Yahoo Sports AM: The rise of the mallet putter

🏀 WNBA in Cleveland? Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert is leading a group that hopes to bring a WNBA expansion team to Cleveland. The 12-team league is already adding three franchises in the next two years and wants to get to 16 teams by 2028.

📺 ESPN axing "ATH": "Around the Horn" will reportedly come to an end next summer after anchoring ESPN's 5pm ET window alongside "PTI" for 23 uninterrupted years.

🏈 Hall of Fame semifinalists: Eli Manning, Antonio Gates and Adam Vinatieri headline the list of 25 semifinalists for the Pro Football Hall of Fame's Class of 2025.

⛳️ The rise of the mallet putter

Mallet putters have become ubiquitous among top professional golfers, and the once-niche club has helped fuel two historically great seasons in 2024.

Weapon of choice: 21 of the world's top 30 male golfers, and seven of the top 10, used mallet putters as of July — a stark contrast to 20 years ago, when 17 of the top 20 preferred blades. 34 of 46 PGA Tour events this year were won by a mallet-wielding golfer, and they've gained traction on the LPGA Tour, too: every top-10 player uses one.

How we got here: The original 15th-century design from Scotland — a wooden putter called a "cleek" — eventually gave way to the first metal putters in the late-1800s. Those have since evolved into the modern blade, which provides more feedback and feel.

Mallet putters began gaining steam with the 2001 introduction of the Odyssey 2-ball. They provide more stability and forgiveness thanks to a heavier club face and a high MOI (Moment of Inertia), which protects against putts that miss the center of the club face.

Despite those benefits, plenty of golfers still swear by the blade, which offers more precision and is thus considered better on fast greens and for golfers with an arc stroke.

One notable blade enthusiast? Tiger Woods, who won 14 of his 15 majors, 66 of his 82 PGA Tour titles and $94 million with his iconic Scotty Cameron, which remains in his bag today.

The mallet effect: Putts comprise roughly 40% of all strokes (~28 of 70 per round) on the PGA Tour. So yes, a single club can make a huge difference. Just ask top-ranked Scottie Scheffler and Nelly Korda, who found great success in 2024 after embracing the mallet.

Scheffler's putting was the one thing holding him back early this year, and his switch to a mallet at Bay Hill immediately paid dividends: He won four of his next five starts and eight of his final 15, including the Masters, Tour Championship and Olympics.

Korda, to be fair, won six times this year with her blade. But after missing three straight cuts and recovering from injury, she switched to a mallet. Since then, she's finished 2nd, 5th and 1st in LPGA events, and drained five straight birdie putts on Sunday to win The Annika.

What to watch: Korda, who won the LPGA's player of the year award on Wednesday, tees off today at the season-ending Tour Championship. She's going for her eighth win of the year, which would be the most since Lorena Ochoa won eight times in 2007.

🏀 Geno makes history: 1,217 wins

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By the numbers: In addition to having the most wins, Auriemma also has the most national championships (11), the most Final Fours (23) and the best winning percentage (.882) in D1 history. He's guided the Huskies to 59 conference titles and six perfect seasons, while coaching 27 All-Americans and five No. 1 overall WNBA draft picks.

From the ground up: Auriemma, who turned 70 in March, has spent four decades building UConn into the standard for women's basketball. His Huskies program has become so powerful, so synonymous with winning, that it's easy to forget what he inherited in 1985.

When Auriemma came to UConn as a 31-year-old, he saw it as a stepping-stone job: Win a bit, then move on to a more established program. Championship basketball wasn't supposed to emanate from UConn; Auriemma could see that.

During his interview, then-UConn athletic director John Toner intentionally avoided showing Auriemma the gym or the locker room out of fear that he would turn down the job. After Auriemma took the job anyway, he shared a single office with his entire staff. He and longtime assistant Chris Dailey each had a desk; the rest of the staff shared a single couch.

Auriemma's and Dailey's coaching contracts stipulated they teach gym classes to non-athletes. Attendance was so poor at UConn games that they made it a class requirement for students.

— Chantel Jennings, The Athletic ($)

Legends come home: Rebecca Lobo, Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi and Maya Moore were among the 63 former Huskies on hand at Gampel Pavilion — a who's-who of basketball royalty, all there to honor their teacher. Not bad for a guy who got into coaching by accident.

🏈 The 2025 QB class is looking bleak

A year ago, it was how many. Today, it's do we have any? As the college football season barrels toward December, NFL teams looking for a franchise QB are running out of time.

From Yahoo Sports' Charles Robinson:

The topic of conversation a year ago was the availability of potential franchise QBs in the 2024 NFL Draft. And by mid-November of 2023, there was little doubt that coming wave of talent had positioned the league on the doorstep of a bumper crop of players.

It was a class that had a perceived generational talent (Caleb Williams), a fast riser (Jayden Daniels), a nitpicked-but-abundantly talented prototype (Drake Maye), a winner with raw upside (J.J. McCarthy) and two deeply experienced starters who were seen as ready-to-start rookies (Michael Penix Jr. and Bo Nix).

