For Scottie, a warm-up in jail, a tie for fourth

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Words never expected to be heard from any golfer, much less the No. 1 ranked player in the world.

“I did spend some time stretching in a jail cell. That was a first for me,” said Scheffler. “That was part of my warm-up. I was just sitting there waiting and I started going through my warm-up, I felt like there was a chance I may be able to still come out here and play.”   

Scottie Scheffler played Friday and quite well considering the circumstances. No, exceedingly well no matter the circumstances.   

Two rounds into the 106th PGA Championship, a tournament that may be remembered for much more than the birdies and the bogies, Scheffler, having shot 66, is tied for fourth, three shots behind leader Xander Schauffele.  

Large sporting events in general and golf tournaments, in particular, are settings for crossing roads and fairways, security people caught between order and chaos, misunderstandings and on occasion missteps.

As what happened Friday at Valhalla Golf Club where in the darkness of early morning a concession worker was killed dashing across a thoroughfare, when frantically trying to arrive for work on time, he was hit by a shuttle bus.

An accident. A traffic tie-up,  Rain falling. Impatience growing. Police doing what they’re paid to do, keeping everybody safe. Touring pros unable to do what they’re paid to do, compete.

The word is Scheffler is cool-headed and respectful. A new father. But he couldn’t get around a traffic tie-up just before the entrance to Valhalla Golf Club so he steered his courtesy car, the one with the identifying painted on the side and front, PGA Championship, onto the center median.

Bryan Gillis is a long-time Louisville police detective. He’s usually on other types of assignments but he has worked the Kentucky Derby, where attendance is above 140,000 but the spectators are behind rails and the horses follow a jockey’s instructions.

When Scheffler headed for the practice tee, Gillis ordered Scheffler to stop and when Scheffler didn’t he then grabbed the side of the vehicle.  

Gillis was dragged through the mud and was injured severely enough to need hospital treatment. Scheffler was sent to jail, where while he waited for release in a cell practiced his warm-up exercises.

Scheffler was charged with felony second-degree assault on a police officer, along with lesser charges of third-degree criminal mischief, reckless driving and disregarding signals from officers directing traffic, according to Jefferson County court records.

One of the Louisville politicians, worried that the arrest and jailing would be a large negative for Louisville, suggested the charges be dropped, which probably will happen.

What shouldn’t happen is how this all came to take place.

“I don't really know,” said a contrite Scheffler. “I feel like my head is still spinning. I can't really explain what happened this morning. I was sitting around and waiting. I started going through my routine and I tried to get my heart rate down as much as I could today, but like I said, I still feel like my head is spinning a little bit. But I was fortunate to be able to make it back out and play some golf today.”

Some very good golf, the type a No.1 ought to play. Golf that had people in a few hours selling T-shirts that read “Free Scottie.”

After a 62 at Valhalla, Schauffele says, “It’s just Thursday”

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Just Thursday. That was the reminder, the warning, if you will, from the man whose golf was just remarkable.

Just Thursday, but whatever day of the week it was becomes irrelevant after the sort of record round posted by Xander Schauffele, on day one of the PGA Championship.

The old saying echoed for years by golfers of any age is you can’t win a tournament in the first round but you can lose it. For sure Schauffele didn’t lose it.

And he certainly put himself in a beautiful position to win it.

Indeed there are three days remaining in this second major of the year, and the weather, beautiful Thursday, is forecast to turn wet and miserable, and Rory McIlroy and Brooks Koepka are only miniscule distances behind.

Still, Schauffele shot a 9-under par 62 on that course named for a mythological place of Norse warriors, Valhalla, where former champions include McIlroy and Tiger Woods.

“It’s a great start to a big tournament,” Schauffele said. “One I am obviously going to take. But it’s just Thursday, that’s about it.”

Not quite. Not when a few days ago, last Sunday to be specific, the 30-year-old Schauffele entered the Wells Fargo at Quail Hollow, and was blown away by McIlroy and ended up sighing, “When (Rory’s) on, he’s on. Hats off to him for winning. He played unbelievably well.”

As did Schauffele even though as he pointed out it might have been just Thursday.

The golfers are stronger these days, and more aggressive. The kids grow up watching The Golf Channel and ESPN. And playing in college competitions at places like Pinehurst. Numbers don’t intimidate them… Neither do absurdly long par-fives.

A 62 in a major?  Rickie Fowler did it in last year’s U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club. So did Schauffele.

Asked one of those nonsensical questions about how he would compare the 62’s, Schauffele said, “I don't know. I can't nitpick. I'll take a 62 in any major any day.”

His German-born father, Stefan, was an Olympic decathlon hopeful until a drunken driver crashed into his car which cost him an eye. An aerospace engineer, Stefan settled in the San Diego area where Schauffele was born and grew up. As everyone down there does, he surfed. Under Stefan’s coaching, Xander developed in golf, after high school enrolling at Long Beach State, then transferring to San Diego State.

He took the men’s golf gold medal in the 2016 Tokyo Olympics, yet he’s never finished higher than second in any major. Thus did that 62 at the PGA create possibility. And pressure.   

 “Yeah, I think not winning makes you want to win more, as weird as that is. For me, at least, I react to it, and I want it more and more and more, and it makes me want to work harder and harder and harder.”

A call to the post for a golf major in the Derby city

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The call to the post was being played. Not to announce the horses coming onto the track, but to tell us the luggage was arriving at the carousel.

The Derby may have been run a week and a half ago, but everything in Kentucky seems connected to racing.

Or bourbon, Or basketball. Until this week. When a golf major, the PGA Championship, returns. 

Not that people around here are going to forget the thoroughbreds — “We’ll have the Preakness on TV in the media tent Saturday,” said the golf exec — or college hoops, so help us Adolph Rupp.

