SAN JOSE – This is Sharks Territory. That’s what the signs tell us.
That’s what these playoffs tell us. Down here in San Jose, life and hockey would be so much better if there weren’t any postseason. Which, if the Sharks don’t begin to get some results, there won’t be in a short while.
Remember the way the Warriors stunned the Dallas Mavericks in the first round of the NBA playoffs a couple of years ago? What’s happened to the Sharks is the reverse. They have become the stunees.
“Ask them,’’ San Jose coach Todd McLellan said of his group, “and I think they’ll tell you they’re the better team. It’s not like we’ve been spanked.’’
No, but they’ve been beaten. Twice. At home in front of sellout crowds whose anticipation turned to dismay, whose shouts turned into boos.
The Sharks finally scored Sunday night. After 85 minutes and 35 seconds of not scoring. This time they were beaten by the Anaheim Ducks, 3-2, which aesthetically may be more acceptable than losing 2-0, as happened Thursday night.
San Jose had the best regular-season record in the NHL. And at the moment a tie for the worst current postseason record. It’s a recurring nightmare for the Sharks, who lure everyone into thinking this may be the year and then go out and trip over their own intentions.
The Sharks are 0-for-12 on the power play, equally dividing their failings with six each game. Twelve different times they’ve had a man advantage, and 12 different times they’ve been unable to score. You don’t have to have been born in Canada to understand that’s not very good.
“They’re beating us to the puck,’’ said the Sharks captain, Patty Marleau. The result is that Anaheim, known for physical play rather than success, has a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven Western Conference quarterfinals.
And so San Jose players are firing clichés faster and harder than apparently they have the puck.
“Again,’’ said San Jose’s Joe Thornton, “I thought we controlled the game.’’
If he means hitting the puck, indeed. San Jose had 44 shots on goal, compared to 26 for Anaheim. If he means getting the puck past the goalie, absolutely not. You can persuade yourself that you’re doing a great job, but in sports the only thing that matters is who wins.
And in two games, the Sharks haven’t won any.
They shook up their lines. They were more aggressive. The first game the Sharks’ Jeremy Roenick described as a chess match.
This one was a hockey match, with plenty of banging and shoving. It was great theater. But it wasn’t satisfying for the 17,496 fans whose noise level ebbed in the final minutes. Except for the boos.
“Sometimes,’’ said Randy Carlyle, the Ducks coach, “it is more important to prevent a goal than score a goal in these tight games.’’ That’s the quintessential philosophy in the four major team sports. Defense beats offense. Keep the other guy from getting goals, baskets, runs or touchdowns.
The Giants won a couple of games over the weekend from the Arizona Diamondbacks because in those games the D-backs were shutout. In these games, the Sharks were shut down.
“The penalty kill is what they do,’’ said McLellen of Anaheim. “It’s very effective. We got to find a way to score, and that’s our biggest concern.’’
Anaheim’s young Swiss goalie, Jonas Hiller, has been brilliant. He stopped all 35 Sharks shots on Thursday night and 42 of the 44 Sunday night.
“There’s no magic to all this,’’ said the Sharks veteran Claude Lemieux. “You just have to get the puck into the net.’’
They understand the problem. Now they must go about correcting it.
He was the voice, whose love both of his sport and his work was open and infectious. John Madden didn't just make us understand football, he made us understand ourselves.
The NFL and its television broadcasts will go on because institutions inevitably outlast the people who bring them to popularity and prominence.
Yet, cliché as the phrase may be, things never will be the same.
Madden truly was the guy on the next chair in the restaurant, or the next stool in the bar, the guy who had to get into the conversation. Then, unpretentiously, unlike so many others because he knew what he was talking about, John simply took over.
Or to borrow a Madden observation, "Boom!''
At age 73, John on Thursday announced he was retiring from the broadcast booth, a property he seemingly had held in perpetuity for four different networks, the last being NBC on Sunday nights. It was there he and Al Michaels kept us informed and entertained.
Now as Kipling would have said, like all captains and kings, John Madden departs, with his class, to our sorrow. We're not only losing a football mind, we're losing a friend.
His family had something to do with the decision. He'll be married to the wonderful Virginia 50 years in December, and they have two sons and six grandchildren, whom, from August to January, were virtual strangers to John.
