By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com
LYTHAM ST. ANNES, England — The word was everywhere, making a bad situation worse, as if what happened to Adam Scott the final day of the British Open, the final holes of the British Open, could be worse.
Scott not only lost the Open, blew the Open, came in second to Ernie Els, but was being branded a “choke,’’ and there’s nothing more demeaning in sports, nothing more damaging.
© RealClearSports 2012
By Art Spander
For GlobalGolfPost.com
LYTHAM ST. ANNES, ENGLAND -- Oh, woe is England. Pickpocketing and shoplifting are on the increase. "Shameful" -- that's what the headline said -- civil servants planned to strike Heathrow Airport as Olympic Games traffic reached a peak.
Copyright 2012 Global Golf Post
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
LYTHAM ST. ANNES, England -- The game plan, Tiger Woods said, was to shoot under par going out. Instead, with a triple-bogey 7 on the sixth hole after landing in one of Royal Lytham & St. Annes' steep and evil bunkers, he shot himself in the foot.
Copyright © 2012 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
LYTHAM ST. ANNES, England -- Adam Scott cried the day Greg Norman blew the Masters. It was 1996 and Scott was a teenager in Australia who idolized Norman.
Copyright © 2012 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
LYTHAM ST. ANNES, England -- The opportunity is in front of Adam Scott, because for the first time after three rounds of a major championship everyone else is behind him.
Copyright © 2012 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
LYTHAM ST. ANNES, England -- Brandt Snedeker tied a British Open scoring record Friday, sat down in the media tent and true to his hang-loose character insisted, "I'm sure everybody in the room is in about as much shock as I am right now.''
Copyright © 2012 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
LYTHAM ST. ANNES, England -- When the U.S. basketball team arrived for the Olympics, there was frequent use of the words "Dream Team'' in the British papers. That phrase also would be a proper description of the leader board after Thursday's first round of the 141st British Open.
Copyright © 2012 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
For RealClearSports
LYTHAM ST. ANNES, England - He trails the guy, Adam Scott, who uses his former swing - and his former caddie - by three shots.
He's two strokes behind Paul Lawrie, the man no one remembers won the '99 British Open - because they can't forget who lost it, Jean Van de Velde - as well as Zach Johnson and a Belgian named Nicolas Colsaerts.
© RealClearSports 2012
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
LYTHAM ST. ANNES, England -- It is a course of too many bunkers and too little room. Royal Lytham & St. Annes is squeezed between railroad tracks and brick Victorian homes, where Bobby Jones got a title, Tiger Woods got confidence and David Duval's fling with greatness reached its apogee.
Copyright © 2012 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com
LYTHAM ST. ANNES, England - It is a place of history, not beauty, a links course next to Victorian homes instead of the coastline. Blackpool, Britain's idea of Coney Island, is up the road, and the Beatles' home, Liverpool, is some 30 miles to the south, another reminder of the area's proletarian setting.
Royal Lytham & St. Annes, where the 141st British Open starts Thursday, isn't much for aesthetics. The elegance comes from the test it provides and from the players in 10 previous Opens, Bobby Jones to David Duval, who conquered her.
© RealClearSports 2012
By Art Spander
Special to PGA.com
LYTHAM ST. ANNES, England – In a land of royalty, we begin with The King. Not of the nation but of the country of golf, Arnold Palmer. He believed in the Open Championship, in what could be described as a sporting manifest destiny, of Americans crossing not mountains but the sea, to accept a challenge and win a championship.
Since 1922, when Walter Hagen, also given a title that would fit in Britain, “Sir Haig," there have been 89 Opens and 40 native-born American winners. That includes the last two at this year's venue, Royal Lytham & St. Annes on the Lancashire Coast -- Tom Lehman in 1996 and David Duval in 2001.
© 2012 PGA.com, the PGA of America and Turner Sports Interactive, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com
LONDON – He plays the wrong game, the one, which has made him rich and famous across the ocean but is barely recognized in his home country.
“The British Olympic Giant,’’ was the title of a piece in the Sunday magazine of the Times of London. Giant in terms of height, because as everyone familiar with the NBA knows Luol Deng is 6-foot-9.
© RealClearSports 2012
By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com
LONDON – The tears apparently have dried, but unfortunately the streets haven’t. The Sunday Times had a front-page story on something other than the overdone hopes of Andy Murray, and it was about the weather for the upcoming Olympics.
In a word, like England’s results in soccer, grim.
© RealClearSports 2012
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
WIMBLEDON, England -- It wasn't the weight of a nation that kept Andy Murray from ending 76 years of British futility at Wimbledon, it was the unstoppable brilliance of Roger Federer.
Copyright © 2012 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com
WIMBLEDON, England -- So maybe John McEnroe, as all announcers who want us to pay attention to the moment, was exaggerating a trifle.
But when someone has won all the Grand Slams except the French and is smart enough to have spent a year at Stanford, he is allowed an opinion.
Which McEnroe would give, certainly, even if not allowed.
© RealClearSports 2012
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
WIMBLEDON, England -- Think of the Mets making the World Series. Consider the Islanders getting to the Stanley Cup Final. Nothing compared to Andy Murray playing in Sunday's Wimbledon men's final. A nation turns its lonely eyes to him.
"Great Scot, a Briton in the Final,'' was the headline in the Independent. An editorial in the Times of London, the paper first published in 1785, with the headline "Magnificent Murray,'' began "Andy Murray's achievement yesterday was immense.''
Copyright © 2012 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
WIMBLEDON, England -- She leaned back and fell, tearfully, joyfully, Serena Williams on the sacred grass of Centre Court and at the same instant at the top of the tennis world.
"It's been an unbelievable journey for me,'' she would say. An unbelievable journey for anyone.
Copyright © 2012 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
WIMBLEDON, England -- In Saturday's Wimbledon women's final of contrasts, Serena Williams takes her big serve and grand history against the finesse and unfulfilled dreams of Agnieszka Radwanska.
Williams has set tournament records for aces as she tries for a fifth All England championship and 14th Grand Slam title. Radwanska, the first Pole in a Wimbledon final in 73 years (well before the Open Era), has kept opponents off balance as she kept moving toward a first major title.
Copyright © 2012 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com
WIMBLEDON, England -- He contends he knows how it works. "I think,'' said Roger Federer, "I have played over 100 matches on grass now.'' That is to his advantage. And perhaps, since he will be 31 in a month, to his disadvantage.
A year ago, two years ago, in consecutive Wimbledons, he was eliminated in the quarterfinals. So watching from afar, and knowing tennis is a sport of the young - Novak Djokovic is 25, Rafael Nadal 26 - we declared Federer a dinosaur.
© RealClearSports 2012
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
WIMBLEDON, England -- Intriguing. Roger Federer might have described his Wimbledon semifinal Friday against No. 1 Novak Djokovic as important. Or critical. Or possibly a last hurrah. But he called it intriguing.
They've played 26 times, Federer, the man with the record 16 Grand Slam titles, and Djokovic, who has replaced Federer at the top of the rankings. Federer has won 14, but Djokovic has taken seven of the last eight, including three straight.
Copyright © 2012 Newsday. All rights reserved.