He was the taskmaster known as the Baron of the Bluegrass when he coached UK to NCAA titles. It was a few years after the other school, the University of Louisville, began to get its own titles under Denny Crum. They came to appreciate Crum, who, yes, even got involved in horse racing, but Crum was from the south part of California not the south of America, and played under and became an assistant to John Wooden at UCLA.  

He started out by referring to the university and city as “Lewis-ville,” but the public forgave him. As the folks around here tell you it’s “Luville.”

And UK stands for the University of Kentucky, not the United Kingdom, although with the number of trainers and jockeys from England who show up each spring or the Derby, you might be confused.

Apropos of nothing but perhaps pertinent to a great deal, is Brit, Rory McIlroy of Northern  Ireland who along with No. 1-ranked  Scottie Scheffler, is one of the favorites at this 106th PGA at Valhalla Golf Club. 

Rory McIlroy may not know how to say Louisville, but he definitely knows how to play the course, having won the 2014 PGA Championship by a stroke over Phil Mi Mickelson, who indeed is here. As you are aware, McIlroy, in a bravura performance, won the Wells Fargo Championship last Sunday at Quail Hollow in Charlotte.

As you may not be aware, although news of a social nature travels like wildfire, McIlroy almost simultaneously filed for divorce from his wife of seven years, Erica. Strange timing some might say, but seemingly the split will not affect Rory as he seeks success. And no smart-aleck remarks that getting out of a bunker should be no problem after getting out of a marriage.

Rory will be ready. No question. We heard the call to the post, albeit for a few suitcases. Now for the golfers, the flag is up.

At a Valhalla PGA, memories of Tiger making history

LOUISVILLE,  KY. —  This is bluegrass country. The way the rain has been falling it’s wet grass country. They’re playing another PGA Championship here at Valhalla, a place named for the great hall in  Norse mythology where the souls of heroes slain in battle went.

Which has nothing to do with saving par but certainly captures one’s attention.

In a few days, we’ll be concentrating on who is able to capture the tournament, and yes as expected the favorites are Scottie Scheffler, first in the world rankings, and McIlroy, first in last weekend’s Wells Fargo event.

But now we deal once more with someone who also was No. 1 in the world, who also won the Wells Fargo and no less won the PGA Championship right here on the wet Kentucky bluegrass, Tiger Woods. 

Yes, golf can be slow. Or can be boring, but golf may be the only sport where yesterday’s legends go on playing. What else are they going to do? Retire and play golf for fun? Might as well do it for millions. 

Not that Tiger, after winning 82 PGA Tour tournaments, needs the money. His contract with Nike was dissolved. He now has his own clothing line, Sun Day Red. Clever, huh?

What Tiger needs is the competition. And companionship, camaraderie, the laughter, the satisfaction. His thoughts, “I still can hit the thing.” And he can, if at age 48, after the surgeries, not as he once could.

But while we wait for the names to be posted on the leaderboard, cognizant when the 106th concludes Sunday evening, let’s listen to Tiger’s comments in the media tent Tuesday. 

Indeed he’s entered this time. Former PGA champions have lifetime invitations  Yet, his past is what’s important, rather than the future. Woods won the PGA Championship four times, one fewer than the remarkable Walter Hagen, who won it in the 1920s  when it was at match play.

Of Tiger’s four, perhaps the most memorable, was at Valhalla in 2000 — the third of his four major victories that year.  He was locked into the closing holes with Bob May, who had faced Tiger in southern California when they were amateurs. The PGA Championship was in August, in the suburbs of Louisville while the weather was hot.

“I just remember the pressure that I felt, the chance, an opportunity to do something that Ben Hogan did in 1953. The summer was a whirlwind,” said Woods. “I was playing well, then coming into this event, being able to play with Jack (Nicklaus) in his last PGA championship. Jack played with Gene Sarazen in his last PGA. Just the connection with all that.”

Woods and May tied at the end of 72 holes, and Tiger won a 3-hole playoff. History had been achieved. He had three majors.

For the Warriors, draft workouts and new hope

The Warriors are conducting pre-draft workouts. Why not? You have to think of the future in sports, even when reality dictates it never will equal the past.

Another Steph Curry or Klay Thompson? They should be so lucky, and yes despite all the research and planning, luck plays a huge role.

A team has to be in the right place — meaning the bottom or close to it — at the right time. And then get the right break, picking high in the draft lottery or, going back in time, 1969, calling a coin flip correctly.

Which Phoenix that year did not. So Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — at the time, still known as Lew Alcindor — went to Milwaukee. The Suns ended up with No. 2, Neal Walk, who was not Abdul-Jabbar. Not even close.  

You have to have talent. But it must be the proper talent. The current Suns seemingly had a veritable all-star team on the roster. But they were swept in the first round of the playoffs. And 

11 days later, Thursday, head coach Frank Vogel lost his job, the modern-day equivalent of losing your head in ancient Rome.

Lucius Quinctius never should have sent in that lineup to face the Lions. Or, relating to the sport at hand, the Timberwolves.  

The 2020 NBA draft four summers ago, the one the Warriors owned the No. 2 pick, which turned out to be James Wiseman. The first choice was Anthony Edwards.

And so are sporting dynasties built or left unconstructed.

Edwards has done everything expected, leading Minnesota to two road victories over the defending league-champion Denver Nuggets. Wiseman offered potential, they tell us, and early on scored and rebounded the way a 7-footer should. For a while — a brief while.

Then came an injury. Whether Wiseman recovered is arguable, but the Warriors didn’t. They traded him to Detroit and in one of those convoluted transactions ended up with Gary Payton II, who was an integral part of an NBA title.

It’s probably unfair to label Wiseman as a bust. After all, he only had a short spell learning the game at Memphis before going pro.

