By JILL LAWLESS and KWIYEON HA, Associated Press

TURNBERRY, Scotland — TURNBERRY, Scotland (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump ’s trip to Scotland this week will be a homecoming of sorts, but he’s likely to get a mixed reception.

Trump has had a long and at times rocky relationship with the country where his mother grew up in a humble house on a windswept isle.

He will be met by both political leaders and protesters during the visit, which begins Friday and takes in his two Scottish golf resorts. It comes two months before King Charles III is due to welcome him on a formal state visit to the U.K.

“I’m not proud that he (has) Scottish heritage,” said Patricia Sloan, who says she stopped visiting the Turnberry resort on Scotland’s west coast after Trump bought it in 2014. “All countries have good and bad that come out of them, and if he’s going to kind of wave the flag of having Scottish heritage, that’s the bad part, I think.”

Trump’s mother was born Mary Anne MacLeod in 1912 near the town of Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, one of the Outer Hebrides off Scotland’s northwest coast.

“My mother was born in Scotland — Stornoway, which is serious Scotland,” Trump said in 2017.

She was raised in a large Scots Gaelic-speaking family and left for New York in 1930, one of thousands of people from the islands to emigrate in the hardscrabble years after World War I.

MacLeod married the president’s father, Fred C. Trump, the son of German immigrants, in New York in 1936. She died in August 2000 at the age of 88.

Trump still has relatives on Lewis and visited in 2008, spending a few minutes in the plain gray house where his mother grew up.

Trump’s ties and troubles in Scotland are intertwined with golf.

He first proposed building a course on a wild and beautiful stretch of the North Sea coast north of Aberdeen in 2006.

The Trump International Scotland development was backed by the Scottish government. But it was fiercely opposed by some local residents and conservationists, who said the stretch of coastal sand dunes was home to some of the country’s rarest wildlife, including skylarks, kittiwakes, badgers and otters.

Local fisherman Michael Forbes became an international cause celebre after he refused the Trump Organization’s offer of 350,000 pounds ($690,000 at the time) to sell his family’s rundown farm in the center of the estate. Forbes still lives on his property, which Trump once called “a slum and a pigsty.”

“If it weren’t for my mother, would I have walked away from this site? I think probably I would have, yes,” Trump said in 2008 during the planning battle over the course. “Possibly, had my mother not been born in Scotland, I probably wouldn’t have started it.”

The golf course was eventually approved and opened in 2012. Some of the grander aspects of the planned development, including 500 houses and a 450-room hotel, have not been realized, and the site has never made a profit.

A second 18-hole course at the resort is scheduled to open this summer. It’s named the MacLeod Course in honor of Trump’s mother.

There has been less controversy about Turnberry on the other side of Scotland, a long-established course that Trump bought in 2014.

“He did bring employment to the area,” said local resident Louise Robertson. “I know that in terms of the hotel and the lighthouse, he spent a lot of money restoring it, so again, that was welcomed by the local people. But other than that, I can’t really say positive things about it.”

Trump has pushed for the British Open to be held at the course for the first time since 2009.

Turnberry is one of 10 courses on the rotation to host the Open. But organizers say there are logistical issues about “road, rail and accommodation infrastructure” that must be resolved before it can return.

Trump has had a rollercoaster relationship with Scottish and U.K. politicians.

More than a decade ago, the Scottish government enlisted Trump as an unpaid business adviser with the GlobalScot network, a group of business leaders, entrepreneurs and executives with a connection to Scotland. It dumped him in 2015 after he called for Muslims to be banned from the U.S. The remarks also prompted Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen to revoke an honorary doctorate in business administration it had awarded Trump in 2010.

This week Trump will meet left-leaning Scottish First Minister John Swinney, an erstwhile Trump critic who endorsed Kamala Harris before last year’s election — a move branded an “insult” by a spokesperson for Trump’s Scottish businesses.

Swinney said it’s “in Scotland’s interest” for him to meet the president.

Some Scots disagree, and a major police operation is being mounted during the visit in anticipation of protests. The Stop Trump Scotland group has encouraged demonstrators to come to Aberdeen and “show Trump exactly what we think of him in Scotland.”

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is also expected to travel to Scotland for talks with Trump. The British leader has forged a warm relationship with Trump, who said this month “I really like the prime minister a lot, even though he’s a liberal.” They are likely to talk trade, as Starmer seeks to nail down an exemption for U.K. steel from Trump’s tariffs.

There is no word on whether Trump and Starmer — not a golfer — will play a round at one of the courses.

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Lawless reported from London

RHINE-RUHR, Germany (SMU) – SMU men’s swimmer Kristaps Mikelsons and All-American diver Luke Sitz wrapped up their campaigns at the FISU World University Games in Rhine-Ruhr, Germany, on Wednesday. Sitz secured two medals for Team UniUSA. 

The sophomore earned a bronze medal in the men’s 3-meter springboard, with a score of 429.75 on July 18. Breaking a 28-year drought, Sitz’s podium finish was the first medal for Team UniUSA on 3-meter springboard since 1997.  

On Wednesday, Sitz picked up another piece of hardware, claiming a silver medal on the men’s synchronized 3-meter springboard. The U.S. pair of Sitz and Indiana University’s Joshua David Sollenberger earned a 380.34 total.  

In his final event, Sitz fell just short of medaling in the mixed team (3-meter/10-meter), placing fourth with a 393.50. 

Representing Latvia, Mikelsons also competed in Rhine-Ruhr. Mikelsons participated in four individual events: 100m breast, 200m IM, 200m breast and 50m breast.  

In the 100m breast, Mikelsons posted a time of 1:02.16. After advancing to the 200m IM semifinals, he registered a time of 2:02.43 to place 15th overall. 

