CALGARY — The rookies on PGA Tour Champions are, for the most part, the most accomplished first-time participants of any sport. 

This season on the over-50 circuit is a prime example. 

Zach Johnson, who turned 50 in February, has come out of the gates like a thoroughbred, winning four times already this year. In the Charles Schwab Cup standings, the season-long points race, he trails only good pal Stewart Cink. Cink is just in his second full campaign on the senior circuit and has won five times already in 2026 — including last week in a playoff against Miguel Angel Jimenez. 

While Cink is off this week, Johnson — a past winner of both the Masters and The Open Championship — is making his Rogers Charity Classic debut (and playing in Canada for the first time since the 2024 RBC Canadian Open), looking to catch up to his good friend in the standings. 

“I don’t have any other expectations other than to just execute shots. I feel fortunate Stewart is not playing. Love you, Stewy,” Johnson said with a big smile Wednesday from a stunning summertime day in Calgary. 

Johnson won his debut event on PGA Tour Champions at the beginning of March and hasn’t looked back since. He has not finished outside the top 10 yet this season in 11 tournaments (plus he finished tied for ninth at the PGA Tour’s John Deere Classic in July). He won two events in a row, including his first senior major at the Kaulig Companies Championship, and comes into this week at Canyon Meadows Golf and Country Club off a win in Portugal earlier in August. 

Despite his fine finish on the PGA Tour, he said he’s just been happy with the kind of golf he’s been playing anywhere. 

“Take the tour out of it. PGA Tour Champions, PGA Tour out of it. I’m probably playing some of the best golf — consistently best golf in probably a few years at least,” Johnson said. 

He does, however, trail Cink by about $1 million in the season-long standings — with Cink, 53, having notched two major titles this year and finishing runner-up at the U.S. Senior Open. There are nine tournaments left in the 2026 campaign. 

The two have been stalwarts of the PGA Tour and the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup leadership for decades, and Johnson said Wednesday that he still feels like there is a “healthy” rivalry between the pair. 

“I’m genuinely happy for him and all of his success. And … it really starts and ends with that. Obviously, we are different on and off the golf course, but the healthy part of it is that we can make each other better,” Johnson explained. “Our friendship is so thick and when I’ve had valleys and he’s had valleys, we’ve been there because you’re going to (in golf). This game is hard. And when we have successes and peaks, ideally we’re the first ones to congratulate or hug the other.” 

Cink did have to wait a few years for his friend to join him on PGA Tour Champions, and Johnson admitted he didn’t think too much about joining the over-50 crew until he turned 49. Then, he realized, most of his best friends were already playing there and he was watching it on TV — for the first time in his career, he admitted, he was watching lots of golf. 

“When you’ve got your best buddies out here, it’s intriguing, you know,” Johnson said. “Midway through last year I’m like, ‘Wow. Man. Next year might be different.

“This is the best. Had I won (the John Deere Classic), I’d still be out (on PGA Tour Champions). I mean that sincerely. My caddie and I talked about it. Like why would we go back to (the PGA Tour)? Three days of great dudes on great golf courses, great arenas, great venues, great support, great sponsors. This is the best place in golf.”   

While Johnson is the top-ranked golfer in the field this week at Canyon Meadows — five of the top 10 in the Schwab Cup standings are teeing it up in Calgary with the two-time major champ leading the way — the golfer with likely the most support of anyone will once again be Canada’s Mike Weir. 

Weir told Sportsnet.ca he has had an up-and-down year on the results ledger — he’s had three top-15s but also four finishes outside of the top-40 — but he, as per usual, is always inspired by the home crowds. This year is set to be extra special around the par-3 16th at Canyon Meadows as well, with Rogers bringing some of the Blue Jays spirit to the course. Like ‘The Rink’ at the RBC Canadian Open, there is a micro-sized build out of the Rogers Centre complete with left, centre and right-field distances and foul poles amongst other Blue Jays-inspired designs. That, Weir said, is something he’s extra excited about this year along with hopefully pushing through to the end of 2026 with some solid results. 

Despite the extra crowd support — Weir is one of three Canadians in the field alongside Stephen Ames and Calgary’s own Wes Martin — it may be tough to beat Johnson, again, this week on PGA Tour Champions. He’s refreshed and ready. And he’s thrilled at the opportunity to win another big event on the schedule. 

“Everything about this event — which I was told is spectacular — so far this place has not disappointed. And it won’t,” Johnson said. “I can already feel it.” 

It’s a night that most Toronto Blue Jays fans probably aren’t ready to relive. Yet Game 7 of the 2025 World Series not only brought one of the most significant seasons in franchise history to a heartbreaking end, but also put a bow on a Fall Classic that immediately entered the pantheon of the greatest ever played.

So, like it or not, the seven-game thriller will be dissected and analyzed for years to come. And no game from the series will be revisited more often than the Los Angeles Dodgers’ improbable extra-inning victory at Rogers Centre.

With the Commissioner’s Trophy on the line, the Dodgers sent two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani to the mound opposite Blue Jays veteran and future Hall of Famer Max Scherzer.

But even as the two heavyweights went toe-to-toe, it didn’t take long for Toronto to strike first.

Bo Bichette, essentially playing on one leg after returning from a knee injury that kept him out for the first two rounds of October, provided the signature swing of his seven-year Blue Jays career to open the scoring.

With one out in the third inning, and George Springer on third and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. on first, Bichette was first-pitch swinging on a middle-middle slider from Ohtani. He unloaded, driving the ball 442 feet and well over the wall in centre field before emphatically dropping his bat as the Toronto faithful erupted into celebration.