The draft is what keeps the games competitive and the fan base believing. Nobody contemplates earning a high choice. That’s a definition the previous season was terrible — however, maybe a Victor Wembanyama is waiting up ahead.

Better to dream than regret.

Are the Athletics once again the Amazing A’s?

The Amazing A’s, what the Oakland Athletics were called in the 1980s, when they were winning World Series championships in rapid order.

Yet, in a way, the A’s of 2024 seemed no less amazing. Until the last few days, when the Texas Rangers and reality ganged up to ruin a good story and perhaps a good record.

Baseball is a sport of relative balance. The best team still loses 60 times. The worst team still wins 60 times. Unless it is the Athletics of 2023, who had a jarring 50-112 mark. 

Hapless. Hopeless. But not surprising. 

In baseball, just as with autos and wine, you get what you pay for. Want a Mercedes or a bottle of Domaine Romanee Conti? It’s going to cost you. The same goes for players such as Shohei Ohtani or Bryce Harper. What management was paying for was a lot of players who weren’t ready for the bigs (and might never be).

That was last year. And the year before. Now the roster is respectable, and the A’s play has been even more so. They had a six-game win streak. Which would also be a tenth of the victory total the previous year.

So we were only a month into the schedule? Don’t rain on our parade. Enjoy the present. A’s manager Mark Kotsay deserves a smile or two. It’s not his fault he doesn’t have the same people as the Yankees.

As we know, the A’s are based somewhere between the devil and the deep blue Lake Mead.  Talk about instability. They’re called the Oakland A’s, someday they will be moving up Interstate 80 to Sacramento and then, sadly, pulling up stakes and settling down forever in Las Vegas.

That’s the current plan arranged by people who have no heart and less compassion for the maligned folks in Alameda County.

Small wonder attendance for the A’s-Rangers game Monday night at — oh yeah, Oakland — was announced at 3,965. Tell the fans you’re high-tailing it to another town or another state and they’ll be no-shows. Then again, Monday night has never been worth much for baseball by the Bay. When the Giants were at old, cold Candlestick, they had numerous crowds under 10,000. 

But the issue here is not who goes to the ballpark (or doesn’t go) but rather how the home club again, the Athletics, is doing on the field.

Better than most of us believe — hey, a six-game win streak would make most teams envious — and some way to keep people interested. 

The Athletics should escape the ignominy of being the worst team in baseball. One small step for man is one amazing move for the A’s.

The U.S. Open invites Tiger; as it should have

The United States Golf Association offered Tiger Woods an exemption into the 2024 U.S. Open at Pinehurst. Anyone have a problem with that?  

I don’t.  

And one assumes NBC-TV, which has the contract to televise the tournament, doesn’t either.

Sports are about entertainment as much as they are about competition.  And in the individual games, golf, tennis, it’s the stars, the names, who bring us to the course or the courts, or the TV screen.

Four majors in golf, all of which have been won by Woods, and three, the Masters, PGA Championship and Open Championship, or British Open, give the winner a lifetime invite. You did something special, and you’ll be rewarded in a special way.

Unless it’s America’s national championship, the U.S. Open. Thanks, but in a few years you’ve got to qualify with the other guys, and don’t let the trophy get tarnished.  

Woods is not going to win. Not at age 48, with that beat-up body. He probably won’t make the cut. But as long as he’s able and willing, get him and the other former champions into the field as they do at Augusta or will do at Troon, in Scotland, where the Open is scheduled, or Valhalla, the site of the PGA Championship in May.

Golf is the forever game, with 25-year-olds challenging for the honors achieved by an older generation. Someone we barely know teeing off in the same group with someone already famous. Or about to be. 

No, you didn’t want to turn it into an invitational, but how come the British Open, the oldest event of them all, can find room for its former champions, and except for rare exemptions, such as this — and the U.S. Open can’t?

Woods seemed as excited about getting one more chance to play an Open as anyone.

He’s won three Opens, the last, in 2008 at Torrey Pines, when, with a leg so painful he grimaced on every shot, Woods beat Rocco Mediate, in a playoff that went 19 holes.

“This U.S. Open, our national championship, is a truly special event for our game, one that has helped define my career," Woods said in a statement. "I'm honored to receive this exemption and could not be more excited for the opportunity to compete in this year's U.S. Open, especially at Pinehurst, a venue that means so much to the game.”

Tiger himself did so much for the game. He brought in a different audience, which included various ethnic groups so long unaccepted in the game, and which also helped turn him into an attraction that before his time would have seemed unimaginable.

The U.S.G.A. did right by Tiger Woods and golf. It will be good to see him in The Open no matter how well he does play.

No LeBron, no Steph — is that what the NBA needs?

The old Hollywood execs figured it out practically from the day movies first hit the silver screen: The story didn’t matter as much as the people who were in it. Entertainment is not so much a business of plots as of personalities. Stars. Yes, Shakespeare is special, but did you want to see Lady McBeth or Lady Gaga?

The same is true in sports. As the TV people are aware.

A few days ago, before the post-season started, one of the announcers at ESPN said he wanted Steph Curry and LeBron James in the Western Conference playoffs.

Of course, because that’s what the viewing audience wanted to see. The player called one of the greatest of all time, still dominant at age 39, and the best long-distance shooter in history. You didn’t need to care about the Lakers or Warriors, not that being a fan of either team wouldn’t have hurt. All you really needed to be was a fan of basketball.  

Well, Curry — or more correctly his team, the Golden State Warriors — failed to advance to the postseason. And now, after playing only five games, the Lakers and LeBron are done.

Two favorites finished. 

The old guard — and old forward — about to depart. For now. And possibly how LeBron responds to the question on whether he’s played his last game for the Lakers, forever.

Change is inevitable in sports, as everywhere, yet it seems so much more personal and painful when the change is to the athletes we follow.