The two Northern California teams, the Oakland Raiders, which Madden coached to a Super Bowl win more than 30 years ago, and the San Francisco 49ers, also had something to do with the retirement. They have slipped so far from their championship years they're not considered worthy of Sunday night TV. Madden thus never was able to get back to his Bay Area home during the NFL season.
"I'm not tired of anything," said Madden, "but I'm going away."
So, this fall, for the first time since he was a freshman at Jefferson High in Daly City, the working class community dead south of San Francisco, John Madden will not be involved in football.
"What made it hard," he said during his morning radio spot on San Francisco's KCBS, "is I enjoyed everything so much. I always felt I was the luckiest guy in the world."
John Madden was everyman, with a sharper intellect. He liked to make us believe that on his cross-country bus journeys he only ate at places named "Joes," or slept in his clothes.
He is a closet intellectual who always made you feel good. Even when he was berating you, as he did now and then when he was Raiders coach and I was covering the team for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Some sporting leaders, coaches, managers, general managers, insist they never read the papers. Madden wasn't at all that disingenuous.
He'd come jogging and yelling across the Raiders old practice field in Alameda, waving the sports page and telling me in a few unsavory phrases I didn't have a clue what was going on. Then, when the workout ended, he would give me a clue and an explanation. Boom.
A few years back I was driving from Oakland to San Francisco, sitting in the line of traffic waiting to pass through the toll booths on the east end of the Bay Bridge. A horn sounded. And sounded again. Three lanes to my right, it was Madden, honking and waving - his arm, not a sports story he didn't appreciate.
John's pal from the time they were kids has been John Robinson, who went on to a successful coaching career himself, leading USC to Rose Bowl wins. "We were just a couple of doofuses from Daly City," Madden reminded of the pairing.
Part of their ritual among the group with which they ran was buying ice cream cones. "Another kid would yell 'First dibs,'" said Madden, "and he got to lick your cone. So we all would immediately lick our own cones to keep anyone else from getting some of yours. John Robinson would still eat my cone after I licked it."
Along the way, Madden has licked the world. He coached. He became a TV analyst. He did commercials for seemingly every product from Lite Beer - "Tastes great; less filling." - to Ace Hardware. He has a weekend home on the Monterey Peninsula. He owns huge hunks of the Diablo Valley beyond the hills east of Oakland. He was voted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He has an eponymous EA video game.
And arguably, he's the biggest star ever connected to the NFL.
"There's nothing wrong with me," Madden said about leaving, repelling in advance any stories that he has a medical problem. "I'm not tired of traveling. It's just this is the right time, the right thing."
We'll miss you, John.
© RealClearSports 2009
AUGUSTA, Ga. – Cigar
smoke is what Kenny Perry remembers. He was "probably seven," and his father,
intense but not abusive, and determined to make his boy a winner, would sit on a
towel, tee up ball after ball and all the while puff on a cigar.
"I would hit them as
fast as I could," said Perry, "and we did that hour after hour. I still smell
the cigar, the grass. Any time I catch a whiff of all that, my dad instantly
comes to me."
Kenny Perry is tied
for first place two rounds into this 2009 Masters. He shot a 5-under-par 67
Friday and, at 9-under-par 135, shares the lead with Chad Campbell.
His father, Ken Sr.,
85, is back in Kentucky, with two stents in his heart. And though Kenny, who's earned more
money playing golf, $28.1 million, than anyone who's never won a major, says he
would be satisfied if his career never went another day, his father continually
reminds him, "You need to win that green jacket."
Which of course is
what the Masters champion is awarded.
Kenny Perry is 48,
and in 1986 Jack Nicklaus, with his sixth Masters victory, became at age 46 the
oldest ever to win the tournament. Perry said he isn't thinking of making
history.
He is thinking of
finishing first.
After finishing a
year of redemption, countering criticism and playing so beautifully and
meaningfully in the 2008 Ryder Cup in his home state, at the very course,
Valhalla were Perry incurred his most wretched defeat, he and the family have
been named Grand Marshals of the Kentucky Derby parade.
