Sports
Language barriers, culture shock, isolation: How NHL's loneliest players cope
Alexandre Carrier looked over at the stone-faced new guy to his left on the Gatineau Olympiques bench and noticed that he had another teammate’s stick in his hands. Ever the helpful sort, Carrier politely pointed out Yakov Trenin’s mistake. Trenin turned his head, stared at Carrier for a moment, and responded.
“Yes.”
Confused but also curious, Carrier then asked Trenin another question, one in which “no” was the only possible answer. Trenin again eyed him, expressionless.
“Yes.”
“I’m like, OK, he has no clue what I’m saying,” Carrier recalled with a laugh. “This was going to be a work in progress.”
Trenin was 17 years old when he left Russia to pursue his hockey dreams halfway around the world in North America. He had done his homework, too, taking classes to learn some rudimentary English so he at least could have a hope of understanding his coaches and fitting in with his teammates. The whole situation was terrifying.
Then he showed up in Quebec.
“I didn’t know they only speak French there,” Trenin said. “I was preparing for English and I get there and they all speak French.”
Trenin can laugh about it now, nearly a decade later. His English is excellent, and he’s in his fifth season with the Nashville Predators, with perpetual teammate Carrier owning the stall just across the Bridgestone Arena locker room. But when Trenin first showed up in Gatineau, he was the only Russian on the team — quite literally a stranger in a strange land. He knew nobody. He didn’t understand anybody. It was hard to make out the words the coaches were saying in team meetings. It was hard to communicate with his teammates on the ice. It was hard to fit in, to make friends, to hang out with the guys.
Carrier and the other Olympiques did their best to make Trenin feel welcome. They coaxed him into a volleyball match after a practice. They invited him to the movies “even though he didn’t understand a thing,” Carrier said. They spoke to him in their own sometimes-broken English, and Trenin — who was still new to that language and not very comfortable in it — found it easier to understand them than native English speakers because he found their accents similar to his own.
“You can’t really have a big conversation with him, so you try to just do stuff with him to make him feel part of the team,” Carrier said. “Just get him out of the house.”
Hockey is a global sport, and every time you walk into an NHL locker room, you’re liable to hear three, four, five different languages being spoken at once. Inevitable cliques form, too. The Russian players will have their locker stalls clustered together. The Czech guys on every team will all hang out away from the rink, piling into Bistro Praha for a taste of home when they roll into Edmonton. The Swedes and Finns are taught English throughout their childhoods and are usually at or near fluency, but they still congregate together and hide their conversations from prying ears by speaking their native tongue.
But not everybody has that social safety net. Sometimes, you’re the only Russian in the room, the only Czech, the only Finn, the only native French speaker. And whether you’re a teenager in juniors with no command of English or a 30-something trilingual NHL veteran, it can be difficult to be the only one from your country in the room. It’s isolating. Lonely, even.
“Sometimes, you just want to talk in your native language,” said 34-year-old Evgenii Dadonov, a 10-year NHL vet and the only Russian in the Dallas Stars room. “I can talk English, but I act a little different in Russian. I’m myself more. I’m not thinking too much when I talk and relax. In English, I’m always thinking and it’s harder to relax. It’s just something you deal with over here.”
Few players command a locker room the way Pierre-Édouard Bellemare does. He’s a big personality with a big voice, a big smile and a big laugh, and he’s everybody’s favorite teammate. As one of just two NHLers from France (Columbus’ Alexandre Texier is the other), he speaks flawless French and English, and he is fully conversant in Swedish, too. Teammates headed for summer vacations in Paris pepper him with questions and requests for restaurant recommendations. Others regularly chirp him about how “bougie” and “arrogant” the French are, and he gleefully gives it right back.
Approaching his 39th birthday and on his fifth NHL team, the Seattle Kraken, there isn’t a room in the hockey world in which Bellemare couldn’t fit in.
“I can come into a team really easily, talking to the Swedish guys or talking to the French-speaking guys or talking to the English-speaking guys,” he said. “It’s been my superpower.”
But back in 2006, Bellemare was a scared 21-year-old on the phone with his mom back in France, trying to hold back the tears because he hated walking through those doors. He had left France to play in Sweden’s second-tier league, one of the first Frenchmen to do so, and the transition had been soul-crushing. He had the skills and he had the work ethic, but he couldn’t communicate with anyone. He didn’t speak a lick of Swedish or English at the time. About the only Swedish word he knew was the one for French people, and he heard it often, usually under his new teammates’ breath as they laughed among themselves about the new guy.