The NFL just had its player draft, selecting the new who will replace the old. In the summer the NBA will have its own draft. That doesn’t mean we have to replace them in our hearts.

The NBA West once belonged to Kobe Bryant of the Lakers. Then it became the property of Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green. Now it has been usurped by Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets. 

Hard to believe? Not really. 

Hard to accept? Only if you tend to live in the past, recent or distant.

We miss Kobe. We’ll miss Steph and LeBron. Time moves on as the memorable athletes slow down.

Up in Northern California, where we’ve waited and watched, and if you will, suffered the power and championships that went to the Lakers during the Magic, Kareem and Worthy years, we’re prepared for the worst.

But down in L.A., the future is being approached with particular gloom. 

“For the 13th time in 14 seasons, the Lakers have fallen far short in their bid to pile on another NBA championship, and, man, is this getting old,” wrote columnist Bill Plaschke in the Los Angeles Times. “Scream. Sigh. Get used to it.”

In the continuing world of sport it’s hard to get used to anything except nothing and no one stays the same.

On his 100th birthday, Schallock is still a (Hollywood) Star

Art Schallock roomed with Yogi Berra, faced Duke Snider in the World Series, and, perhaps most noteworthy of anything, on Thursday turned 100.

And, oh yeah, I saw him pitch.      

Not for the New York Yankees, for whom he was a contribution to those championships in the 1950s, but for the Hollywood Stars of the Pacific Coast League.

Which admittedly also makes me old, if not quite as old as Schallock, who even before this momentous birthday was the oldest living former major leaguer.

Schallock was a little lefthander, but at 5-foot-9, he was still a couple of inches taller than the legendary Bobby Shantz. His story has been told in newspapers, The Athletic, and quite impressively a few days ago by Vernon Glenn of San Francisco’s KPIX TV station, who tracked down Schallock to his residence in Sonoma.

Schallock was born in Marin, was a star at Tamalpais High and hoped to join the San Francisco Seals of the PCL. The majors had not yet moved west of St. Louis.

What he joined after the attack on Pearl Harbor was the Navy, where based on an aircraft carrier he saw combat. When the war was over he signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers, who sent him to one of the Seals’ PCL rivals.

The Hollywood Stars played home games in a classic minor league park, all wood single deck, where CBS television city now is located in West L.A.

For a kid in junior high, it was a great place, easy to get autographs, people such as Bernier, Chuck Stevens, Frankie Kelleher, manager Fred Haney — and Schallock. 

He asked my name. “Same as yours,” I told him.  

For a player working his way back after not even throwing a baseball for years, it was a time of joy and a time of doubt.

The other PCL park in LA, Wrigley Field, where the Angels, PCL and briefly, in 1961, the major league played, was more elegant and double-decked. Not that it mattered, but it mattered to me.

The era was different. Salaries were minuscule compared to now — but, of course, a new car was only $1,500. Ballplayers held off-season jobs to support their families.

The Dodgers traded Schallock to the Yankees, who brought him up, making room on the roster by sending down a young outfielder named Mickey Mantle. After three years he was claimed off of waivers by the Baltimore Orioles.

A hell of a career. 

In the TV interview on, Schallock wore a Yankees hat. Understandable, but I’ll always remember him with the Hollywood Stars.

Warriors season is gone; does Klay stay or go?

Klay Thompson was upset. Not because he had missed every one of his field goal attempts — and surely that contributed to his discontent. But about the question posed to him this morning after, the one about his future, which at that moment seemed the only proper question to be asked. 

Of course when you went 0-for-10, and your team, the proud and until now eminently successful Golden State Warriors, would fail to qualify for the playoffs — ending a streak at 13 straight seasons — the question may not have seemed so proper.

“You don’t want to talk about the season first?” Thompson said, answering a question with a question of his own. “You want to talk about the future?”

Indeed. 

It does little good to discuss what has happened, other than in certain instances as a bit of self-satisfaction. Once a game is finished, a season complete, unless you’re stepping away, the issue is what will happen.  

The Warriors were the NBA’s best. No more. Their roster has become a blend of memories and possibilities.

The embarrassment of Tuesday night's play-in game, with the Sacramento Kings defeating the Warriors 114-98, may have been less of a disappointment and more of a revelation. Yes, Steph Curry still has his wits and his 3-pointers, Draymond Green is a defensive whiz and team leader, and Klay’s offense is invaluable — as his lack of scoring against the Kings made only too clear.

But the Warriors were out-muscled and out-hustled, pushed around as much symbolically as physically. They basically never had a chance. Except to show how much they lack.

Sport more than anything else makes us aware of the passing of time. The cliche that nothing and no one lasts forever is all too apparent on our courts and fields, diamonds and gridirons. The pieces are out there, and sometimes they fit perfectly — for a while. But it can’t last.

Veteran fans understand. Organizations are always on the lookout, on the rebuild, drafting, and coaching, but there only was one Michael Jordan, and there only is one Steph Curry.

The New England Patriots defied the odds. They were contenders in the NFL for a decade. Then they were hopeless and Bill Belichick was a nowhere man.

Where Klay Thompson is going to be next season and beyond is the topic of notable consequence. Curry and Draymond are under contract. Thompson is a free agent. 

“I can’t see us playing without him,” said Steph.

What Klay and the Warriors’ management see is what will count. 

“I previously just said about the season we had and how much commitment it takes to play the games we did and give it our all,” said Thompson, “so I really haven’t thought about that deep into the future because I still need to process the year we had and it was one filled with ups and downs, but ultimately, we — I personally and our team did everything we could to try and win as many games as we possibly could.”

He was asked, about living in the future, what were some of the things?

“Good place to be.”

Will that good place still be with the Warriors?

No drama this Masters; Scheffler wouldn’t allow it

AUGUSTA, Ga. — It wasn’t dramatic, the final round of the 88th Masters, but it certainly was emphatic. Scottie Scheffler grabbed the tournament by the lapel of its green jacket Sunday and never let go.