"You know everything
is a bonus now," said Perry. "I'm going through each and every day enjoying
life a little bit. I think I can win. I'm still burning inside, wanting to kick
everybody's butt. I've got a will inside of me. My dad taught me. He beat on me
so bad as a kid in any kind of game or sport, I cried all the time. And then he
would laugh in my face as he was doing it.
"You know, he was a
smart man. And at the Ryder Cup when he came up to me and gave me that hug, I
told him it was the greatest gift I could never have given him. That was pretty
special for us as a father and son."
Ken Perry Sr. was an
insurance agent. His greatest talent, it turns out, was selling his son on how
to make it through life, to steel him for whatever might come, as the fictitious
father of song who named his boy Sue.
Kenny Perry Jr. is a
golfer who didn't have the luxury of a high-priced academy, a pro who has raised a
family – three children, the youngest of whom still is older than 19-year-old
Rory McIlvoy, the Irish golfing phenom – and raised huge sums for charity. Kenny Perry's outlook is different from
that of others.
"Where I came
from," said Perry, "the roots I had and my upbringing, to come from a nine-hole
course in the middle of nowhere ... I didn't have swing coaches. I didn't have
this entourage. I didn't have any money, begging, doing whatever I could,
scratching and clawing to get there."
It was 13 years ago
at Valhalla, the course outside Louisville, 130 miles from the Perry residence
in Franklin, where in the PGA Championship Kenny had his greatest opportunity to
take that major. He finished early the last day and, glib sort that he is, was
persuaded to climb into the TV booth while play continued.
He still was there
when Mark Brooks came in to tie Perry, who not having hit a ball in the
preceding hour, was not ready for the playoff won by Brooks.
"Yeah," he
conceded, "I think about it a lot."
So do others. Perry
was so obsessed with atoning for his failure when Valhalla hosted last
September's Ryder Cup, he didn't even attempt to qualify for the U.S. Open and
then, even though exempt, passed up a spot in the British Open. For that he was
ripped in the media. He didn't care.
"I laid all my cards
on the line that week," he said of the Ryder Cup experience. "I put it all on
the line, being in front of my home crowd. I mean I could have been a dog that
week and gone 0 for 4 or 5 and not won a point. I put all the pressure I could
on myself.
"People remember the
debacle at the PGA, how I screwed that up, and all of Kentucky remembered me for
that. I was going for broke, either was going to hit a home run or get thrown
out. And it went my way. Things went my way."
They haven't stopped
going his way. Having missed the cut five of the previous times he played here,
Perry gleefully declared, "At least I can tell everybody I led the Masters once
in my life."
Some stop to smell the flowers. For Kenny Perry, it's cigar smoke.
AUGUSTA, Ga. – It was difficult to tell whether the response to Greg Norman on his return to his beautiful hell, applause and cheering so loud and enthusiastic, was out of admiration or sympathy.
"Everybody wants to live in the past," Norman said Thursday, answering a question about what might have been had he not come apart in that final round of the 1996 Masters, a final round he doesn't want to remember and no one else wants to forget.
So many chances to win this major played out beneath the Georgia pines, golf's tribute to spring and history.
Norman was the man of a decade, from the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s. Always in contention. Often in frustration.
Jack Nicklaus edged him by a shot in the '86 Masters, then a year later Larry Mize holed a chip to win over Greg in a playoff. Then after we spent seasons taunting Norman with our thoughts and analysis, he constructed a six-shot lead over Nick Faldo with 18 holes remaining.
At last, we believed, there would be redemption. Instead there was more agony. Faldo not only beat Norman, he beat him by five shots.
Greg returned another half-dozen times, even coming in as high as third in 1999, but then his life changed. There were injuries. His marriage was unraveling. He concentrated on his numerous businesses, from turf grass to boat building. The Masters was left in the distance, his last appearance in 2002.
Until now. Until gaining a place in the field through a surprising third-place finish in last July's British Open. At 54, Greg Norman was back to challenge the greens and demons. In the first round, he met that challenge, shooting a 2-under-par 70.
And naturally, someone wondered, euphemistically of course, if Norman had played that awful final day in 1996 as he did this wonderfully reassuring first day in 2009, "what you might have shot on an earlier Augusta National."
Norman was not fooled. He understood the meaning, and he offered his punch line about us living in the past.