The team in Leksand sent Bellemare and some of the Finnish imports to a professor’s house a few times for some basic lessons, but it was pointless, because, “At that time, I didn’t understand s—.”
“My first couple of months in Sweden were terrible,” Bellemare said. “Everybody was like, ‘Why are we bringing in a French guy? France has nothing to bring in hockey.’ This is how they saw me.”
If not for Bellemare’s mom, Frederique, his hockey career might have ended right there. But Frederique told him to embrace the challenge, that he was in Sweden not just to further his hockey career but to broaden his cultural horizons. So Bellemare broke through the language barrier like he was the Kool-Aid Homme. He learned both English and Swedish simultaneously, and shockingly fast — mostly through subtitles on movies and TV shows, as so many other international players do to hone their English once they get to the NHL.
“I was kind of in a panic mode to learn the languages,” Bellemare said. “I learned both languages really fast because I had no choice. The brain is such a wonderful thing. When you’re in a panic mode, he knows, he recognizes and suddenly you get abilities to learn a little bit faster. Nobody spoke my language, right? So I had to learn fast.”
Bellemare had to overcome more than just the language gap, though. The French had that “bougie” reputation in Sweden, too, and he had to overcome that resentment. The funny thing was that the Swedish league was the bougie one compared to what Bellemare had in France, where he was one of the country’s top players but was hardly making any money. In Sweden, he had free gear and free food. He had three hours of ice time every day instead of one. It was a hockey paradise compared to what he had in France.
So that became Mom’s advice: “Show those guys that they’re the ones who are all spoiled.”
“Once I started learning the language, they saw and said, ‘OK, this kid is trying,’” Bellemare said. “I became the hardest-working kid, and the happiest kid because I was in a sick locker room every day, with all this stuff I didn’t have back home in France. And all along, my mom was like, ‘How cool is it that a year from now, you’ll be trilingual?’ I was like, ‘That ain’t gonna happen.’ But it did happen!”
All these years later, Bellemare’s wife is Swedish and his kids, ages 6 and 4, already are bilingual, and “really close” to adding French to their repertoire.
“Like I said, it’s been a superpower,” Bellemare said, beaming. “Even though it was terrible at first.”
Unlocking the human brain’s massive potential isn’t the only silver lining that emerges from that kind of isolation. Rookie center Waltteri Merelä is the only Finn on the Tampa Bay Lightning roster, and while he admitted that he’d love to have one or two more in the room, it’s forced him to go beyond his comfort zone and make friends he might otherwise never have made.
Early in the season, Merelä and his wife learned that they live in the same neighborhood as goalies Jonas Johansson and Matt Tomkins, so they started hanging out. Now their wives and girlfriends have become close, too.
“When it’s just you, you kind of need to go find the guys that you’re going to hang out with,” Merelä said. “You don’t have that one guy you’re always hanging out with.”
Bellemare says he hasn’t experienced the animosity, othering and xenophobia in the NHL that he faced in Sweden. In his experience, the European players in the NHL typically bond over their cultural overlaps rather than focus on the divisions. There are Finns who played in Sweden, Czechs who played in Finland, Slovaks who played in Russia, Russians who played in Germany, and on and on. By the time they get to the NHL, many Europeans have a history with their new teammates, or at least some shared heritage to bond over. Which leads to a lot of good-natured chirping, particularly when a tournament like the World Junior Championship is going on.
The Swedish-Finnish rivalry is as heated as it gets, and that allows a rookie like Merelä to walk into the room and start giving it to a future Hall of Famer like Victor Hedman.
“Yeah, I can talk s— with him,” Merelä said. “But he’s always talking s— to me about Finland. It’s fun, it’s just a normal thing. It helps make you a part of everything.”
English is the universal language in hockey, the skeleton key to communication between nations. Many Europeans come to North America fluent, but nearly all can speak the language a little.
“The first few years, you just hang out with the Europeans,” said Buffalo’s Zemgus Girgensons, the only Latvian on the Sabres roster. “If you all don’t talk that great of English, you can talk to each other and help each other learn. You just manage, and try to learn English as fast as you can.”
