RealClearSports: Match Play Is Golf for the Moment

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By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

MARANA, Ariz. -- Match play is when golf becomes the NCAA basketball tournament. Match play is when two men compete head to head, as Ali and Frazier or Nadal and Federer. Match play is "get the ball in the cup or get out of here.''

And, as Tiger Woods a day earlier, Lee Westwood, Phil Mickelson and Rory McIlroy are out of here. Done.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2011

SF Examiner: Tiger sent packing at Match Play, still searching for his swing

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By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

They’ve got an airport up Interstate 10 used as a parking lot for dozens of obsolete jets. This is a region for retirement, the Arizona desert, planes and people, a place to reflect on what used to be.

Such as Tiger Woods’ golf game.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2011 SF Newspaper Company

SF Examiner: Spring brings new challenges for champions

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By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

And so it starts again. The best season in San Francisco Giants history must be relegated to history. It is February, and baseball returns, as always bringing its pleasures and its questions.

What happens in the year after? Does Buster Posey improve, or is there such a thing as the dreaded sophomore jinx? Does Aubrey Huff take his thong and enthusiasm to another level? How does being named “one of the 25 Coolest Athletes of All Time” — ALL TIME — by GQ magazine affect Tim Lincecum?

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2011 SF Newspaper Company

RealClearSports: NBA's All About Glamour Teams

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By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

So, Denver, the city and the team, symbolically lies bleeding and battered. It was overmatched and under-financed. The NBA is a league for the Big Guys, figuratively as well as literally.

In the so-called ultimate team game, everything is under the control of the individual.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2011

Global Golf Post: Gray Matter: What Was He Thinking?

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By Art Spander
For GlobalGolfPost.com

PACIFIC PALISADES, CALIFORNIA -- He either is courageous or outrageous. Maybe a little of both. As a television reporter, Jim Gray pushes the envelope, and so after an incident the Golf Channel pushed him off the broadcast of the Northern Trust Open.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2011 Global Golf Post

Global Golf Post: Couples Takes The Walk Of Fame

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By Art Spander
For GlobalGolfPost.com

PACIFIC PALISADES, CALIFORNIA -- Oh, Riviera, glorious, historic Riviera, off Sunset Boulevard, in a canyon a mile from the Pacific, with Ben Hogan's statue next to the putting green, photos of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy lining the walls and a celebrity picture of Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby outside the men's locker room.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2011 Global Golf Post

RealClearSports: Wrong Time for Cursed Golfer Johnson

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By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. -- Golf isn't a sport, it's absurdity. Columnist Jim Murray, who used to belong to Riviera, where they're playing the Northern Trust Open this week, called golf the pursuit of the infinite.

It has rules out of the 19th Century. It has scenarios out of the pages of "Alice in Wonderland."

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2011

SF Examiner: Barry Bonds trial has finally reached point of exhaustion

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By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

The 7½-year itch. The government’s unrelenting attempt to convict Barry Bonds begins once again next month, yet another form of March Madness.

According to the best reports, the feds are now into taxpayers for $6 million in trying to prove Barry is guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice. And they’ll be spending a great deal more.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2011 SF Newspaper Company

RealClearSports: Open Champ Is Going Hollywood

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By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

LOS ANGELES -- He's here, Shrek, or as it says on the birth certificate, Lodewicus Theodorus Oosthuizen. Last weekend the Grammy Awards. This weekend, the NBA All-Star Game. And smack in the middle, the guy with the gap in his teeth but no holes in his golf game, Louis Oosthuizen, British Open Champion.

"I'm still looking around for the Hollywood sign,'' Oosthuizen insisted on Tuesday. "Once I see that I'll know in L.A. Yeah, I've never been here. Whenever you're here, you want to see that sign.''

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2011

LA Times: D.A. Points, Bill Murray win AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am

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By Art Spander
Special to the Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Pebble Beach — The golf tournament once known as the Bing Crosby now could be renamed the Bill Murray. The man known for his role as greenskeeper Carl Spackler in "Caddyshack," already a legend at Pebble Beach, is now a champion.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

RealClearSports: Murray Points D.A. to 63 at Pebble

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By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. -- His name is D.A. (for Darren Andrew) Points. He plays golf for a living, and he has a sense of humor, two things some find mutually exclusive.

He's able to team up with the man from "Caddyshack,'' the inimitable Bill Murray, and still get noticed on his own.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2011

SF Examiner: Giants pitcher Matt Cain swings away at Pebble Beach

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By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

It was just like pitching. Rhythm and motion. Except there wasn’t a guy holding a bat 60 feet, 6 inches away from Matt Cain, there was a pin maybe 240 yards away. Or a cup 10 feet away.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2011 SF Newspaper Company

SF Examiner: Pebble Beach's classic golf event honors greats

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By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

This is the golf tournament less about golf than it is about people.

This is the one Bing Crosby started in the 1930s for his “fellas” in the entertainment business, the one that since 1947 has been as much a fixture on the Monterey Peninsula as the crash of the waves and the sweep of the fairways.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2011 SF Newspaper Company

RealClearSports: 'Great One' Loses It Over Golf

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By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. -- Welcome to the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, where there isn't any ice on the streets or fairways; any fan who has a ticket will not be forced to watch on television; there is no threat of a lockout; and star athletes from other sports have been known to turn into Jell-O while playing with the pros.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2011

SF Examiner: A perfect finish to Super Bowl XLV for Packers

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By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

Bumbling Christina Aguilera forgot the words to the national anthem, the bumbling NFL forgot to make sure all the people who had tickets had seats, and the bumbling Pittsburgh Steelers forgot what to do with the football, which is not turn it over.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2011 SF Newspaper Company

RealClearSports: Of Late Nights and Super Bowl Victories

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By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

DALLAS -- Saw a story that Ben Roethlisberger and a couple of Steelers teammates had been witnessed post-midnight at a Fort Worth bar. Then a few hours later saw in person Dick Vermeil, now in the wine business but previously a coach of football champions.

Such a perfect link.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2011

SF Examiner: Despite off-field issues, Big Ben back in big game

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By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

It’s not as if nothing happened. The suspension was imposed, for a reason which if it doesn’t beg the truth is hardly specific.

Ben Roethlisberger missed the first month of the season for violating the NFL’s personal conduct policy.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2011 SF Newspaper Company

SF Examiner: Northern California native Aaron Rodgers is leader of the Pack

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By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

In the end, sport is about results, not possibilities. Sure, football, the 49ers and  the Green Bay Packers would have been different if San Francisco had drafted the man who as a kid always wanted to play in The City — Aaron Rodgers. But they did not, and in retrospect, Rodgers is better off, if indeed the Niners are not.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2011 SF Newspaper Company

RealClearSports: Madness From Another Media Day

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By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

ARLINGTON, Texas -- These spikes were not done by a wide receiver who had just scored. They were the four-inch heels of the reporter -- need it be pointed out a woman reporter? -- from some TV station as intent on getting herself noticed as she was getting the answer to a preposterous question.

Stilettos on artificial turf are about as nonsensical as on icy thoroughfares in Dallas, and if this is supposed to be a test case of the 2014 (brrr) New York game we are (chattering teeth) forewarned.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2011