It's a different Greg Norman now. He said his marriage to retired tennis star Chris Evert, after a $100 million divorce from his wife of some 25 years, Laura, has proven to be stabilizing.
Chrissie's calm approach, understanding of competition and willingness to accept Greg's hours of practice, have been a balance Norman said had been lacking.
Greg and Chris talk to each other like husband and wife, and athlete and athlete.
"She wishes she could get back out there and play," said Norman, who in contrast has gone back out there and is playing, "because she sees the passion I have, and I'm at the age – we are both at the age – where golf allows me to do it, or my sport allows me to do it for whatever crazy reason."
And Evert, also 54, unable to race about a court as she did three decades past, finds vicarious success in Norman's golf. "She can still hit all the shots," he said. "But she feels, especially now, she loves the competition, wants to make sure everything is right around me. Because she's been there and done that and wants nothing more than to see me just happy playing golf, whatever happens on the course."
What happened Thursday was Norman had three birdies and only one bogey. And at each green and each tee, the crowd was more than gracious, it was excited.
"Hey everybody loves me," joked Norman. Nothing wrong with that is there? Are you guys jealous?"
Greg, with his swashbuckling ways, with his nickname, "The Great White Shark," was forever a favorite. He took chances. He took figurative blows to the jaw.
"No matter where I play in the world, I've been connected to the gallery," said Norman. "I play with my heart on my sleeve, and I've done very well out of the game. And when I come here, people probably feel for me – some of the things that have happened here -- and really enjoy seeing me back here.
"I played my way into this tournament, which very few people can say at age 54, and it's a feather in my cap, to say the least. A seven-year hiatus, and it feels like the very first time I played here."
That was 28 years ago, 1981, and Norman, albeit on a more receptive course not toughened and lengthened, shot a 69, only one stroke better than the last time he played here, Thursday.
Norman, in his 22 Masters, has finished second three times and third three times. So close. And too far.
"Can a 54-old-man win this golf tournament?" a journalist asked Greg Norman in closing.
"We'll have to wait and see," Norman said with a shrug.
Or, knowing what the Masters has done to Greg, wait and hope.
AUGUSTA, GA. – One word. One name. Tiger. And it all changes, in golf, in sports. One name, and we’re thinking differently. One name, and we’re paying attention again.
One name, and the game is on.
It’s not a comeback for Tiger Woods. Not at the Masters. He was here in ’08, as in ’07 and the 12 years before that, two as an amateur.
He missed golf for eight months, June to February, recovering from knee surgery. And certainly golf, so dependent on individual stars, missed him.
But here under the Georgia pines, here where Amen Corner lurks, here where history can be found on virtually every magnificently trimmed fairway or hellishly fast green, it’s as if nothing has changed. Because nothing has changed.
Tiger is playing and thus, weeks of rehabbing and months of doubts to the contrary, Tiger is the favorite.
What a great few days in sports, the Final Four, the beginning of baseball season, the Masters. A tradition like no other, CBS tells us. Tiger Woods, a golfer like no other, and nobody needs to tell us.
What the fans tell Tiger, shout it out, is “You’re the man.” Which he is. Golf is dozens of great players, Phil Mickelson, Anthony Kim, Geoff Ogilvy, Greg Norman, returning to his scene of heartbreak. Golf is one person, Tiger Woods.
Does he do it this week, win a fifth Masters, a 15th major? Or does he fail, and his short streak without a Masters victory extend to four, which would be the longest since he turned pro and, with that crushing triumph in 1997, turned golf upside down?
Either way, Tiger becomes the tale, the focus. Either we’re going to say, “How about Tiger?” or “What happened to Tiger?” The world distilled into good and bad, right and wrong, Tiger or not Tiger.
The Giants and A’s have started their long season.
The 49ers and Raiders are trying to figure into the NFL Draft. All of it is interesting, as opposed to Tiger, who is compelling.
Golf, as tennis, is constructed on personalities. Arnie took the game out of the country clubs. Jack Nicklaus awed us with his success. Greg Norman was exciting, sometimes in a negative way. Then along came Tiger, breaking par, breaking barriers, becoming as much a symbol of progress as a champion athlete.
And now here he is, and here the Masters is, and we can’t help but pay attention and perhaps pay obeisance to arguably the finest golfer ever and maybe the best-run tournament ever.
