By Art Spander
For GlobalGolfPost.com
PACIFIC PALISADES, CALIFORNIA -- The mirrors were taped to the sides of the car, a Ford Focus. "They fell off too much," Keegan Bradley remembered.
Not what you want to make an impression at Augusta National. Or even at the Subway sandwich shop down the street.
Bradley's mode of transportation is better now. It should be. He won the PGA Championship...
Copyright 2012 Global Golf Post
By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com
LOS ANGELES — He made a bogey. After 49 holes. And who knows how many air miles? Phil Mickelson, jet-setter, pacesetter, has brought his game down the California coast in a big way.
Pebble Beach? Riviera? He just keeps flying along, literally and figuratively.
The first round of the Northern Trust Open on Thursday ended...
© RealClearSports 2012
By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com
LOS ANGELES — And now this week’s distillation of the PGA Tour: Phil is here, and Tiger isn’t.
Here being the Northern Trust Open, which used to be called the Los Angeles Open. Here being Riviera Country Club.
A lot of Hollywood in the history of Riviera. A lot of Hollywood is in pro golf, in every sport.
© RealClearSports 2012
By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner
"This is unbelievable. I’ve never been part of something like this," Jeremy Lin said. But not about becoming the toast of New York, about signing with the Warriors.
Hey, the young man had to start some place.
He was a curiosity, a hometown kid...
Copyright 2012 SF Newspaper Company
By Art Spander
For GlobalGolfPost.com
PEBBLE BEACH, CALIFORNIA — This isn't the old Tiger Woods. This is the Tiger Woods who teases and frustrates. This is the Tiger Woods who gets himself into position to win but doesn't win, in fact in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am doesn't even finish in the top 10.
This isn't the old Tiger Woods, and maybe it's time to wonder if it ever will be. All he had in front of him Sunday were Charlie Wi and Ken Duke...
Copyright 2012 Global Golf Post
By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner
This is the way you conquer Pebble Beach: You go out in the final round on the opening holes, the ones historically the easiest, and make birdies and maybe an eagle. Which is exactly what Phil Mickelson did Sunday.
Phil the Mick, Lefty, the guy who a few months from his 42nd birthday seemed on the downside of his career, overtook Pebble, playing partner Tiger Woods, Charlie Wi and everything and everyone else.
Copyright 2012 SF Newspaper Company
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. -- Try these for a couple of names high on the leader board at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am heading into Sunday's final round: Tiger and Phil.
Throw in a historic course along the California coast and a journeyman who's never finished first, and the script couldn't be more appealing.
It's not a major, but...
Copyright © 2012 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. -- Tiger Woods isn't playing badly. His problem halfway through the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am is that more than a dozen other golfers are playing better, particularly Charlie Wi, who faced Woods as an amateur.
Woods shifted to shorter Monterey Peninsula CC on Friday in this tournament which uses a three-course rotation. He shot 2-under-par 68 for a two-round total of 136.
Copyright © 2012 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — So according to the Forbes Magazine poll, Tiger Woods shares with Michael Vick the dishonor of being the most disliked athletes in America, one of those nonsensical judgmental ratings designed to draw attention.
How can the two even be linked, Tiger guilty of no crime except disillusionment and Vick, as we know, convicted of torturing animals?
If Tiger is so disliked...
© RealClearSports 2012
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — Tiger Woods' first tournament round of the year in the United States consisted of good tee shots, middling approach shots and a score that would have been satisfying if the scores of so many others in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am weren't outstanding.
On a windless, blue-sky day along the Central California coast, Woods shot a 4-under par 68 at Spyglass Hill, considered by most the most difficult of the three courses used the opening three rounds. But he was considerably back of the tri-leaders.
Copyright © 2012 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner
PEBBLE BEACH — It is a week as much for nostalgia as for sport, a time to walk the fairways of the present and wake up echoes of the past, to watch Tiger Woods and Bill Murray and remember Arnold Palmer and Dean Martin.
