield and stole the show in a morale-boosting victory for Liverpool

3 min Both teams have started in a 4-2-3-1 formation as expected.

1 min Fulham kick off from left to right as we watch. The home fans launch straight into a song about Andy Robertson, who announced this week that he will leave the club this summer. £8m he cost.

Published: April 11, 2026, 6:38 pm

Grand National 2026: I Am Maximus wins big race for second time at Aintree – as it happened

I Am Maximus made history when becoming the first horse to regain the National since Red Rum in the 1970s

I Am Maximus joins legends | Tom Jenkins’s gallery

12.45pm MAGHULL NOVICE CHASE

And they’re off … should be plenty of pace on here as a few like to get on with it early … Be Aware jumps to the right at the first but grabs the lead … Salvatore Mundi has powered through the field to run with Be Aware up at the front ... the favourite has not been all that fluent to be fair … they still lead on the turn for home … Kala Conti was ready to challenge but fell three out … Mirabad is ready to challenge … takes it up and kicks clear for an easy win! Dan Skelton, the outative champion trainer, lands another big prize.

12.45pm MAGHULL NOVICE CHASE betting

Salvator Mundi – 11/10

Kala Conti – 11/4

Mighty Bandit – 7/1

Be Aware – 10/1

No Questions Asked – 20/1

Alnilam – 22/1

Mirabad – 50/1

King Of Kingsfield – 50/1
Full betting via Oddschecker

Published: April 11, 2026, 4:46 pm

Brentford 2-2 Everton, Hearts 3-1 Motherwell and more: Saturday football clockwatch – as it happened

Everton salvaged a point with a stoppage time equaliser while Hearts struck late to stay top of the Scottish Premiership

The leaders are behind at the Emirates. Arsenal’s defence was caught asleep and failed to play Truffert offside as he surged down the left, his cross pinged off Saliba’s boot and sat up perfectly for Eli Junior Kroupi to put away at the back post.

Championship: Ipswich go ahead at Norwich, thanks to a Jaden Philogene penalty, sending the goalie the wrong way.

Published: April 11, 2026, 4:35 pm

Rory McIlroy aims for ‘free’ state of mind in final round of Masters after losing six-shot lead

• McIlroy visibly short of his best during one-over par 73

• ‘I wish I was a few shots better off but I’m comfortable’

Rory McIlroy hopes to benefit from a “free” state of mind on the final day of the Masters, despite the defending champion conceding he will have to improve markedly from round three to retain the Green Jacket. McIlroy saw his six-stroke lead evaporate on Saturday, meaning he enters the fourth round in a tie with Cameron Young at the top of the leaderboard. McIlroy was visibly short of his best during a one-over par 73.

The Northern Irishman can, however, pull upon the glory of 2025 at the same venue. “I’d like to think that I’ll play a little bit freer and I’ll play, like I’ve already got a Green Jacket, which I do,” McIlroy said. “Sometimes I maybe just have to remind myself of that. The pairing will be just a little bit easier, the atmosphere out there will be a little bit easier.

Published: April 12, 2026, 12:24 am

Sensational Scheffler reminds everyone why he is still No 1 with Masters masterclass | Andy Bull

The American shoots sublime 65 in a show of strength to give himself a chance of a third title at Augusta

On Friday evening Scottie Scheffler was in the new player facility going back and forth over his putting game. Despite himself, he got sucked into watching what Rory McIlroy was doing on the big TVs the club have up in the training room. “It was pretty special stuff,” Scheffler admitted. And by the time McIlroy had finished Scheffler, the world’s No 1 golfer, had a different perspective on the tournament. He had scored 70 and 74 himself, and was even-par for the tournament, 12 shots off McIlroy’s lead, with 36 holes to play and nothing left to lose.

All of a sudden a tournament which has a way of making the game feel very complicated indeed had become very simple for him. Scheffler needed birdies. And he got them. He made five altogether, along with an eagle. He scored 65, seven under. It was the best round he’s ever played in the Masters. “I think that’s what great players do,” Scheffler said. “They rise to the occasion when you are at the biggest tournaments, and you’d be hard pressed to find another tournament that’s bigger than this one, especially for me.”

Published: April 11, 2026, 11:05 pm

The Masters day three: Rory McIlroy level with Cameron Young after losing outright lead – as it happened

Cameron Young shot 65 to wipe out Rory McIlroy’s big lead on Moving Day at Augusta National. Scott Murray was watching

Max Homa led at this stage two years ago, ending the week in third spot after falling away over the weekend with a pair of 73s. Undaunted, he came back last year, and tied for 12th. The 35-year-old Californian has fallen in love with Augusta National late in life, and he’s going well again this week. Birdies at 1 and 2 have whisked him up the standings to -4.

While we’re waiting for the leading players to take to the course, we’ve got time to indulge in a wee spot of Masters nostalgia. This episode of This Golfing Life, a wonderful new golf podcast hosted by the award-winning journalist and author Dan Davies, dives deep into the career of the 1980 and 1983 champion, the legendary Seve Ballesteros, and comes much recommended. (Fans of Paddington and Maurice Flitcroft may enjoy this episode too.) Get on it!

Published: April 11, 2026, 11:04 pm

School drop, fly to Augusta, home for dinner: Rory McIlroy’s scouting trips pay off at Masters

• McIlroy skipped PGA Tour events to practise at Augusta

• Defending champion has six-shot lead after two rounds

Rory McIlroy has explained how scouting trips to Augusta National in the weeks leading up to the Masters have played a significant role in his domination of this staging of the major. McIlroy’s second round of 65 – which included six birdies in the closing seven holes – set a Masters record, with the defending champion the first man to lead the tournament by six at the halfway point.

Entering the Masters, it was assumed McIlroy’s three-week break from PGA Tour business was to conserve energy. Instead, he made smart use of his private jet as he looks to become just the fourth golfer to win back-to-back Masters titles.

Published: April 11, 2026, 12:32 am