In the rare instance when a player doesn’t speak any English at all, teams will sometimes go to great lengths to help them feel comfortable — especially for a potential star player. When the Blackhawks signed Artemi Panarin and brought him over from Russia for the 2015-16 season, they also signed Panarin’s buddy and SKA Saint Petersburg teammate Viktor Tikhonov, who grew up in San Jose, Calif., and speaks perfect English and Russian. Tikhonov could play, but he was brought over more to be Panarin’s friend and guide to America than he was to provide scoring depth. Once Panarin had his feet underneath him, Tikhonov was rather coldly traded to Arizona.
Some friends of the SKA Saint Petersburg program went so far as to set up Panarin with an interpreter, Andrew Aksyonov, who, along with his wife, Yulia Mikhaylova, were Saint Petersburg natives who had been living in Chicago. The couple picked Panarin up at the airport, took him into their home and showed him where to get groceries and the like. It was supposed to be just until Tikhonov arrived, but they became close, and the Blackhawks even hired Aksyonov to serve as Panarin’s interpreter.
Anything to make a player feel more comfortable because anxiety off the ice easily can spill onto the ice.
And that anxiety is real. Defenseman Nikita Zaitsev, now the only Russian in the Blackhawks room, said the hardest thing when he first came to North America, leaving Moscow in the KHL for Toronto in the NHL at age 25, was English slang and hockey vernacular. His English was quite good, but he kept hearing words he had never heard before, lingo that’s commonplace in the NHL but gets lost in translation. So he leaned heavily on the other Russian in the room, winger Nikita Soshnikov.
“You just want to confirm something, make sure you’re hearing the right thing,” Zaitsev said. “It can be hard. Sometimes you just want to talk to somebody in Russian. You need that. It’s always going to be hard, especially that first year.”
The culture shock, of course, goes beyond the language. If you come from a small town in Russia or Czechia or wherever and you land in, say, New York or Los Angeles or Toronto, it can be overwhelming. Merelä, for one, is grateful he ended up in Tampa — a real city, yes, but a more manageable one, with a laidback vibe.
“We don’t have really big cities in Finland,” he said. “There are a couple of OK ones, a couple hundred thousand people, but nothing like (North America). So this is probably one of the best places to play. You can figure it out pretty fast and it’s not that big. It’s easy to live here and the weather’s good and all the people are nice. Maybe if I went to some other place, it wouldn’t have been as good.”
Joining a new team is never easy. Joining a new continent is something else entirely. There’s so much to navigate, so much to absorb, so much to learn. And doing it while feeling isolated and alone is almost hard to fathom. So, in Girgensons’ words, “You manage. You figure it out.” Eventually, your new home becomes simply home, and teammates and friendships transcend borders and languages.
But still, even after fully assimilating into North American life, it’s always nice to have someone from back home at your side.
“It’s less of an issue now that I’ve been here a while, but it’s still easier to talk to somebody that speaks your language, and who you can talk to about the news going on in Russia,” Trenin said. “When (the team) brings someone from your country, it’s exciting. You stick together.”
Then he smiled.
“Even if you don’t really like them.”
(Illustration: Sean Reilly / The Athletic; Photos: John Russell, Bill Wippert, Christopher Mast / NHLI via Getty Images)
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Jameis Winston traded the gridiron for the world’s game this summer, living it up with a different kind of football (and football fans) as a FOX Sports World Cup correspondent for the 2026 tournament.
Winston — the 2013 Heisman Trophy winner and current quarterback for the New York Giants — will take the hype around the largest World Cup yet, as a 48-team tournament co-hosted by the United States, Mexico and Canada.
Here’s a look at some of the best moments from Winston’s World Cup journey:
Jameis “Man of the People” Winston
Not only is Winston making a massive impact on fans at the World Cup, but he’s also carving out a brand-new reputation. Thanks to his larger-than-life personality, he is quickly becoming the ultimate “man of the people.”
He’s been connecting with fans at every turn, even handing over his No. 4 United States jersey to a local fan in the crowd.
“He just gifted me his jersey,” one fan said. “This is unbelievable. My grandma will hate me for that. I’m speechless. This is amazing. Whoever said the U.S. can’t do soccer? Go USA. Go America.”
If there’s one thing Winston has accomplished throughout this World Cup, it’s proving that he truly is a man of the people.
Inside Look at Winston’s Epic Week-Long Celebration with U.S. and Australian Fans
Winston’s World Cup journey continues as he sets out to assemble the loudest possible “USA” chants. The momentum started earlier in the week at a Seattle Mariners game, where he successfully rallied an entire section into full-voice chants.