The Masters the last couple of years hasn’t been as exciting as we remembered. The weather was cold. The course had been toughened. The familiar roars of appreciative fans were lacking.
Tiger the last three years wasn’t quite as exciting at the Masters as we preferred, although two third places and a second isn’t exactly a collapse. More a tease.
“The last couple years, my putting has been streaky here,” was Tiger’s explanation before today’s first round. “I got on rolls where I make everything, and I get on rolls where I didn’t make anything.”
For sure, Tiger has made himself impossible to ignore.
Art Spander has been covering Bay Area sports since 1965 and also writes on www.artspander.com and www.realclearsports.com. E-mail him at typoes@aol.com.
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http://www.sfexaminer.com/sports/Spander-Tiger-injects-life-into-the-Masters-42715287.html
Copyright 2009 SF Newspaper Company
The NCAA Final Four, with its oversized crowds came first, and were followed by the baseball openers teasing the long season to come. Now, at a site as legendary as the men who have competed here, the Masters.
Now Amen Corner, Hogan Bridge and the man whose very presence has transformed golf into more than a weekend pastime, Tiger Woods.
Have we come down from North Carolina’s brilliant victory over Michigan State? Or Francisco Rodriguez’ excellent relief performance in his first chance for the Mets? It is time to get up once more, to follow Phil and Padraig and particularly, Tiger. Time to pay attention to the 12th hole, called by some the most difficult par-3 in golf, and to greens that as Dan Jenkins once wrote, are as slick as the top of Sam Snead’s bald head.
There is a special fascination with the Masters as the first major tournament of every year. The name itself lends a cachet not found anywhere else in sport.
Golfers last a lifetime. Jack Nicklaus won a Masters at age 46 and was playing the tournament well into his 60s. Greg Norman is back this time, and even the most callous of individuals finds sympathy for a man in his 50s known less for success than for his failures, including that 1996 Masters, when he blew a six-shot lead the last day.
We are familiar with so many of them -- last year’s winner Trevor Immelman, and Vijay Singh and names which persist like the blooms of the dogwood trees.
We remember when Tom Weiskopf took a 12 on that 13th hole, and when Mickelson made that winning putt on the 18th and jumped, what, all of three inches? And we remember when, in 1997, Tiger crushed the scoring record, sending a signal that golf would never be the same, as he became the first African-American to win the Masters.
Since then, it’s been all about Tiger, and this year -- the year of the great return -- the focus is even greater. From his first shot in Thursday’s opening round to his last, he will be the focus, and perhaps the champion. He was gone eight months after surgery on that anterior cruciate ligament and legitimately or not, because we should be wary of doubting the great ones, there were questions of whether he would be his old self. They were answered quickly enough.
Tiger stood over that 15-foot putt nine days ago on the 72nd hole at Arnold Palmer’s tournament and seemingly as if predestined, knocked the ball into the cup to win. The way he had done before the layoff. The way he always will do.
“I really wanted to get into contention,” Woods said Tuesday of his victory, “and feel the rush again on the back nine. I was not in it at Doral; I was on the periphery. The past week at Bay Hill was great to feel that, and to see how my body would react again. It’s been a while and a lot of uncertainty over the months upon months of rehab. And it felt great to hit shots.”
Uncertainty? With Tiger Woods? Deep down, he knew. So did the rest of us. He was going to win again. It was inevitable. That he needed only three tournaments was maybe a surprise. Or was it?
I learned not too long ago, never to be unsure of Tiger. It was the 1996 U.S. Amateur, his last before turning pro a few days later. He was 5-down in the final, at match play, and on a radio broadcast I declared his reign, after winning the previous two years, was at an end.
Not at all. Woods caught Steve Scott and won on the second extra hole, the 38th. Scott could only sigh, “Against Tiger Woods no lead is safe.”
A couple days later, Willie McCovey, the Hall of Fame baseball player, confronted me and said, “How could you give up on Tiger? I don’t care how far teams and players get behind, when they’re good you have to believe in them.”
I believe. Tiger may not win this Masters, but who wants to pick against him? In these wonderful few days of April 2009, not me.
