It’s highly unlikely that Michael Brennan will be the only 24-year-old man to take his shirt off in public in New Orleans on Thursday, but he will be the only one to do so who has a PGA Tour victory under his belt.

During the opening round of this week’s Zurich Classic, a team event on Tour played at TPC Louisiana, Brennan and teammate Johnny Keefer began on the back nine and got things rolling early, getting to 4-under through their opening six holes.

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After back-to-back pars on the 16th and 17th holes, the duo arrived at the Par 5 closing hole, which is when things got messy.

Brennan found the greenside pond with his second shot, but after getting eyes on his golf ball just off the bank inside the water hazard, he elected to try to play it instead of taking a drop.

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Taking such a risk is a perk when you’re playing in a team event, and with Keefer in Position A, Brennan said, why not? So, he took off his shirt and attempted to hit his golf ball out of the hazard. Unfortunately, he didn’t manage to pull off the miracle shot. He did get his golf ball in the air, but only for it to find the water even further.

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Players taking their shirts off before hitting a shot out of a water hazard is rare, but it does happen at least a handful of times per season. It’s certainly an odd enough occasion that if you are presented with an opportunity to hit a miracle shot, you have to take advantage in a setting like the Zurich Classic.

Brennan having six-pack abs and possessing what appears to be about 2.8 percent body fat probably made his decision to go tarps off that much easier.

The Brennan-Keefer duo fired a very solid 11-under 61 on Thursday in the best-ball format.

President Donald Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, is inviting the head of the world’s largest religious group to join U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers on a ride-along in an American city.

While speaking at a Turning Point USA panel on Wednesday, Homan, who has identified himself as a “lifelong Catholic,” confirmed he would like Pope Leo XIV to join federal officers for a ride-along because “They’re talking about something they don’t understand.”

This comes amid an ongoing feud between the pope and the Trump administration over immigration policy and the conflict in Iran. While maintaining that “every country has a right to determine who and how and when people enter,” Leo has criticized the administration’s interior immigration enforcement as “extremely disrespectful, to say the least.” In response, President Donald Trump has criticized the pope as “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.” Vice President JD Vance, who is also Catholic, has suggested that “in some cases it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality.”

However, Homan, who oversees Trump’s border security efforts, has taken a different approach. Asked on the panel Wednesday whether he was inviting the pope to participate in a ride-along with ICE, he responded emphatically, “Yes.”

“I will sit down and talk to him,” he said. “Because they’re talking about something that they don’t understand.”

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Homan said, “I’ll explain to them what happened under the Biden administration. An open border is the most inhumane thing you can do.”

He went on to rip into former President Joe Biden and former Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over their handling of the border from 2021 to 2025. He said the previous administration used tax dollars to provide illegal immigrants with transportation, lodging, and work authorization.

“When you make that promise to the whole world, the most vulnerable people will give their life savings to the cartels to make that dangerous journey,” said Homan.

“The most humane thing you can do,” he said, “is secure the border.”

“President Trump has illegal immigration down 96.7 percent … When 97 percent less people are coming, how many women aren’t being raped? How many children aren’t dying? How many pounds of fentanyl is not getting in to kill Americans? How many known suspected terrorists aren’t making it into the United States?” he asked.

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Homan has previously gone on the record on the administration’s spat with the Vatican, saying, “I welcome discussion with any of them, because they don’t understand illegal immigration is not a victimless crime.”

Speaking outside the White House earlier this month, he told reporters, “If they wore my shoes for 40 years, and talked to a 9-year-old girl that got raped multiple times, or stood in the back of a tractor trailer with 19 dead aliens at my feet, including a 5-year-old boy that baked to death, if they understood the atrocities that happened on the open border, I think their opinion would change.”

“Human traffickers are out of business, right? The cartels are going bankrupt because of that secure border. I wish they’d understand that,” he lamented. “Because if they did, I think they’d have a different opinion.”

Fox News Digital reached out to the Holy See for comment.

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While maintaining “I have no fear of the Trump administration,” the Roman pontiff has emphasized that the feud with the president has been overblown.

“Much of what has been written since then has been more commentary on commentary, trying to interpret what has been said,” he has said. “It was looked at as if I was trying to debate, again, the president, which is not my interest at all.”

Chris “Mad Dog” Russo went on ESPN’s First Take this week and delivered one of the most absurd hot takes of 2026. After Scottie Scheffler’s playoff duel with Matt Fitzpatrick at the RBC Heritage in Hilton Head, Russo inexplicably objected to American fans chanting “U-S-A.” Russo thought the American fans backing an American over an Englishman was problematic.