“When he hit that, (after) they walked Vlad intentionally, it’s a first-pitch hanging breaking ball, and he waffles it,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said in Part 7 of the Sportsnet documentary, The Blue Jays Way, commemorating the franchise’s 50th season. “I thought, ‘OK, here we go. We got this.’”

(The seventh part of The Blue Jays Way: Born Ready will air on Sunday, Aug. 23, after Toronto’s game against the New York Yankees on Sportsnet and Sportsnet+.)

Holding that 3-0 lead, Toronto would allow the Dodgers to score on sacrifice flies in the fourth and sixth innings, but added an insurance tally in the bottom of the sixth on Andrés Giménez’s RBI double that scored Ernie Clement from second.

That extra run gave the Blue Jays some breathing room and helped them take a 4-3 lead into the ninth after a solo homer from Max Muncy in the eighth.

However, it was in that fateful ninth inning that the baseball gods intervened.

With a full count, one out, Shohei Ohtani on deck and Los Angeles’ nine-hole hitter Miguel Rojas at the plate, the Dodgers second baseman hit one of the most unlikely homers you’ll ever see off Blue Jays closer Jeff Hoffman.

“I don’t think that was on anybody’s bingo card,” Dodgers star first baseman Freddie Freeman said in The Blue Jays Way. “To hit a slider with two strikes, top nine in Game 7 of the World Series to tie the game, that’s only a thing you can dream about in the backyard.”

Rojas’s blast levelled the score at 4-4, but it wasn’t the last dramatic moment he would have in that inning.

After the Blue Jays loaded the bases with one out in the bottom half, centre-fielder Daulton Varsho pounded a grounder at the drawn-in Rojas, sending the 36-year-old onto his back knee to field the ball. Rojas steadied himself to his feet and managed to throw a strike to catcher Will Smith, nabbing a hard-charging Isiah Kiner-Falefa by a matter of inches at the plate.

“He kind of stumbled. In my mind, I was waiting for one of three things to happen,” Schneider said. “I was waiting for him to just miss the ball, (for him) to try and get up and fall — you know when you fall on your butt, and you can’t make a throw — or three, throw a worm-burner or over Will Smith’s head.

“And when none of those happened, I almost couldn’t believe it.”

Although the ball beat Kiner-Falefa to the plate, Smith’s foot did lift slightly as he received the throw, opening the window for a video review to change the ruling on the field. But the call was confirmed, and the two sides played on.

It set the stage for Ernie Clement, who had set the MLB record for hits in a single post-season earlier in the evening, to come to the plate in a dream scenario.

Tie game, bases loaded, two outs, bottom of the ninth in Game 7 of the World Series.

And Clement wasted no time, going after a curveball below the zone and lofting the pitch to deep left field. Dodgers outfielders Enrique Hernández and Andy Pages came together as they chased after the potential championship-clinching drive, but after they collided, the ball settled in Pages’ glove for the game-saving out.

“I was looking for a curveball in that moment because I knew (Yoshinobu Yamamoto) wanted to steal Strike 1 or get me to swing at something that I wasn’t necessarily looking for,” Clement said of the at-bat in the documentary. “I’m just waiting for the ball to fly out of their mitt, waiting for the ball to go flying and we win the World Series.

“I don’t see the ball go anywhere, and I’m just like, ‘No way.’ What an absolute phenomenal play.”

So, off to extras the game went, adding yet another layer to the roller-coaster series.

After both offences came up scoreless in the 10th, Smith provided what turned out to be the decisive blow: a two-out solo homer into the left-field bullpen off prized Blue Jays deadline acquisition Shane Bieber.

“This game is not for the faint of heart, that’s for sure,” Bieber said in Part 7. “Giving up that homer, I think about it quite a bit. All you can do is try to use it to your advantage to fuel what’s ahead of you.”

The Blue Jays pushed for an equalizer in the bottom of the 11th, moving Guerrero Jr. to third after his leadoff double with a sacrifice bunt. But the Dodgers walked Addison Barger and induced a double-play ball off the bat of Alejandro Kirk to clinch their second consecutive title.

“You’re up 3-2 (in the series), and you lose,” Guerrero Jr. said. “It hurt, but it’s part of baseball. And (I) got to live with that all my life, and there’s nothing that I can go back and change.”

“If we would’ve played against them, and it would’ve been a noticeable difference of who the better team was, I think it would’ve been a lot easier to swallow that loss,” Toronto starter Kevin Gausman added.

The loss led to a scene in Toronto’s locker room unlike anything baseball had seen before. As the 2025 Blue Jays, a true band of brothers, reckoned with their season coming to an end, they shed tears and spoke openly to reporters and to each other about how special their bond was throughout their run to Game 7.

“We took our time post-game, feeling all those emotions,” Bieber said. “Individually and as a team. And probably a few days, weeks after that, as well.”

Once the pain of coming oh so close to winning it all subsided, Toronto’s players eventually had the chance to appreciate just how special the 2025 season had been.

The Blue Jays went from a fifth-place finish in the division in 2024 to winning the franchise’s seventh AL East title while becoming just the third team in franchise history to capture the American League pennant.

“I was proud of myself, proud of my teammates, because we did it all. We gave it all the effort we had. We grinded, we did everything to try and win,” Guerrero Jr. said. “But I know, one day, we’re going to celebrate winning a World Series.”