By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — Tiger Woods started making putts. Matt Kuchar continued making amends. And Justin Thomas again was playing as if he was going to make the 2019 Genesis Open his tournament.
Copyright 2019, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — The thinking in golf is to get out trouble before you take a chance on getting into more trouble. With a printed statement and a proper payment, Matt Kuchar was able to extricate himself from some self-created difficulties.
Copyright 2019, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — And haven’t these been a few strange days of golf?
The revelation of Matt Kuchar’s perhaps low payment to a caddy after winning a tournament. The apology by Sergio Garcia for wreaking havoc on a course during a tournament in Saudi Arabia. The unprecedented hail that fell Sunday during the AT&T at Pebble Beach.
Copyright 2019, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — What do they call these people? Movers and shakers? Power brokers? There's no question in sports, as in other facets of life, that some people make a difference — on the field or the fairways, or maybe more importantly at the gate or the television ratings, where the money comes from.
Copyright 2019, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — He was so good, so young, on the cover of Golf Digest when still an amateur. The sport belonged to Phil Mickelson, along with Ernie Els. And then Tiger Woods came along.
Copyright 2019, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — Bing Crosby must be smiling up there someplace. They can take his name off the tournament. They can take some of the historic plaques off the wall near the pro shop. But they can’t change that central California mid-winter climate known as Crosby Weather.
Copyright 2019, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — He’s in first place. As a golfer. As a humanitarian. Whether or not Paul Casey holds his lead in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am going into Sunday’s final round, Casey is a winner.
Copyright 2019, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — Phil Mickelson finished, and for a few inelegant holes he seemed to be finished off. Jordan Spieth was still splashing forward. Open your umbrella, grab that Gore-Tex jacket and we’ll add another tale to the wintry woes of the tournament that can’t escape the Pacific storms or (drip, drip) its own reputation.
Copyright 2019, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — The great thing about Jay Monahan’s job is that he didn’t have to ask the boss if he could take the day off and play golf. He is the boss, the commissioner of the PGA Tour.
Copyright 2019, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — He did so well so quickly. Jordan Spieth couldn’t miss a putt, it seemed, and winning two majors before his 22nd birthday surely meant that he couldn’t miss becoming a Hall of Fame golfer. Didn’t his teenage pals call him “The Golden Child”?
Copyright 2019, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
ATLANTA — It wasn’t very super. Instead it was a verification of one of football’s oldest adages: You win on defense. Especially against team built on offense.
Copyright 2019, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
ATLANTA — They came from the suburbs of the Bay Area, growing up 50 miles and almost a generation apart, the new kid on the block and the onetime kid who has knocked off everyone’s block, Jared Goff and Tom Brady.
Copyright 2019, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
ATLANTA — The job has its benefits, starting with the current annual salary of $35 million a year. The job — or at least the person holding it — has its critics, and it always has.
Copyright 2019, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
ATLANTA — His father, Bum Phillips, once said of another coach, probably Don Shula but possibly also Bear Bryant, “He can take his’n and beat your’n, and he can take your’n and beat his’n.”
Copyright 2019, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
ATLANTA — Super Bowl media day always has been crazy. Now it’s commercial. Now it’s “Opening Night Fueled by Gatorade.” Now it’s been turned into another spectator event, people in the stands and, of course, paying to get in.
Copyright 2019, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
OAKLAND, Calif. — The trend had started. Torches were being passed, along with footballs and, down in the Australian Open, tennis players indiscriminate enough to rush the net.
Copyright 2019, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
OAKLAND, Calif. — These are the Warriors that were supposed to be, baskets by the dozens, points by the hundreds, ignoring the possibility (that Kevin Durant may be leaving), relishing the probability (that DeMarcus Cousins is arriving) and ecstatic that Steph Curry, who scored 23 points in the third quarter alone, is once again, Steph Curry.
Copyright 2019, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
OAKLAND, Calif. — It was a night when the Warriors remembered what they had — not that anyone would have been irreverent enough to forget — and also learned what they soon would have.
Copyright 2019, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — He handled the defeat better than his secondary handled the Clemson receivers. This was a momentous defeat for Nick Saban, his worst at Alabama, his second worst as a college football coach, and yet he dealt with it forthright, candidly, if somewhat bewildered by his team’s failings.
Copyright 2019, The Maven
By Art Spander
OAKLAND, Calif. — Kevin Durant studied the final stat sheet and listened to the questions. “I thought both teams played great,” he said, as much to himself as to the media facing him.
That they did. It was just that the Houston Rockets played a little greater.
Give Durant credit. He was out there, in the middle, so to speak, making baskets, missing shots, running, leaping, falling and, with his teammates, losing.
And yet he was moved by more than the final result, the Houston Rockets defeating the Warriors 135-134 on a 3-point basket with one second left by, whom else, James Harden.
Say what you want, that the Dubs, who were up by 20 in the first minute of the third quarter, blew the game; that Harden with yet another triple double (44 points, 15 assists and 10 rebounds) is unstoppable; that Golden State will be in trouble in the playoffs.
But if you love basketball, you have to appreciate what took place in the Dubs’ first home appearance of the new year, a meeting of the two teams who battled for seven games in last year’s Western Conference final — the change in momentum, the big baskets down the stretch, the reminder that in sports nothing is certain, even a huge second-half lead by the back-to-back NBA champions.
Warriors coach Steve Kerr was less magnanimous than Durant. “I thought we had control of the game,” said Kerr. “We had a six-point lead with the ball and would have liked to have seen us get better shots.”
And have liked to have seen the Rockets, who now have won both games on the season schedule, get less successful shots.
“They came out swinging,” Kerr said of the Rockets after intermission. “They scored, I think, 18 points in the first four minutes. Our defense was really poor. Our offensive execution was really lacking.”
And Harden, the bearded wonder who had his fifth straight 40-point game and second triple double of the week, was really, well, being James Harden.
“He just did what he always does,” said Kerr. “He’s the master of isolation, the step-back three and drawing fouls. I thought we did a really good job of keeping him off the line (Harden was 8-of-9 on free throws) for the most part. He made an impossible shot at the end. Just an incredible performance. Give him all the credit he deserves.”
And give the Warriors another loss in a meaningful game at the Oracle, where in some two-plus months they’ve flopped against Oklahoma City, Toronto, Milwaukee, the Lakers and now Houston.
“Down the stretch we were missing shots,” said Durant, who scored 26 points but only two in the third quarter. Steph Curry led the Warriors with 35, while Klay Thompson had 26.
“But I don’t think down the stretch is the reason we lost,” Durant added. “I just felt we let our foot off the gas a little bit in the third quarter. They knocked down some shots. But James shot 23 threes tonight. That’s a lot of three pointers.”
Including the game winner. “James wouldn’t have had to make that shot,” said Thompson, “if we just played the way we were supposed to in the second half. The ball movement got stagnant.”
For the Rockets, the ball moves in Harden’s hands.
“He can get any shot he wants,” Houston coach Mike D’Antoni said. “His threat is getting to the rim any time he wants. I don’t think we’ve seen the likes of this offense and the explosion he has.”
Harden got pummeled in the first quarter and left the game for a few minutes. “I was a little dizzy in the beginning,” he said, “but it’s a big-time game for us.”
During the day, broadcasters at ESPN debated whether the game was more important for the Warriors or for the Rockets, a bit silly but time-filling.
Asked why he’s so difficult to guard, Harden candidly pointed out, “I think it’s the separation I create, and once I create the separation you can’t really recover. You have to let me shoot or hit my elbow. There’s not much you can do about it.”
Except, as did Kevin Durant, contend that you played in a great game.