As a reporter since 1960, Art Spander is a living treasure of sports history. A recipient of the Dick McCann Memorial Award -- given for his long and distinguished career covering professional football -- he has earned himself a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And he has recently been honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the PGA of America for 2009.
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http://www.realclearsports.com/articles/2009/04/best-of-sporting-times-and-tigers.html
© RealClearSports 2009
By Art Spander
This was one in which reality crushed reverie, power overwhelmed hopefulness. This was one in which the best college basketball team in the land proved it was the best college basketball team in the land, and the experts knew exactly what they are talking about.
Over the weekend, we had been immersed in the tale of Michigan State, and how its ascent was being felt by this city that once was the proud hub of a flourishing auto industry, but now reflects all the problems of America’s stumbling economy. It was going to be so glorious, so uplifting when the Spartans came through. But they could not. North Carolina never gave them a chance. The Tar Heels ran and jumped and harassed. And Michigan State was in a state of bewilderment.
In the end, Carolina won 89-72, took its fifth NCAA basketball championship, finished as the Final One of the Final Four, verified that indeed as in October’s preseason polls and now in April’s glory, the Tar Heels are an unquestioned No. 1
They hit quickly and hard, stunning not only Michigan State, but a record crowd of 72,922 at Ford Field, the majority of which naturally was cheering for the Spartans. Carolina was up 22-7 within six minutes gone; then 34-11 with 9:44 to play in the half.
Would the Tar Heels score 100? Maybe they should have. Would they beat State worse than in December, when Carolina, in the very same building, the home of the NFL Detroit Lions, dismantled the Spartans, 98-63? Maybe they could have.
“They’ve kind of given us our lunch, haven’t they?" Tom Izzo, the Michigan State coach asked with great prescience the day before the game. “But that’s because they’re a great program."
The greatest going this season.
Sunday night, Roy Williams, the Carolina coach, dined on fried lobster at the Detroit Fish Market for the second time in 48 hours. “I’m not superstitious," Williams said when confronted as he left the restaurant, “but I ate here Friday night and I didn’t want to take any chances."
With the team he put on the court, there were no chances to be taken. Carolina forced a supposedly disciplined State team into 21 turnovers. “Fourteen in the first half," said Izzo. “We couldn’t do anything. I was disappointed. I also thought we missed some good shots early. I thought we looked either shell-shocked or worn down."
The championship was a reward for Carolina players such as Tyler Hansbrough and Danny Green, who ignored opportunities to join the NBA and came back for a senior season of not so much retribution as relish.
The 6-foot-9 Hansbrough, last season’s Player of the Year, was castigated because he did not lead Carolina to a title. When Williams was asked if that would diminish Tyler’s career, he was adamant in his denial. “Ernie Banks never won a World Series," Williams reminded.
But now Hansbrough has won an NCAA, and when the final seconds ticked off and the confetti was shot from those special air guns, he was a little kid beside himself, belying a reputation for a lack of emotion.
“This was the best way to go out," Hansbrough shouted into a CBS television microphone, “after what we had been through. We climbed all the way." Hansbrough had 18 points, behind Ty Lawson’s 21 and Wayne Ellington’s 19. Center Goran Suton scored 17 in his last game for Michigan State.
“We couldn’t stop Hansbrough inside,” said Izzo, “and we couldn’t stop Lawson from getting to the line.” Lawson got 18 free throws and made 15 as he drove inside and drew foul after foul.
“All I know,” said Williams, who has led Carolina to two championships in his six years after moving there from Kansas, “is I’m the luckiest coach in America. I am so proud of this team. We overcame a lot during the season."
They also scored a lot. Eight times Carolina reached 100 points or more, and when the Heels led Michigan State 55-34 at intermission, it appeared inevitable they would do it a ninth time. But Carolina got a bit loose and sloppy, and so the rout became merely a one-sided victory.
Magic Johnson, the Michigan State alum, and Larry Bird were in the building on what was the 30th anniversary of their memorable battle in the 1979 NCAA championship, won by the Spartans over Bird and Indiana State. And Michael Jordan, a Heel, David Robinson, Vivien Stringer and John Stockton made an appearance as part of being voted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Quite a night for greatness. And North Carolina was a major part of that, much to the frustration of the state of Michigan and Michigan State.
