Read a real edition.

Good morning.

Four of your five subjects did not compete this week, and two of them are no worse off for it. Nelly Korda's Race to CME Globe lead is still well over 500 points, and Rory McIlroy sits 307.76 points behind Patrick Reed, who is injured and out of the Dunhill Links. Lando Norris was the only one who competed, and an Alpine collision in Baku ended his race and left him 116 points behind Kimi Antonelli.

Joshua Shaw, Editor

Fulham wait out a three-week break in 19th

FULHAM HAVE NOT PLAYED  since the 1-1 draw with Manchester United on 20 September, and they will not play again until 10 October. The Premier League has stopped for three weeks, the first time its calendar has held an international break of that length. Álvaro Arbeloa's side spend the pause in 19th place, with two points from five games and still no league win. Only Tottenham sit lower, level on points but three goals worse on goal difference. Seventeenth place is a single point away.

The break interrupted a run of three matches without defeat. A goalless draw at Anfield on 12 September was followed by a 3-2 Carabao Cup win at West Ham three days later, with Oscar Bobb scoring the winner in the 78th minute. Manchester United came to Craven Cottage next. Fulham went ahead on 63 minutes when Lammens, in the United goal, pushed out a Calvin Bassey shot and it went in off Lisandro Martínez. Matheus Cunha's deflected shot drew United level in the 89th minute. The expected-goals figures were almost identical, 1.57 to United's 1.59. Roundtable, a sports news site, wrote on 24 September that the break had arrived just as Fulham were "starting to find their groove".

Around a dozen Fulham players went away on international duty, and several made news. Shea Charles won Northern Ireland's match in Georgia on 25 September with a goal in the 99th minute. His brother Pierce saved a Kvaratskhelia penalty in the same 1-0 win. David Affengruber headed his first goal for Austria in Sunday's 3-1 win over Kosovo. The goal stood after a VAR check for offside. Bobb opened the scoring for Norway in a 3-2 win over Denmark, whose side included his club team-mate Joachim Andersen. Timothy Castagne played every minute at right-back as Belgium won 2-0 in Italy. Alex Iwobi was Nigeria's standout player in their 2-1 win over Madagascar, and set up the equaliser.

Kenny Tete, concussed at Anfield, missed the United match. Arbeloa said beforehand that he expected the full-back to be fit once the break ended. Tom Cairney, the captain, is still recovering, and no return date has been given. Castagne's Belgium face France tonight, and Shea Charles's Northern Ireland meet Hungary. The squad then gathers again for a run of fixtures that a Yahoo preview on 22 September called "must-win". Ipswich come first, at Portman Road on 10 October, and Hull visit Craven Cottage a week later. Both clubs are newly promoted.

Korda sits out Arkansas and loses no ground

THE WORLD NUMBER ONE  did not play the Walmart NW Arkansas Championship at Pinnacle Country Club last week. Nelly Korda is missing from the Associated Press scores for all three rounds and from the 144-player field list published on 20 September. No withdrawal or injury was reported. She appears simply not to have entered. Jeeno Thitikul, the world No. 2, stayed away as well, so the highest-ranked player in the field was Miyu Yamashita, fifth in the world. Yuna Nishimura of Japan won by five shots at 21 under.

Korda last played competitive golf at the Solheim Cup, which Europe won 15-13 on 13 September. She took 2.5 points from four matches, and her Sunday singles win was the 12th Solheim Cup match victory of her career. Her foursomes partnership with Allisen Corpuz reached 5-0, a Solheim Cup record. Afterwards she said she had a cold, which meant 'working with 30% of my hearing for a few days'. A holiday followed. EssentiallySports reported on 19 September that she was in Greece with her fiancé, Casey Gunderson.

Standing still has cost her nothing. Korda remains world No. 1 in the Rolex rankings, with Thitikul second and Haeran Ryu third. Her Race to CME Globe total of 3,713.875 points has not moved since she tied for 50th at the FM Championship in August. The Solheim Cup carries no points, and Arkansas passed without her. Four wins this season, including the Chevron Championship and the U.S. Women's Open, have built a lead of well over 500 points, too many for any rival to overtake with a single win.

Her next start is not yet confirmed. The LOTTE Championship begins in Hawaii on Thursday, and its field preview names Thitikul as the headliner without mentioning Korda. Four Asian events follow from 15 October, and her entry to each is unconfirmed. The ANNIKA, 12 to 15 November, is her first announced start. She has won it three times, and the LPGA named her among its early commitments on 18 September.

Djokovic lands early in Beijing and gets to work

A QUIET WEEK  for Novak Djokovic was spent on a practice court in Beijing rather than in competition. He arrived in China a few days early for the China Open, whose main draw begins on Wednesday, and was hitting on the main stadium court soon after landing. His last match was his first-round defeat at the US Open on 30 August. Four weeks have passed without competition. Late in the week he showed Iga Swiatek where to stand when returning serve on the practice courts.