While many of the guys chasing him self-destructed with one double bogey after another, Scheffler played like the top-ranked golfer in the world.   

Which he is.

Now he’s also a two-time Masters champion after this overwhelming victory, four shots in front of the surprising Swede, Ludvig Aberg, joining Scheffler’s win of 2022.

“It’s hard to put into words how special this week has been,” added Scheffler. “It’s been a long week, a grind of a week. The golf course was so challenging, and to be sitting here wearing this jacket again and getting to take it home is extremely special.”

There’s an old saying that the Masters doesn’t start until the back nine Sunday. Oh, really? By then it was virtually over. Scheffler, in truth, locked this up with birdies on eight, nine and 10, and went on to shoot a 4-under 68.

Just before that, he had just bogeyed 6 to have his lead cut to a shot. 

“The best momentum turner that I had today was the birdie putt on 8. I hit two really good shots in there long of the green. I had an extremely difficult pitch that I hit up there about 10, 12 feet from the cup. It was a challenging read because it turned early and it was really straight at the end. So it was a putt that you had to really start on line and hope it held its line. I poured that one in.”

That gave him a four-round total of 11-under 277. Aberg, a rookie skilled enough to be chosen for the winning Euro Ryder Cup team, shot 68 for 281. Meanwhile, the Englishman Tommy Fleetwood shot a 69, joined by Cal alums Max Homa (73) and Collin Morikawa (74), all tied for third at 284. 

Last year’s winner, Jon Rahm, never was in it — the last person to repeat was Tiger Woods in 2001-2002. Tiger shot 77 on Sunday.

Scheffler is not yet another Tiger — no one will be — but at 27, he possibly could equal Woods’ five Masters victories in the coming years, one fewer than Jack Nicklaus.

Scheffler already owns one mark — he’s now the only golfer with a beard to win the Masters.

A Masters lead for Scheffler, an 82 for Tiger

AUGUSTA, Ga. — This was the Masters in all its glorious — and agonizing — inconsistency with shots missed and leads lost. Going into the final round, nothing was certain except Tiger Woods had his highest round ever here, a 12-over par 82.

The TV guys love to call Saturday “moving day” at tournaments, but with the way things went if any of the contenders, or Tiger, moved, it was to tears.

The scoreboards spread across the immersive landscape of Augusta National Golf Club had more number changes than at a race track pari-mutuel machine.

A Danish pro you’re probably not familiar with, Niccolai Hojgaard, temporarily grabbed first with birdies at 8, 9 and 10 and then, whoops, dropped out of sight and practically off the board by making bogies at 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15.

Then it was Collin Morikawa, the Cal alum, briefly in front. Finally, at least for moving day, it was the 2022 Masters champion, Scottie Scheffler, shooting a 1-under par 71 and at 7-under 209, ahead of Morikawa, 69-210, while Max Homa, the other Cal guy, had a 73, is at 211.

Hojgaard came in at 74 for 214. A roller coaster ride.

Something Woods wouldn’t have minded, no one expected Tiger to win — other than Tiger at least — but no one, after Tiger rallied with a 72 Friday to make the cut, figured he would play so poorly.

Still, he is 48, and he hasn’t played very much because of the injuries. His body won’t do what he wants it to do, a problem that confronts so many as the years go on.

To his credit and to the delight of his fans, and CBS television, Woods vowed to play Sunday said a few days ago he’s a fighter, and fighters keep fighting

“I wouldn’t necessarily say mental reps. It’s just that I haven’t competed and played much. When I had chances to get it flipped around and when I made that putt at 5, I promptly three-putted 6 and flubbed a chip at 7 and just got it going the wrong way, and when I had the opportunities to flip it, I didn’t.”

Asked if Friday, when he played nearly a round and ½ wore him out physically, Woods said, “Oh, yeah, it did.”

Scheffler is where a younger Tiger used to be, the favorite and No.1 in the world rankings. He knows the tournament and knows how to succeed.

“I think I have a better understanding of what morning is like (Sunday), I’m proud of how I played today. It was a good fight out there.”

One Scheffler seems prepared to win. One Tiger was destined to lose.

Tiger sets another record — 24 straight Masters cuts

AUGUSTA, Ga. — He was talking like a man who believes he still has a chance because in his mind Tiger Woods always has a chance if he’s still in the tournament.

And Woods who Friday set a record by making the cut in the Masters for the 24th straight time — or every time he’s played as a pro — definitely is in this one.

Look, we know that with only two rounds left and behind players such as Max Homa, 2022 Masters champ Scottie Scheffler — the current No. 1 in the world rankings — and 2020 U.S. Open champ Bryson DeChambeau, Woods isn’t going to win.

But Tiger doesn’t know it, or if he does, he never would admit it.  He’s come from behind so many other times, although, yes, now Woods is 48 and has been hurt so often it’s remarkable he still can walk, much less make birdies. He made enough in what virtually was a round and a half of golf at Augusta National.

Because darkness kept Woods and others from completing Thursday’s first round, Tiger had to play 14 through 18 Friday morning, then after a 50-minute break, tee off in the second round. He did so in a very Tigerish style, responding with an even-par 72 after a one-over 73.  That 145 total may have put him five shots to the rear of Homa’s 138, but Tiger has won the Masters five times.

"I'm tired," Woods said after the second round. "I've been out for a while, competing, grinding. It's been a long 23 holes, a long day. But Lance Bennett (his caddy) and I really did some good fighting today, and we've got a chance."

Which means the telecast (Saturday and Sunday on CBS, after the first two rounds on ESPN) has a chance to attract a massive amount of viewers. Not much else is going on this weekend and Tiger on the tube lures people who normally wouldn't watch.  