He took that to the pre-game show, along with a countdown to the USA vs. Australia matchup. His goal was simple and that was to bring both fanbases together while highlighting what makes American and Australian soccer cultures special.
“My mission today is to allow Aussies to hear the USA chants from sea to shining sea,” Winston said.
The United States defeated Australia 2-0 on Friday night, and Winston matched the crowd’s energy throughout. As tensions rose following several hard challenges on the pitch, he kept the atmosphere lively by engaging in plenty of friendly trash talk with opposing fans.
“The Australian team…they just don’t know what to do with us,” Winston said. “They’re turning to violence. That’s what little cousins do when they can’t fight.”
Despite the result not going Australia’s way, Winston embraced the opportunity to connect with the Australian fans throughout the week. While Americans have their own traditions, few experiences topped Winston’s firsthand look at Australia’s famous shoey celebration.
Winston witnessed one of Australia’s most famous traditions firsthand as fans drank beer from a shoe.
“They showed us an amazing tradition in Australian culture,” Winston said. “I’m talking about drinking a brew from a shoe. You gotta love traditions.”
Ready For USA-Australia in Seattle
Emerald City is ready! Seattle has a legit claim at being one of the most soccer-crazed cities in the country. Winston joined the American Outlaws – the official supporters’ group of the U.S. teams – before Friday’s huge match.
Seattle is awash in red, white, and blue and this city knows how to get behind a winner, having just recently celebrated the Super Bowl-winning Seahawks.
Convinced Mariners Fans To Start “USA” Chants
Winston has now found himself at a Seattle Mariners game, where he was honored with the opportunity to throw out the ceremonial first pitch. Next, he’ll turn his attention to soccer as the United States men’s national team prepares to face Australia at Seattle Stadium on Friday night.
During his appearance at T-Mobile Park, Winston rallied the crowd into a loud chorus of “USA” chants. His mission was to create the biggest chant possible in Seattle, and by all accounts, he succeeded.
As Winston’s World Cup journey continues across the country, he is bringing fans together through a shared love of the game. The roaring “USA” chant at the Mariners game was another example of his ability to connect with sports fans wherever he goes.
That’s ‘Sir’ Jameis Winston To You
Now, it doesn’t seem likely that these England supporters actually have the royal authority to knight Jameis Winston, but listen: it’s the World Cup, everyone is having a good time, so, Sir Jameis Winston it is, even if just for a day.
Even if being knighted is an ephemeral act, that kit is not: Winston now has himself an England jersey with his name on it. A knight’s cuirass? Brigandine? Hauberk? His chain mail? Whichever it’s standing in for, it’s custom just for Jameis.
Catching The Perfect Angle of Lionel Messi’s Golazo
Lionel Messi has completely taken over Argentina’s opening FIFA World Cup match against Algeria, scoring not one, not two but three goals, completing the hat trick. He would have even had a fourth if he hadn’t been ruled offside earlier in the first half.
Jameis Winston had the best angle on Messi’s golazo and was seen celebrating with fans in Argentina’s section. He was also wearing a customized “Winston Argentina” jersey.
A Goat Dressed As Messi The GOAT
Tuesday ahead of Argentina’s World Cup opener against Algeria in Kansas City, Winston was getting pumped for the match. But he wasn’t alone.
Winston had a pal with him, a literal real-life goat named Wesley, who was perfectly dressed for the occasion in a Lionel Messi jersey. This World Cup is expected to be Messi’s last, and because of that, it’s worth celebrating and savoring every moment the GOAT is on the pitch.
It’s not often to see a goat, much less one adorned in the trademark colors of a living legend, being at the center of attention ahead of one of the most anticipated games at the tournament. But Wesley-dressed-as-Messi deserves all the love he was shown in KC.
Winning Over Fans By Helping Clean Dallas Stadium at the World Cup
Winston continues to be a national treasure when it comes to his involvement in the World Cup this year. He was spotted helping Japanese fans clean up the stands (a tradition that was spotlighted after the team’s first World Cup in 1998) following Japan’s thrilling 2-2 draw with the Netherlands on Sunday afternoon.
The FOX Sports broadcast team, featuring Rob Stone, couldn’t contain their excitement for Winston as the feed shifted over to him in the crowd.