The junior touched the wall at 2:16.58 in the 200m breast, leading his heat. Finally, in the 50m breast, Mikelsons recorded a 28.73. 

Mikelsons also took part in two relays, finishing in 3:29.62 in the men’s 4x100m free relay and 4:04.29 in the mixed 4x100m medley relay. 

The conditions were perfect for a big offensive performance Wednesday at Wrigley Field. The heat, paired with a breeze blowing out, could carry would-be long flyouts over the fence.

“It was a day where you were rewarded for putting the ball in the air,” manager Craig Counsell said after the Cubs’ 8-4 loss to the Royals. “And they did that part of the game certainly better than us.”

Standing in the Cubs’ way was Royals starter Seth Lugo.

It was the kind of pre-trade-deadline matchup that perfectly underlined the push-and-pull of this time of year.

The Cubs’ biggest need, with about a week before the July 31 deadline, is starting pitching. Lugo, who held the Cubs to four hits and two runs in six innings, will be highly sought after by contending teams if the Royals make him available. But their trade-deadline direction is unclear.

As of Wednesday afternoon, nine non-division-leading American League teams were within 4½ games of a wild-card spot, including the Royals (50-53). And while the -National League isn’t quite as tightly packed, it still has bubble teams such as the Cardinals. All that uncertainty of direction has pushed back deadline action.

As soon as one of those gray-area teams loses a few games, its head of baseball operations is sure to hear from organizations looking to pick off its players.

“We’ve all been there,” Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said Friday. “As an example, in ’23, I was really open with everyone: ‘Don’t feel bad. Yes, this is a little bit day-to-day here. We lose two games in a row, we may be selling, and if we win two games in a row, we might be buying.’ Teams are pretty open about that.”

The Royals inched the opposite way at Wrigley Field this week, taking two of three from the Cubs.

On the other side, the Cubs’ loss, paired with a win by the Brewers (61-41) against the Mariners, knocked the Cubs (60-42) out of a tie for the best record in the majors — and the NL Central.

Pitching opposite Lugo, the Cubs had Colin Rea, who has been a regular starter most of the year because of a wave of injuries.

Between Justin Steele’s season-ending elbow injury, Shota Imanaga’s seven-week stay on the injured list for a strained hamstring and Jameson Taillon’s calf strain at the beginning of the month, the Cubs have been without two top starters simultaneously for essentially all but the first six weeks of the season.

Rea, despite allowing six runs (five earned) in five innings against the Royals, has been key in stabilizing the rotation. But the Cubs have used bullpen days to fill the final spot in their rotation this month, further emphasizing their need for starting pitching at the deadline.

Even after surrendering a trio of two-run homers, Rea’s ERA was at a respectable 4.06.

“It’s tough to blame the pitcher,” Counsell said, noting the error that put a runner on base for the first homer and the role the hitter-friendly conditions might have played in the others.

The Cubs’ offense didn’t flash its power until Lugo was gone. Instead, it took advantage of a leadoff walk in the second inning and a leadoff hit-by-pitch in the third.

“He’s got a very expansive pitch mix, and you never really feel like you can sit on anything,” Counsell said. “He pitched well.”

Against the Royals’ bullpen, Cubs rookie Matt Shaw hit a solo homer to extend his post-All-Star-break hot streak, and Pete Crow-Armstrong launched his 27th homer of the season to retake sole ownership of the team lead.

WELLESLEY, Mass. — The Boston Fleet have hired Kris Sparre as the second head coach in the PWHL franchise’s history.

Sparre, a 38-year-old veteran assistant with no experience in the women’s game, replaces Courtney Kessel, who had a 27-19-8 record and a Walter Cup Finals appearance before leaving to take over at Princeton. Her departure leaves only two female head coaches among the PWHL’s eight teams.

“This is a league that has tremendous momentum right now. And to be able to work in a city like Boston, that has such a rich tradition in winning, and building successful teams, is something I don’t take lightly and am tremendously excited about,” Sparre said Wednesday at his introductory news conference. “I want to carry on that tradition. I want to make the Boston Fleet a championship-level program that we can all be proud of.”

A Toronto-area native, Sparre played nine seasons as a forward in the minor leagues and in Germany and coached in the OHL, AHL and Austria’s top league. He was an assistant coach for Red Bull Salzburg from 2019-21 before spending three seasons with the San Diego Gulls, the AHL affiliate of the Anaheim Ducks.

Making the move to women’s hockey gave him the chance to deal with the sport’s elite.

“It was important for me that I wanted to work with the highest level of athletes possible,” he said. “They’re motivated people. They want to get better. That’s my skillset; that’s my wheelhouse. That’s where I want to live. And so when this opportunity came up, I didn’t look at it as ‘men’s (vs.) women’s.’ I looked at as the best option to work with the best in the world.”

Fleet general manager Danielle Marmer said Sparre’s experience in the AHL, where coaches need to balance winning with player development, will make him a good fit. Marmer, who spent time in the Boston Bruins player development department, said Sparre’s lack of experience coaching women did not scare her off.

“I don’t have a concern about the fact that he hasn’t coached women’s hockey,” she said. “These are professional athletes. He’s coached professional athletes. He’s coached the best players in the game. Our players want to be treated like pros, and they want to learn from the best. And I think that’s what we’re doing here with bringing Kris in.”

The Fleet have eight players remaining from the roster that reached finals in the PWHL’s inaugural season. But they are looking to replace 36-year-old captain and league MVP finalist Hilary Knight, who was left unprotected in the expansion draft and is moving to Seattle after a season in which she tied for the league lead with 29 points.

“These are the best players in the world — the best women’s hockey players in the world,” said Sparre, who was headed out for lobster rolls after the media session. “We’ve got to be humble. … We can learn a lot from them, too.”

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AP Hockey Writer John Wawrow contributed to this report.