The Laver Cup went ahead in London without him, and Team Europe won it 13-5 on Sunday. He dropped out of the top 10 after the US Open and spent the past week at No. 12. His 2026 season stands at 14 wins and seven defeats, with no title. His best run came at the Australian Open, where he reached the final. His last win came at Wimbledon, before Jannik Sinner beat him in straight sets in the July semi-finals.

Beijing has always been good to him. He has never lost a match at the China Open, winning the title six times between 2009 and 2015 and beating Rafael Nadal in the last of those finals. That final was eleven years ago. A seventh title would be the 102nd of his career, and at 39 he would become the tournament's oldest champion, a record held by Nadal, who won it at 31 in 2017. The draw is due to be made on Monday afternoon, Beijing time, with his first match expected midweek.

What a practice court cannot show is how his body holds up across a full match. In New York he struggled with shoulder and back problems and was sick on court, though nothing was formally diagnosed and no timeline for recovery was given. Shanghai follows from 7 October, and Paris and the ATP Finals in Turin are also on his schedule.

McIlroy closes on Reed with Montgomerie's record in sight

SEVEN QUIET DAYS  followed Wentworth for Rory McIlroy. The break was scheduled rather than forced, and he carries no injury. His last competitive shots came at the BMW PGA Championship, where he eagled the 18th on the Saturday with a 4-iron from 230 yards to inside two feet and moved within two of the lead. A closing 68 took him to 15 under par and a four-way share of second. J.J. Spaun played his last five holes in four under and won by two. "I had my chances out there," McIlroy said. "Wish I had some of those putts back, but I have to be encouraged with where my game is at."

Second place counted for more because Patrick Reed was not there at the finish. Reed hurt his wrist at Wentworth and withdrew in the second round after his tee shot at the 10th, leaving the course in a cart. Reports on Sunday said he had pulled out of the Alfred Dunhill Links as well and needs more time away from competition, with no return date given. He still leads the Race to Dubai with 3,423.62 points to McIlroy's 3,115.86, but the gap has narrowed. It was 839.76 points before Wentworth. Now it is 307.76. An eighth Race to Dubai title would bring McIlroy level with Colin Montgomerie's record, and it would be his fifth in a row. "I'm not sure what Patrick's schedule looks like coming up," he said, "but I feel like I have enough opportunities."

The Presidents Cup did not go the way he wanted. At Wentworth he had said he hoped the Internationals would win, and they led 7-3 after two days at Medinah before the United States came back to win 17-13. Like Reed, McIlroy is absent from the Dunhill Links field, so his break runs into the middle of October. McIlroy returns on 15 October at the DP World India Championship in New Delhi. The Abu Dhabi Championship follows in November, and the season ends a week later at the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai. That leaves him three events in his DP World Tour season, as he noted himself. "It would be obviously amazing to match Monty's record," he said.

Norris calls for a race ban after Baku crash

AN ALPINE COLLISION  put Lando Norris out of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on Saturday, and the fault was not his. The trouble came at Turn 1 on lap 36, at the first restart after a safety car for Alex Albon's crash. Franco Colapinto locked up on cold tyres and hit his Alpine team-mate Pierre Gasly, who was pushed into Norris. All three retired. Norris had been running eighth, one place behind Gasly, after flat-spotting his tyres at the same corner earlier and dropping into the midfield. It was his first retirement since Monaco, and it ended eight straight points finishes.

McLaren's weekend had gone wrong long before the crash. Andrea Stella, the team principal, said the team had found "a deficit of power" on Norris's car and called fuel injection a "high priority". In qualifying his top speed was 3.4 km/h down on Oscar Piastri's and 11.5 km/h down on George Russell's. A lock-up on his qualifying lap left him fifth on the grid, with Russell's Mercedes on pole. Piastri ran second or third for most of the race before a late lock-up of his own, and was classified 13th. The team scored nothing. Stella admitted McLaren had "made life too difficult for our drivers today".

Norris spoke bluntly afterwards. "Just some drivers that shouldn't be in F1, to be honest," he said, before arguing that anyone who caused a crash like that on a restart deserved at least a one-race ban. "It costs a lot of money, all my parts are in the bin now." The stewards gave Colapinto a ten-second penalty, converted into a five-place grid drop for the next race. Colapinto himself was contrite, blaming "cold brakes, cold tyres". Russell, Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar all thought Norris had gone too far. Some Colapinto supporters went much further, sending Norris abuse on X that included homophobic messages. Norris had said nothing more in public by the time this issue closed.

The points table makes grim reading for the reigning champion. Norris is fourth on 186 points, 13 behind Lewis Hamilton and 116 behind Kimi Antonelli with eight races left; before Baku the gap to Antonelli was 106 with nine to go. He had played down his title hopes before the weekend began. Next comes Sepang, in Malaysia, which hosts the Bahrain Grand Prix after the race was moved from April because of the conflict in the Middle East. It will be the circuit's first Formula 1 race since 2017. Norris has said the track may suit McLaren better: "Maybe Malaysia is a better one for us."