“Jameis Winston is working with the Japanese national team to clean up Dallas Stadium,” Stone said. “He’s a man of the people. Show me a number one draft pick in NFL history who takes out his own garbage bag and cleans up inside the stadium.
One of the Japanese fans later described how he was surprised to see an NFL quarterback joining the clean-up effort, but was appreciative on Winston joining the cherished tradition.
Riding The Dutch ‘Oranje Army’ Bus
Jameis got up close and personal with one of the best fan bases in the world in Dallas, where the Netherlands and the always raucous “Oranje Army” know how to make an entrance.
Winston rode along with the Dutch fans in their “Oranje Army Bus” and admitted that “there’s nothing bigger than the Dutch Army.”
Witnessing USA’s Win With IShowSpeed
USA! USA!
Jameis took in the sights and sounds at Los Angeles Stadium for the United States’ opening match Friday, which included meeting up with influencer IShowSpeed. Not a bad way to see one of the USA’s biggest wins ever at a World Cup.
Nneka Ogwumike called game.
The 10-time WNBA All-Star and Sparks forward hit a 25-foot, buzzer-beating three-point shot from the left wing to give the Sparks an electric 98-97 come-from-behind win over the New York Liberty on Sunday at Crypto.com Arena.
In a rematch of the WNBA’s first-ever game from June 21, 1997, the Sparks overcame a 17-point Liberty lead, all while celebrating the inaugural matchup — and iconic alumni — that changed women’s sports forever.
“It feels really good,” Ogwumike said in a postgame interview through tears. “I’ve been with the Sparks for so long. … It’s emotional seeing all of these legends in the building — people who didn’t get paid their values — coming in here and supporting us. I’m so grateful.”
Ogwumike led the Sparks with a game-high 24 points on 11-of-18 shooting while the rest of the starting lineup — Dearica Hamby, Erica Wheeler, Kelsey Plum and Ariel Atkins — all finished in double figures.
Guard Rae Burrell, celebrating her 26th birthday, scored 19 off the bench.
“I’m just happy that I was able to contribute in any way to get this W, especially the birthday dub,” Burrell said.
New York led for most of the game despite a lackluster performance from Sabrina Ionescu, who finished with two points. The rest of the Liberty’s starting five — Breanna Stewart, Satou Sabally, Leonie Fiebich and Jonquel Jones — delivered with a combined 63 points.
It was a total team effort for the Sparks, who were extra grateful to have Plum back after she missed Wednesday’s game with a leg injury. The Sparks improved to 7-0 in games when the four-time All-Star has six-plus assists (Plum had seven), and the team posted a season-high 28 assists.
“I wish we were fully healthy,” Sparks coach Lynne Roberts said before the game, referencing the ankle sprain Cameron Brink sustained Monday against Golden State. “But we got KP. And obviously, as you guys know, she’s the head of the snake. So that gives us, the whole group, a little more confidence … a little swagger, maybe that’s the right word.”
The Sparks rode that confidence and swagger to the finish line.
Beyond Plum’s return, though, the majority of the Sparks’ energy came from the announced crowd of 18,043 and the fact that Sparks legends such as Lisa Leslie, DeLisha Milton-Jones and Tamecka Dixon, among others, were on hand for the WNBA’s 30th anniversary game.
After a halftime break honoring Sparks and Liberty legends, the Sparks seemed rejuvenated for the final 20 minutes. And after rapper Warren G performed following the third quarter, the Sparks had all the momentum, feeding off the crowd.
“It was just a level of energy in this building that it was no way we were going to lose,” Wheeler said. “I think we owed it to the organization, too.”
It was fitting that Ogwumike, the president of the WNBA’s Player Assn., scored the winning shot in front of iconic players who fought to improve the league for the current generation of players.
“I think everyone in our locker room wouldn’t have picked another person to hit that shot,” Roberts said. “Like, what she’s done for this league … she’s one of one.
“On a night like tonight, where we’re honoring the legacy, not only of the Sparks, but of the league and what [Ogwumike] has done for this league, especially recently, with getting that new [collective bargaining agreement] done — it’s powerful when you think about it.”
With Ogwumike at the forefront of the negotiations, the WNBA and its players’ union agreed to a new CBA in March that, among other things, increased the league’s salary cap from $1.5 million to $7 million and pays $14 million to retired players with five-plus years of service.