There’s golf, and then there’s Tiger. When Woods is involved, so is the public. Especially at a major championship. Especially when that major is the Masters.

“I’ve always loved playing here,” said Woods. “I’ve been able to play here since I was 19-years-old (After winning the U.S. Amateur). It’s one of the honors I don’t take lightly, being able to compete.” 

He’s not alone. As winter ebbs, pro golfers become obsessed with finding a place in the Masters. Tiger, along with the rest who made the cut, has that place. The ride should be very entertaining. Enjoy!

Even at the Masters, one is unable to avoid the story of O.J. Simpson

AUGUSTA, Ga. — This time the tournament is the Masters. That time the tournament was the U.S. Open. Both times the story was about the Pro Football Hall of Fame runner turned killer, Orenthal James Simpson.

Strange how these coincidences take place.

Now, Augusta, where Thursday Bryson DeChambeau took the first-round lead with a 7-under par 65.

Then, Oakmont Country Club, where in June 1994, Ernie Els took the victory. Now and then the overwhelming intrusion of O.J. ‘s life or death.

The announcement of Simpson’s passing, at 76, from cancer, was made in the morning. That it came just before the first shot to the year’s first major championship was appropriate. No matter what else was going on, O.J. Simpson, or his deeds, commandeered the headlines and television screens.

What we found out about Simpson is that he became as adept in the art of delusion as he was in his ability to gain yards. What happened and have been reminders is we don’t really know a person, even a spouse or best friend.      

Had he practiced self-deception, or was it just developed naturally? You come of age in the tough Potrero Hill section of San Francisco without a father, you discover how to survive.

I came to San Francisco in the summer of ’65. Simpson was at CCSF, a junior college, playing the first of two seasons with such brilliance. He not only broke rushing records but also was heavily and brazenly recruited.

That was strong stuff for someone who had been playing tackle at Galileo High, who erroneously was called “O. Jay Simpson” in a caption.

Simpson told us he chose USC because he liked the horse that was the Trojans mascot that ran around the track at the LA Coliseum after Trojan touchdowns. Presumably, he was telling the truth. Now you wonder.         

O.J. was engaging and cooperative, a sports writer and pitchman’s dream. If I needed an interview — after all, I was at the Chronicle, one of his hometown newspapers — or Hertz was looking for promotion, he never refused.

And then, even those skills had declined. Simpson came to the San Francisco 49ers, where tales of his childhood could be revived. A great guy, right? Wrong.

It was a Monday in June 1994. I was arriving at the Pittsburgh airport to cover the Open. At the baggage carousel, I hear some saying, “O.J. Simpson’s wife was killed, and he’s a suspect.”’

No way, I’m thinking O.J. never would do anything like that. The freeway car chase on that Friday captivated the nation. The golf event couldn’t quite do that.

Ernie Els grabbed the trophy. O.J. Simpson grabbed our attention. As always.

In a timeless sport, Rory time may be running out at Augusta

AUGUSTA, Ga. — First a pro football reference. Dan Marino was only 23, in his second season of pro football, when the Miami Dolphins were defeated in Super Bowl XIX by the 49ers. Don’t despair, people told him, you’ll be there again.

He never returned.

Now a turn, at a figurative Amen Corner, of course, to another disappointed athlete. Rory McIlroy was only 22 and in his fifth year as a touring golfer when he blew an eight-shot lead in the 2012 Masters. Don’t despair was the advice. You’ll be there again.

He never has been.     

Twelve years later, McIlroy remains haunted by the failure. The tournament remains the only one of the four majors McIlroy hasn’t won, the piece keeping from gaining a career Grand. He’s made runs, but it’s incomparable to McIlroy, a successful career forever will lack the ultimate closure selection in other games, but age cannot be discounted.

Jack Nicklaus won the Masters at age 46, and Phil Mickelson won the PGA Round Championship at 50.

Still, as you grow older the people you have to beat keep getting younger. And more talented and prepared. Nick Dunlap is your appropriate example. At the start of January, he still was at the University of Alabama. He stunningly won the American Express tournament in the California desert and qualified for the Masters. Oh yes, he turned pro.     

McIlroy’s path was not that different. He left the amateur ranks, and in a relatively short period — the keyword is relatively — won the Open Championship, the U.S. Open-stomping famed Congressional Country Club and the PGA Championship. What’s next? The agony of Augusta, which included a drive so wild it ricocheted off one of those tidy, white-painted buildings known as cabins.

Yet if every following Masters brings memories, it also brings possibilities. Yes, Jon Rahm and Scottie Scheffler are the betting choices, but Rory might be labeled the shoulda-coulda-oh-drat-all selection. Sometimes that sort of irreverence works as well as a long putt on those huge Augusta greens. 

McIlroy has done well heading into the Masters, which is no guarantee of anything, but sometimes those fickle golfing gods are sympathetic. Hey, Rory is idolized from Northern Ireland to Southern California.

“This is my 16th start in the Masters,” he said, “so I feel like I’ve done it quite a few different ways, and I guess just trying to bring a little bit of normalcy into what I sort of try to do week in, week out. I play 25 weeks a year, and there’s no point in doing anything different this week compared to other weeks, I guess.”

Actually, there is, winning the Masters.

Fifty-seven years of Masters cheers and tears

AUGUSTA, Ga. — A tradition unlike any other. Jim Nantz’s brief phrase about the annual first major golf championship has been parodied and mocked, but it lives on. For good reason.

Indeed there is nothing quite like the Masters, which has become a rite as much as a festival of spring, as an event, a competition which has elevated what once was a small southern city to a place of prominence in the world of sport.  

The name is pretentious and became an embarrassment to the great champion, Robert Tyre Jones, who helped create it as the Augusta Invitational.

But if the designation has changed, the location remains the same. Augusta National Golf Club.

