MARANA, Ariz. -- There was a lefthanded shot out of the sagebrush, a couple of erratic putts and considerable bit of coughing from a cold he got from his kids last week in Florida. But in the end there was a narrow victory for Tiger Woods.
Woods said neither he nor his opponent in the first round of the Accenture World Golf Championships Match Play, the Spaniard Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano,...
Copyright © 2012 Newsday. All rights reserved.
]]>The A’s? “Team Irrelevant”? Grabbing supposedly the best Cuban baseball playing defector available, Yoenis Cespedes, for $36 million? Then signing Manny Ramirez? The A’s?
Welcome to the New World of Moneyball. No longer when a journalist asks GM Billy Beane whether we’ll recognize any members of the A’s will he be able to respond, if tongue in cheek, “Do you ever?”
Copyright 2012 SF Newspaper Company
]]>LOS ANGELES -- Perspective is required in judging sports in Southern California, a place where the Angels play in Anaheim but call it Los Angeles, the Dodgers have gone from greatness to embarrassment and for nearly two decades the NFL has been an absentee.
The chaos, organized as it may have been, leaves the Los Angeles Lakers as the only pro team north of San Diego which really matters and its main man, one Kobe Bryant, as keeper of the kingdom, not to mention current leading scorer in the NBA.
© RealClearSports 2012
]]>PACIFIC PALISADES, CALIFORNIA -- Jack Nicklaus said he "loved option holes," and the beguiling 10th at Riviera Country Club, only 315 yards long, with a rolling green surrounded by bunkers, was one of his favorites. Bill Haas would like to second the motion.
Haas knocked in a 45-foot birdie putt Sunday at the 10th, the second hole of a three-way sudden-death playoff, to beat Phil Mickelson and Keegan Bradley and win the Northern Trust Open.
Copyright 2012 Global Golf Post
]]>PACIFIC PALISADES, CALIFORNIA -- Sergio Garcia has started the PGA Tour season with some leftover momentum from two late victories on the European Tour in Spain last year. Garcia raised some eyebrows at the Northern Trust Open on Sunday afternoon with a 6-under 30 on the back nine his first nine of the day. He finished with 64, low round of the tournament...
Copyright 2012 Global Golf Post
]]>PACIFIC PALISADES, CALIFORNIA -- The mirrors were taped to the sides of the car, a Ford Focus. "They fell off too much," Keegan Bradley remembered.
Not what you want to make an impression at Augusta National. Or even at the Subway sandwich shop down the street.
Bradley's mode of transportation is better now. It should be. He won the PGA Championship...
Copyright 2012 Global Golf Post
]]>LOS ANGELES — He made a bogey. After 49 holes. And who knows how many air miles? Phil Mickelson, jet-setter, pacesetter, has brought his game down the California coast in a big way.
Pebble Beach? Riviera? He just keeps flying along, literally and figuratively.
The first round of the Northern Trust Open on Thursday ended...
© RealClearSports 2012
]]>LOS ANGELES — And now this week’s distillation of the PGA Tour: Phil is here, and Tiger isn’t.
Here being the Northern Trust Open, which used to be called the Los Angeles Open. Here being Riviera Country Club.
A lot of Hollywood in the history of Riviera. A lot of Hollywood is in pro golf, in every sport.
© RealClearSports 2012
]]>"This is unbelievable. I’ve never been part of something like this," Jeremy Lin said. But not about becoming the toast of New York, about signing with the Warriors.
Hey, the young man had to start some place.
He was a curiosity, a hometown kid...
Copyright 2012 SF Newspaper Company
]]>PEBBLE BEACH, CALIFORNIA — This isn't the old Tiger Woods. This is the Tiger Woods who teases and frustrates. This is the Tiger Woods who gets himself into position to win but doesn't win, in fact in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am doesn't even finish in the top 10.
This isn't the old Tiger Woods, and maybe it's time to wonder if it ever will be. All he had in front of him Sunday were Charlie Wi and Ken Duke...
Copyright 2012 Global Golf Post
]]>