By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com
At its core, golf is one of the clearest and fairest of sports. Each swing counts a stroke. No umpire is needed as in baseball, no referee as in football.
The problem wasn't the game but rather the surroundings, the bigotry, the exclusion at certain courses because of race or religion. Or, as at Augusta National, gender.
© RealClearSports 2012
By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com
SAN FRANCISCO — Nobody died. The terse adage is offered frequently as perspective for sporting disappointment. And for the San Francisco Giants and their disillusioned fans, that's true.
If you don't count dreams. Or hopes, both of which have expired.
© RealClearSports 2012
By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com
SAN FRANCISCO — So in a while, a couple of weeks probably, Stephen Strasburg won't be allowed to pitch. But that's the future. For the present, he's still active, and today he's going for the Nationals against the Giants.
That's why Tuesday night's win by the Giants over Washington was important. "Huge,'' said Bruce Bochy, San Francisco's manager. The Nats were 4-0 against the Giants. And Monday night, they crushed San Francisco, 14-2.
© RealClearSports 2012
By Art Spander
For GlobalGolfPost.com
KIAWAH ISLAND, SOUTH CAROLINA — It was a great PGA Championship if you liked traffic jams, thunderstorms and alligators eating CBS microphones.
Maybe not quite as great for those waiting for Tiger Woods to win that 15th major, but as Woods himself said even before the first weather warning was posted, he's got another 10 years or so to catch Jack Nicklaus.
Copyright 2012 Global Golf Post
By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com
KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. — The name blows out of the past on the warm wind, whipping up memories and regret.
John Daly is high on a scoreboard in a major, and we are confronted with the joy and pain — mostly pain — of a career that spun out of control. Of a career that is a curiosity.
© RealClearSports 2012
By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com
KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. — Were those raindrops pounding down on the media tent, drowning out Tiger Woods' voice? Or, the way Woods rolled his eyes in bewilderment at the sound, were they coins of his realm, silver dollars, 50-cent pieces or quarters?
We had gone past Tiger’s monthly disappointments and possibilities, the same items invoked almost every time he sits down in front of the journalists and behind a microphone.
© RealClearSports 2012
By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com
It's a business. That inescapable point has been drummed into us as long as there have been professional sports. At no time, however, does the idea become as apparent as that tidy little period at the end of July, baseball's trading deadline.
Teams in contention desperately go after the player or players they believe will make them champions. Teams out of contention basically throw up their arms and throw out their stars, although nobody involved ever would concede they, well, have conceded. Even though it's obvious they have.
© RealClearSports 2012
By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com
There were empty seats in London, and as the world of Twitter would have it, empty heads at NBC.
A young female swimmer from China did what an American coach said is impossible, making us wonder whether she was on something illegal or he merely was on a vindictive crusade.
© RealClearSports 2012
By Art Spander
Special to the Washington Times
His life has returned to a pro tennis player’s normalcy, airport-to-airport, tournament-to-tournament, his concerns again about the person across the net instead of his health issue.
© Copyright 2012 The Washington Times, LLC
By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com
Are we angry at our own ignorance? Or at those who made us aware of what we didn't know?
It was Hollywood stuff, a paperback novel, the descent of the man whose statue has been carted away like that of a toppled dictator, the crash of a man who virtually had wings.
© RealClearSports 2012
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