Old ballparks come down, old athletes pass on. But the golf tournament Bing Crosby started in the late 1930s that became the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am in the 1980s continues on, tugging us backward as it pulls us forward.
By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. – He said he’s at peace, and why not? After what Tiger Woods has gone through the past two years plus – even if ultimately he was responsible for most of the problems – Woods has escaped to a future which could bring memories of the past.
Do we need once more to review the agony, Tiger’s, golf’s? The dark cloud through which the sun never shown, the car accident, the admissions of infidelity, the divorce, the all too frequent injuries, the media attacks, the winless months?
© RealClearSports 2012
By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner
Somehow it all seemed natural, Tiger Woods back at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, upbeat, expansive. Maybe it’s because he feels comfortable in Northern California, having gone to school at Stanford.
Maybe it’s because he believes he’s back to being Tiger Woods.
He has changed. The sport has changed.
Copyright 2012 SF Newspaper Company
By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner
Tom Brady didn’t catch the man whom as a kid he idolized. It could have been because a couple of his best receivers didn’t catch the ball. But ever the team player, Brady was philosophical, not angry.
Another Super Bowl for Brady — the fifth in 10 years — and after three victories, a second straight loss. This time to the same team, the New York Giants, who beat him four years ago. Sunday, in Super Bowl XLVI, those Giants defeated Brady’s New England Patriots 21-17.
By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner
How to figure this one, Super Bowl XLVI, between the New England Patriots, who haven’t lost in 11 games, and the New York Giants, who in November were the last team to beat the Patriots, if only by a 24-20 score?
It’s between a Patriots defense, which wasn’t very intimidating, and a Giants rushing offense, which has come up small.
Copyright 2012 SF Newspaper Company
By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com
INDIANAPOLIS — The father and two sons, as so many others walking the streets, wore football jerseys — but not those of the Giants or Patriots. These were Green Bay Packers uniforms, the No. 12 of Aaron Rodgers.
A year ago, they were the team. A year ago, he was the man. A year ago.
How quickly the days go by. How swiftly times and teams change.
© RealClearSports 2012
By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner
They didn’t, in the poignant phrasing of New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, “know what the [bleep]” they were going to do with Julian Edelman. But they knew on the day of the 2009 NFL draft they were going to do something.
“We drafted you as a football player,” apparently is what Belichick, in his arrogance and brilliance, told Edelman. “We’re going to have you on the field somewhere.”
Copyright 2012 SF Newspaper Company
By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner
INDIANAPOLIS — It could be better for Tom Brady. He could be playing for the 49ers, his team when he was a kid. Such a Niners fan.
“I’d run around the parking lot at Candlestick in my Joe Montana jersey or Steve Young jersey,” Brady said. “Throwing the ball. There were some great times.”
These aren’t bad times. On Sunday, for a fifth time...
Copyright 2012 SF Newspaper Company
By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com
INDIANAPOLIS -- “Name the Kardashian sisters.’’ Was that an order? Or a request? Rob Gronkowski sat and thought. Maybe better than being asked what kind of tree he would be if he were a tree. But not by much.
Super Bowl media day, when 100 football players, if not all at once, and 100,000 journalists, cameramen and assorted mountebanks -- well, more like 3,000, but it seems like 100,000 -- gather to annoy each other.
“Kim,’’ began Gronkowski, the Patriots’ tight end. “Khloe ...“
© RealClearSports 2012
By Art Spander
For GlobalGolfPost.com
LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA -- This wasn't what the Farmers Insurance Open needed, the hometown kid -- well, he's no longer a kid and maybe this is the issue -- missing the cut. And, because that Tiger guy wasn't around, other than around the world, it left a void in the superstar category.
Phil Mickelson had won the tournament, once known as the Buick Invitational, three times. He was the biggest name at Torrey Pines. What a site and sight it is, rambling along the bluffs above the breaking surf.
His participation, however...
Copyright 2012 Global Golf Post