For personnel departments, this was the QB feast. And now, the famine. That continues to be the general consensus of a dozen sources across the spectrum, from GMs to area scouts, who spoke to Yahoo Sports.

The common thread through the class that is deflating: A megawatt star hasn't emerged. So much so that if the entirety of the 2025 QB class was measured against the 2024 class, the best player in the 2025 class may not have come off the board until after the top six players from the 2024 class.

Top 5 QB prospects, in no particular order… Shedeur Sanders (Colorado), Cam Ward (Miami), Quinn Ewers (Texas), Carson Beck (Georgia), Jalen Milroe (Alabama).

🏀 NBA experts: Most intriguing development at the one-month mark?

With the NBA season approaching the one-month mark, our experts shared their biggest takeaways.

Most intriguing development so far?

Vincent Goodwill: The Rockets being competent. We could kind of see this coming with Ime Udoka working his magic and getting this team to be passable last year. Now, they're top four in the West with a deep team (seven guys score in double figures), impressive point differential (+8.4), a good mix of youth and vets, and plenty of assets to put themselves in position to trade for the next disgruntled star.

Ben Rohrbach: Giannis Antetokounmpo. Does he become available? It felt like there was a zero percent chance of that before the season. A month into it? There is a chance, even if it is a slim one. The Bucks are not contenders as currently constituted, and no amount of tinkering around the edges can change that.

Dan Titus: Dyson Daniels. The Great Barrier Thief has become one of the league's most versatile and disruptive defenders, averaging 3.1 steals and 1 block per game. He is well on his way to earning his first All-Defensive team nod, while also putting up career-highs in usage rate, points, rebounds, assists and 3s made per game.

Dan Devine: This might be nothing, but way more defenses seem to be cranking up their full-court pressure. Two seasons ago, no team broke out a press on more than five defensive possessions per game. Last season, two did. So far this season, seven have. They're probably doing it for a reason, and it's probably worth keeping an eye on.

📆 Nov. 21, 1920 and 1969: Two stars are born

104 years ago today, Stan Musial was born in Donora, Pennsylvania. Exactly 49 years later, Ken Griffey Jr. was born in the same tiny town.

What are the odds? One of my favorite bits of trivia is that Ken Griffey Jr. — one of the best to ever do it — somehow has the second-most WAR, hits, runs, RBIs and MVPs among left-handed outfielders born on Nov. 21 in Donora.

Consider this: Donora (current population: 4,500) has produced the same number of Hall of Famers as Philadelphia (Roy Campanella) and Pittsburgh (Bobby Wallace) combined.

Fun fact… One of Musial's teammates on the Donora High School baseball team was Griffey's grandfather, Joseph.

📺 Watchlist: Golf all day

Three golf tournaments begin today, including the season finales for both the PGA and LPGA Tours and a new-look edition of "The Match."

LPGA: Tour Championship (8am ET, ESPN+; 3pm, Golf) … A women's golf record $4 million is on the line at Tiburon Golf Club in Naples, Florida.

PGA: RSM Classic (9am, ESPN+; 12pm, Golf) …The 47th and final event of the year tees off at Sea Island Golf Club on St. Simons Island, Georgia.

The Match: Superstars* (7:30pm, Max) … The Breakers in West Palm Beach hosts the 10th edition of the celebrity event, which looks a bit different this time.

More to watch:

🏈 NFL: Steelers at Browns (8:15pm, Prime)

🏀 NCAAM: No. 13 Baylor at No. 22 St. John's (7pm, CBSSN); Syracuse at Texas (7pm, ESPN2); Virginia at No. 11 Tennessee (9pm, CBSSN)

🏈 NCAAF: NC State at Georgia Tech (7:30pm, ESPN)

🏀 NBA: Pistons at Hornets (7pm, NBA)

🎾 Davis Cup: USA vs. Australia (4am, Tennis); Italy vs. Argentina (11am, Tennis) … Quarterfinals.

*The Match: The two-day tournament for $1 million features eight celebrities (Ken Griffey Jr, Charles Barkley, Wayne Gretzky, Michael Phelps, Blake Griffin, Bill Murray, Mark Wahlberg, Nate Bargatze) playing 2v2 quarterfinals tonight followed by individual semifinals and finals tomorrow.

🏈 NFL trivia

Mike Tomlin, whose incredible run of non-losing seasons will extend to 18 with a win tonight, is one of five active NFL head coaches with 100+ regular-season wins (181).

Question: Who are the other four?

Hint: Three AFC, one NFC.

Answer at the bottom.

📸 Pic du jour: Sin City

Cool shot of the Las Vegas Grand Prix circuit from the sky... Is it just me or does it kind of look like a sideways pig?

Trivia answer: Andy Reid (267 wins), Mike McCarthy (170), John Harbaugh (167), Sean Payton (166)

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