Leslie, Milton-Jones and Dixon discussed the WNBA’s 30-season landmark before the game, paying tribute to Ogwumike and reflecting on what the WNBPA has achieved.
“We were super grateful for the fact that we were thought of, because it’s easy to be forgotten, and you can really think about yourself in the moment that you’re in, but they went beyond that,” Milton-Jones said of the WNBPA.
“And that just shows who [Ogwumike] is as a person. She is an ambassador. She is someone that thinks beyond herself. … And I think that she’s done a great job of representing all players, from all walks of life, in every generation.“
Leslie talked about the importance of young women seeing what is possible as professional athletes, illuminating how a career in basketball — or any sport — can lead to high academic achievement, professional development and lives devoid of derailments.
“I think when we look at the next 30 years, it’s continuing to grow,” Leslie said. “It’s just like, we can’t be satisfied, you know? We have to continuously think about the little girls who want to be professional athletes here in our country. The benefits of being a professional athlete for a young girl are outstanding.”
Leslie added that “every moment” she and her teammates spent working tirelessly in the WNBA was to convince people that women’s basketball belonged.
“That 30 years for us; it’s amazing to be alive to see it,” Leslie said. “I’m just going to be honest, to see these women be paid, what they’re going to be paid, and to continue to grow this game — it’s outstanding.”
Sports
Teenage golfer Miles Russell delivers his dad an all-time Father’s Day experience during US Open final round
America 250: Bobby Jones
Bobby Jones was born on March 17, 1902, in Atlanta, Georgia, and became one of the greatest amateur golfers in history. As a teenager, he reached the third round of the U.S. Amateur at age 14, showing early promise. He went on to win 13 major championships, all as an amateur, a record that still stands. In 1930, Jones achieved the
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Miles Russell is the youngest player in the 2026 U.S. Open field at just 17 years old. Teeing it up in a major championship at that age, let alone making the cut as he did at Shinnecock Hills, made for an already unforgettable week for him and his family.
The young man had one final surprise up his sleeve for Sunday’s final round, however, that not only his family will cherish forever, but made plenty of golf fans watching the moment unfold a bit misty-eyed.
After hitting his approach shot into the par-4 18th, Russell’s caddie made his way over to the gallery. He proceeded to take off his caddie bib and hand it and Russell’s golf bag over to Russell’s father, Joe.
Miles Russell plays his tee shot on the 11th hole during the second round of the UNC Health Championship at Raleigh Country Club on May 29, 2026 in Raleigh, North Carolina. (Photo by Jordan Bank/Getty Images) ((Photo by Jordan Bank/Getty Images))
TEENAGE PHENOM MILES RUSSELL MAKES ENTIRE GOLF WORLD FEEL OLD WITH EYE-POPPING QUOTE AHEAD OF US OPEN DEBUT
According to the NBC broadcast, the entire thing was Russell’s idea. He approached USGA rules officials before teeing off on Sunday to ask them if it was okay to have his dad take over caddying duties for the final hole, and they gave him the green light.
Talk about a Father’s Day gift that may never be topped.
“It was pretty cool,” Russell said after Sunday’s final round. “Just there walking up 18, that’s when he stepped in. It was kind of a fun Father’s Day gift. Kind of cool since it was my first one. Hopefully it’s something he’ll remember for a long time.”
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Amateur Miles Russell of the United States walks across the 16th hole during the first round of the 126th U.S. OPEN at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club on June 18, 2026 in Southampton, New York. (Photo by Andrew Redington/Getty Images) (Andrew Redington/Getty Images)
Russell shot 3-over in the opening two rounds of the U.S. Open to make the cut by two shots. During Saturday’s third round, he struggled a bit en route to a 74, but backed it up with a final round score of even par.
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Miles Russell on the seventh tee during the first round of 126th U.S. Open Championship at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club on June 18, 2026 in Southampton, New York. (Photo by Tracy Wilcox/PGA TOUR via Getty Images) (Tracy Wilcox/PGA TOUR via Getty Images)
Russell qualified for this week’s U.S. Open after advancing in the final stage of qualifying in a three-man playoff vying for two spots in the field. He had Charlie Woods, Tiger’s son, on the bag as his caddie during the qualifier. Both Woods and Russell have committed to play college golf at Florida State.
In 2024, Russell became the youngest player in Korn Ferry Tour history to make the cut in a tournament, eventually finishing T-20
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