Um, what?

Russo started by saying, “This is not the Ryder Cup.”

Did anyone think it was? And since when do fans need an officially sanctioned red-white-and-blue event before they are allowed to root for an American player over a foreign player? Scheffler is American. Fitzpatrick is English. The tournament was in South Carolina. I can’t believe I have to explain this to a man who has spent his entire life living in America and more than two-thirds of it pontificating into a microphone.

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But he wasn’t done. Not even close.

“We’re not fighting Britain in a war.”

Honestly, I can’t believe Russo said this on ESPN. Firstly, no one thinks we’re in a war with Britain. Secondly, and this is basically the same response I had to the Ryder Cup argument, why does the USA have to be in a war with a country to root for our athletes against that country? The more I write about this, the more I think I should have just ignored it because his arguments are almost too dumb to deserve a response. But we’re already in it, so let’s keep going.

“Fitzpatrick is as American as [Stephen A.] Smith is… he freaking lives in Miami!”

Yeah, I really don’t want to dignify this with a response, but unfortunately that’s what they pay me to do. Fitzpatrick living in Florida does not make him an American. He’s from England. He has a thick English accent. He competes for Europe in the Ryder Cup and for Great Britain in the Olympics. He lives in America because it’s convenient for his job as a PGA Tour player. He is not “as American” as a U.S. citizen. This is a ridiculous comment from Russo.

“This is not the ’80 Olympics.”

Not only is Russo’s argument incoherent, it also belongs in the “non sequitur” Hall of Fame (that doesn’t actually exist, but I think it should). This has absolutely nothing to do with the situation at hand. It’s also the same argument as the “This is not the Ryder Cup” comment. It’s as if Russo knows his position is nonsensical and he has no good evidence to support it so he just starts repackaging the same take in different ways. Actually, it’s not “as if” anything; that’s exactly what’s happening here.

So, Chris “Mad Dog” Russo had a major problem with American fans rooting for Scottie Scheffler over Matt Fitzpatrick at the RBC Heritage and chanting “U-S-A”. But you know who didn’t have a problem with it? Matt Fitzpatrick.

After beating Scheffler in a playoff, the Englishman said Americans are “incredibly patriotic” and called the atmosphere “amazing” during his winner’s press conference. He said the crowd “didn’t get out of line” and added, “I’m all for it.” He even slipped in a little dig, joking that Americans have “shorter memories” because Europe won the Ryder Cup last September. In other words, Fitzpatrick understood the moment perfectly well. He saw it as competitive, national and fun. Essentially, Fitzpatrick appreciated American patriotism more than Russo. That should create a moment of self-reflection for Russo, but I suspect it won’t.

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Russo joined the ever-growing list of so-called sports media people who act as if any display of American loyalty must be explained away or require an apology. It doesn’t. Russo should go work for Huffington Post with that kind of take, given what they wrote during the Olympics.

The bigger issue is that Russo missed what makes sports so important to societies, communities, and nations. People sort athletes by side before they sort them by anything else. Team. School. City. Country.

This is also why so many race-first sports arguments are off-base. The crowd at Hilton Head wasn’t making a complicated statement or workshopping a sociological or philosophical thesis. It saw Scheffler as the American and Fitzpatrick as the Englishman, and it reacted accordingly.

We’ve recently seen certain sections of sports media making claims that the NBA “wants more Europeans because they want more white stars.” This is as absurd as Russo’s claims, perhaps more so. Sports fans care about who represents them. Nationality ranks far above skin color. It’s not even close, quite frankly. The identity-obsessed media class believes the opposite. They are categorically incorrect. If it were Tiger Woods in a playoff with Fitzpatrick, you can bet the “U-S-A” chants still would have rung out. No one would have thought, “we should root for the white guy over the American because he’s black.” That even sounded dumb as I was typing it.

In a culture that tries to divide everyone into smaller and smaller ideological and demographic factions, sports still creates the opposite effect. It’s part of the reason that the race-obsessed media often appears to hate sports. They know it proves the opposite of their Critical Race Theory machinations.

Scottie Scheffler is an American. Matt Fitzpatrick is not. The crowd responded by rooting for Scheffler and serenading him with “U-S-A” chants.

American fans root for American athletes over foreign athletes. Period.

They always have. They always will.

And that’s exactly the way that it should be.