It’s where at the second Masters, 1935, Gene Sarazen knocked his second shot into the cup on the par-5 15th, a double eagle — or if you prefer, albatross provided a bit of excitement languishing through the Great  Depression. It’s where Tiger Woods not only won the tournament but because of his ethnic background and jubilant success grabbed our attention for years.

Who knows now what man that will end up the winner in 2024. Maybe it will be Jon Rahm, who could become the first back-to-back winner since Tiger in 2001-2002. Maybe it will be Scottie Scheffer, who has a Masters of his own and currently tops the golf rankings.

True, a veteran experience in the mysteries of Augusta’s greens, invariably wins. But not always. Fuzzy Zoeller won his first Masters — only the second golfer to have done that.

This will be the 88th Masters. This will be my 57th Masters. I had made 54 straight until Covid stopped the streak. Yeah, I’ve eaten a lifetime supply of (ugh) pimento cheese sandwiches and purchased a ton of shirts with the Masters logo on the left front and a large number of Masters hats with the year embroidered on it. 

My first Masters, when I was a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, was 1967. The winner was Gay Brewer. Yes, I believed San Francisco’s Johnny Miller was going to win a couple of times — he was ahead at the 15th hole one year and said “I kept thinking how proud my Dad would be to see me in a Green Coat” — but he never could do it.

The memories include Roberto Divincenzo signing the incorrect score in 1968 that cost him a tie for first — “I am stupid,” the Argentinian sadly kept repeating — and of course, Greg Norman blowing the six-shot lead in 1996. There were cheers for so many. There were tears from Arnold Palmer after his last round and Ben Crenshaw after his second Masters victory, days after the death of his longtime tutor.

Hey, a tradition unlike any other and a fantastic run of golf.

In baseball’s board game, Oakland A’s become the Sacramento A’s

So the Philadelphia-Kansas City-Oakland-Las Vegas Athletics are moving to Sacramento, another wicked maneuver for baseball, which was called America’s Pastime but is little more than a board game for bored rich Americans.

Wasn’t it Bud Selig during his occupancy of the commissioner’s office who told us the sport belongs to the fans while the club owners are merely caretakers? Yeah, we all make mistakes, even millionaires. Especially so many of them, excluding the revered Haas family — who left their fingerprints and sad legacies on the game.

It was one of the French generals in World War I who was trying to explain what went wrong, they said “Ah, they handed me a disaster.”

Which is what baseball on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay was destined to become. It all started with Charles Oscar Finley, a country bumpkin with money who was able to haul the financially staggering Philadelphia Athletics to K.C.

When Finley, a penurious sort, couldn’t get what he wanted in KC — a new ballpark — it was off to Californ-i-a. Missouri senator Stuart Symington called Oakland The luckiest city since Hiroshima. Pretty good foresight.

The A’s became Oakland’s response to the San Francisco Giants, “our team.” The little city was in the Big League. That Finley had no front office but it didn’t matter because he had Reggie Jackson,  Catfish Hunter and Cap’n Sal Bando. And they also had 3 consecutive World Series Championships. Match that Giants.

What the A’s couldn’t match was a corporate backing or government backing for a new ballpark. Still, the fans cheered for their team. Still, the drums pounded in left centerfield. Still, Oakland was A’s territory.

But it also had been Raiders territory. Al Davis, loved/despised, had taken his teams — and some said the heart and soul of the region — to Southern California. He brought the team back. For a price, of course. He wanted the Coliseum not just improved but restyled, a huge section of seats built on the 50-yard line, which unfortunately also was for baseball, was the center field bleachers. Thus we had a new monument, Mt. Davis.

That distorted the baseball park. That, and overflowing toilets in the clubhouse and dugouts made it obvious the Coliseum needed to be replaced.

But talk is one thing. And in the East Bay, action is not just another thing, but rare. The line about Northern California is that it is easy to get issues voted down but virtually impossible to get them approved.

Where the owner, John Fisher, stood on all this was hard to determine. He wanted a new place to play but didn’t seem to want to get involved in how that would come about.  He was oblivious and seemingly uninvolved.

The A’s have the worst team in baseball — one win through Wednesday — as they had the worst team, by far, in 2023.

The thought seems to be to let them fall apart and because it is Oakland, and not a city like San Francisco, Los Angeles, or New York. It is going to become a reality. The team with a roster that probably belongs in the Minor Leagues, is disgracefully undermanned.  Major League Baseball is very much responsible for this. It has allowed the A’s to become what they are, a franchise now doomed to become the Sacramento A’s.

Giants better off without troubles Ohtani could bring

The San Francisco Giants have a new manager and apparently an improved pitching staff. What they don’t have is Shohei Ohtani. Thank heaven for small favors.

Ohtani may be the best player in baseball. He may hit 60 homers this season. May pitch several no-hitters. And he may be a problem as big as one of those Sumo champions. Come to think of it, he already is. So many of us, who are Giants fans (guilty your honor), rued the day Ohtani bypassed the Giants and signed what? A 100-zillion-dollar contract with the despised Los Angeles Dodgers.

Drat, the good folks up here north of Fresno and west of the Sierra, were thinking, those wealthy Dodgers, that celebrity audience and endless success. They did again to our sad little group from the ballpark by the Bay.

Is there no justice in the sporting world? There very well might be, and it’s named Ippei Mizuhara.

He was the interpreter and friend (some friend) who has worked with Ohtani all these years since Shohei came from Japan in 2018 to win two American League MVP awards with the Angels. Ippei is alleged to have bet millions on sports, bringing to the game nightmares of Pete Rose and placing Shohani in a situation of which he contends he was unaware.

