By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
NAPA, Calif. — He said it would be a validation, one that Stewart Cink contends he didn’t need. “Hey,” he told us, “I know I’ve got enough game to compete out here, I really do.”
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
NAPA, Calif. — Phil Mickelson knows, as we all know. The tournament this week, the Safeway Open, here in the smoke and haze at Silverado, is a trifle. A warm-up, if you will.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
NAPA, Calif. — The round was better, two under par, three shots lower than the previous day. Yet it wasn’t good enough to get Jordan Spieth to the weekend.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
NAPA, Calif. — Sometimes fortune is more important than results. Sometimes it isn’t exactly what you do but indeed when you do it.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
NAPA, Calif. — His talent made him fascinating. So did his personality. "The problem is, I'm one of the guys that has to say something,” Sergio Garcia once told us. "A lot of people think about it but don't want to say anything."
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
NAPA, Calif. — The U.S. Open is next week at Winged Foot just outside New York City. Which is the reason Shane Lowry this week is at the Safeway Open in Napa.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
No runs for the Giants, but maybe progress for society. Two games without anyone from San Francisco crossing the plate. One brief series in which young athletes may have crossed a barrier.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
The NBA stopped. But only to make us aware that the killing must stop. If we weren’t aware already.
Black men keep getting shot — this time in Kenosha, Wis. — and other black men again did what they could to peacefully show their outrage and fear.
Copyright 2020 The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
OAKLAND — These are unnerving times. One minute you’re worried about virus droplets, the next about everything going up in flames. If the Oakland Athletics on Saturday seemed to have more on their minds than picking up a ground ball, well, even good teams have their bad games.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
This isn’t like 1969, when the first pick in the NBA draft was Lew Alcindor, who soon would change his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and the second pick was Neal Walk.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
SAN FRANCISCO — Not a bad weekend for the old bay. On one, side Collin Morikawa was sinking putts. On the other, members of the A’s and Astros threatened to sink a few punches.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
SAN FRANCISCO — The finish was acceptable, an under-par round, even if didn’t mean much except to the man himself, Tiger Woods, and his fans.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
SAN FRANCISCO — He wears a hat promoting a messaging service that President Trump is determined to ban. He once flung a putter into a lake in France, and his mother retrieved it, only to discover the club was broken.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
SAN FRANCISCO — As the late great Herb Caen, Mr. San Francisco, used to write, “You had to be there.” Except because of restrictions imposed for the COVID-19 epidemic, you couldn’t be there.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
SAN FRANCISCO — It would be better if things were normal. Shane Lowry, the Open winner, “the champion golfer of year,“ told us that.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
SAN FRANCISCO — The marine layer, a bewitching description of weather that takes yardage from a golf shot and adds extra clothing to a golfer. Brrr.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
SAN FRANCISCO — So it’s the Yankees and Dodgers in the World Series, right? As the networks would have it. You think that, like in 1951, the Giants are going to fall 13½ games behind before becoming a contender? No chance.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
OAKLAND — The bad news was more than 2,000 miles away, yet as near as next door.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
OAKLAND — It wasn’t as strange as you might have imagined, this exhibition game in the middle of summer with photos on cardboard in the seats instead of real, live fans.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
Jack Nicklaus was on the air. Tiger Woods was just off the green. Just like forever.
Except that golf had seemed less important than what it, and virtually every sport, lacked: fans.
Copyright 2020, The Maven