SF Examiner: Not everyone is built to win the U.S. Open

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

The U.S. Open places a premium on emotion and psychology. “A lot of players,” said four-time Open champion Jack Nicklaus, “are eliminated the moment the tournament starts.” Nicklaus, certainly, wasn’t in that category. Neither were Lee Janzen or the late Payne Stewart.

The Open comes to San Francisco’s Olympic Club next month for a fifth time, and for a while now, we’ve been told how in those other four the wrong man won and Olympic, out there across the Great Highway from the Pacific, is the graveyard of champions.

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Copyright 2012 SF Newspaper Company

SF Examiner: Expect the unexpected at Olympic come U.S. Open

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

Six weeks now. Six weeks until America’s golfing championship returns to that place known as the Graveyard of Legends, San Francisco’s Olympic Club, where the chill settles, the fog swirls and expectations end up buried like a ball in the thick rough.

Olympic, alongside the Great Highway, a couple hundred yards from the Pacific Ocean, where the first hole runs atop the San Andreas fault and the last hole has a green fronted by bunkers that look very much like the letters I-O-U.

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Copyright 2012 SF Newspaper Company

SF Examiner: Historic Olympic Club will pose a daunting challenge for US Open contenders

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

The trophy was there, bright and gleaming. The trophy sitting on the tee of the ridiculously lengthened eighth hole at Olympic Club. The trophy and U.S. Open, thoughts about what is coming and what has gone.

A photo day to capture the beauty of Olympic — where the second full week in June, for a fifth time, America’s golfing championship will be played in all its ecstasy and agony.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2012 SF Newspaper Company

RealClearSports: Greatness on a Monday Night

By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

It was Jimmy Cannon who wrote that it all comes down to man being great at something. He was referring specifically to Joe Namath, but the words are inclusive in sports, and the idea must be expanded to include women.

In the end, after the scandals and the embarrassments, the games and those who play them at the highest levels are what keep us from turning away, from giving up. We’re stubborn and maybe stupid. We’re also dreamers.

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© RealClearSports 2011

RealClearSports: Serena Makes a Mess of Everything

By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

NEW YORK – She was outplayed, and Serena Williams came close to making that concession in as many words. So in a way the other words, including the pointed, bitter ones she spewed at the chair umpire during the match, could be considered incidental.

Except nothing Serena does, from the way she sports those shredded shoulder T-shirts after matches to the manner she avoids direct answers to most questions is incidental.



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© RealClearSports 2011