In a prepared 12-minute statement Monday, ESPN properly thought it was so newsworthy it unpardonably interrupted the “Pardon The Interruption” show, Ohtani said he never bet on sports or anything else nor been asked to make bets for others. Ohani accused Mizuhara of “theft and fraud”  related to payments made from Ohtani’s account to an illegal Orange County bookmaking firm.  

Just think if the Giants had been unfortunate enough to sign Ohtani. They’d be dealing with all the legal mess along with the unpopular departure of longtime public address lady, Renel Brooks-Moon.

How much agony can a fan base take?

As this Ohtani drama unfolded I kept thinking of the film “Lost in Translation,” where a faded American movie star, portrayed by who else, Bill Murray, and a neglected young woman form an unlikely bond after crossing paths in Tokyo. It has nothing to do with baseball, gambling or theft, but in part offers a window into cultural differences between two societies on either side of the Pacific.

On this side where the Giants and Dodgers are based — is it ironic the Dodgers opened their season last week in Asia, albeit Korea, not Japan? — Ohtani will be hounded and pestered even more than when he merely was a superstar.

The Dodgers, players and fans, probably are better equipped to handle the Ohtani mess than others, we’ll learn in time. He’s a great athlete, but after what’s happened and considering what might happen, the Giants can do without his baggage. Although they would like his bat.

What would Bud Collins have nicknamed winning Swiatek?

INDIAN WELLS — Iga Swiatek doesn’t need much on the court these days — my goodness she recorded a bagel in her semifinal — other than one of those colorful nicknames invented by the late, great Bud Collins.

He labeled Steffi Graf  “Fraulein Forehand,”  Venus and Serena Williams “Sisters Sledge Hammer. He might have anointed Swiatek the “Polish Rifle,” except that was used for the NFL quarterback Ron Jaworski, who is American.

Swiatek truly is Polish, born in Warsaw, and without question right now the best women’s tennis player in creation.

She turned the final of the BNP Paribas Open into a quick romp Sunday, defeating bewildered Maria Sakkari, 6-4,6-0. 

The match lasted only 1 hour and 8 minutes. Sometimes it seems to take that long to open a new can of tennis balls.

“Sorry I couldn’t put on a better fight,” said Sakkari, who two nights earlier defeated Coco Gauff in a semifinal.

Two years ago, at the same place, Indian Wells Tennis Garden — when you spend millions to build a sports complex among sand dunes and cacti — it was virtually the same. Swiatek defeated Sakkari 6-4, 6-1. 

In the rankings, she means, a place to which she seems intent — and content — never returning. In her week and a half of competition at Indian Wells, the 22-year-old Swiatek lost only 21 games in six matches. 

“She’s aggressive but she’s solid,” Sakkari said, summarizing Swiatek’s incredibly effective tennis.

It’s too early in a career that could last another 15 years or so to predict how Swiatek someday may be judged against the greats, Margaret  Court, Serena Williams, Martina Navratilova, Graf, but among the current females, she’s exactly where the number indicates, first.

It would have been interesting to see what would have been, had Gauff defeated Sakkari, but perhaps the best thing about tennis at any level is the actual playing not the promising. When the opportunity presents itself how do you respond

Swiatek’s response across the net is quite apparent and resourceful. She handled herself beautifully. Same thing after the tournament.

“I’m really proud of myself and super happy,” was her comment after literally lifting the crystal championship trophy. “Even though this tournament looked like the scores, maybe I had everything under control. It wasn't from the beginning to the end. I felt really good on the last two matches. Big amount of confidence.”

And for the bettors who followed the advice of Zachary Cohen in one of the tennis publications to parlay Swiatek and Carlos Alcaraz, who defeated Daniil Medved, 7-6, 6-1. Big money. 

Wonder if Cohen has a decent backhand?

At Indian Wells, Mother Nature rains, Carlos Alcaraz reigns to find a way to hang on

To the match. Not an umbrella.

He had taken a 6-1 lead in the first set of the BNP Paribas semifinal. He had won 19 straight matches and in the process a Grand Slam, the Australian. His opponent, Carlos Alcaraz, said of Sinner, “He’s the best player in the world right now.  

Right, and it doesn’t rain in the Coachella Valley in springtime. Sinner lost, or rather, Alcaraz won 1-6, 6-3, 6-2. He will play another former champion, Dan Medvedev, who in the semi defeated the American Tommy Paul, 1-6, 7-6, 6-2.

“I tried to play obviously good tennis, which I have done,” said  Sinner, “especially the first set. Then I made a couple of mistakes. You know the momentum has changed. He raised his level.”

Which since Alcaraz is No. 2 in the world and Sinner No. 3, it isn’t quite like having to leap the Empire State Building. It was just that Sinner had flown in the first set, verifying the betting line making him such a solid favorite the tennis folk concluded it was a given.

 “Who’s going to stop Jannik?” questioned somebody. Well, good old Mother Nature — he had a 2-1 lead in the first set when the weather intervened, play being delayed more than two hours. And eventually, Alcaraz, who won the BNP a year ago.

“Obviously a tough one to swallow,” said Sinner, previously unbeaten in 2024.

The thinking in men’s tennis has been Alcaraz, the Spaniard, eventually would replace Novak Djokovic, the game’s best. Someday at least. At the moment, Djokovic remains first, and even though he’s 36 and the two heir apparents are in their early 20s, the change could be in the distance.   

Alcaraz had an impressive start, but in the last few months he has slipped. And  Sinner has surged. Then came the Saturday meeting, proof that all the speculation might mean nothing.

“Well, I’m really happy to classify (qualify) for another final,” said Alcaraz. “It means a lot to me to play at such a great level and be able to play another final.”

In the post-match interview, Alcaraz was reminded Thursday he had to flee when a hive of bees swarmed in while Carlos was playing.

 “On Thursday,” he was told, “you had the bees and then you had the rain delay today. You came from down a set. Kind of a wild 48 hours.”