By Art Spander
Global Golf Post
SPRINGFIELD, NEW JERSEY — Bubba Watson has been chided occasionally for some of his comments, an inescapable part of being a star in modern society. But his approach to the game of golf, and those who teach it as well as play it, is commendable.
Copyright 2016 Global Golf Post
By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner
SPRINGFIELD, N.J. — There’s a difference between a professional golfer, someone like Jason Day or Jordan Spieth, someone who plays golf for a living, and a golf professional, someone like Mitch Lowe, who teaches others how to a play and now and then has a chance to compete with the big boys.
The PGA, Professional Golfers Association, is the group of teachers and club pros, but starting nearly a century ago it created a tournament that, along with the Masters and U.S. and British Opens has become one of the four majors. The PGA Championship saves a few places for people such as Lowe, who does his instructing at San Francisco’s Harding Park.
©2016 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
Global Golf Post
TROON, SCOTLAND — Thomas Brent Weekley, better known as "Boo," understands golf far better than most, that is if anyone, pro or amateur, star or hacker, is able to understand golf. A while back Weekley told The Wall Street Journal — yes, Boo, the alligator wrestler, and The Journal seem an odd combination — that if you win a major "all you get is more hype."
Copyright 2016 Global Golf Post
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
TROON, Scotland — J.B. Holmes finished third in a two-man race.
They say anything can happen in golf, that a couple of bogeys by one player and a couple of birdies by another can erase a lead in a few holes. But when Holmes began the final round of the British Open on Sunday, eight shots behind eventual winner Henrik Stenson and seven back of runner-up Phil Mickelson, he wasn’t thinking of a championship.
Copyright © 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
TROON, Scotland — It doesn’t get any better than this, a golf championship in the land where the game was born, with two players, one of the game’s best, the other trying after years to break through, throwing caution to the considerable wind and birdies at each other in a repetitive display of brilliance and excitement.
Henrik Stenson finished in front, with Phil Mickelson second. Sport was the winner. There were no losers.
Copyright © 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
TROON, Scotland — One hole on this blustery, chilly Saturday and the leader became the chaser, the hunted the hunter. For the first time in the 145th British Open, the man in front when the final putt was holed was not Phil Mickelson.
First place after 54 holes belongs to Henrik Stenson, who at 40 probably is nearer his first major championship than anytime in his career, having swept from one stroke behind to one in front on the 220-yard par-3 17th that like most of the back nine at Royal Troon played into a wind that at times gusted above 25 mph.
Copyright © 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
TROON, Scotland — Jordan Spieth is learning what so many athletes already know: After you win a championship — in his case, two championships, the Masters and U.S. Open — people nod their heads and then in so many words ask what you’ve done lately.
Not a great deal other than answer questions he doesn’t particularly like, any more than he didn’t like the way he played the 12th hole the final round of the Masters in April, taking a triple-bogey seven and tossing away the tournament.
Copyright © 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
TROON, Scotland — Clement Sordet said he tried not to think about it. But that was impossible for the French golf pro and for virtually everyone else.
Sordet finished his second round at the British Open on Friday and then spoke about the tragedy in Nice, where a truck rammed into a celebrating crowd during a Bastille Day fireworks display Thursday night along a seaside boulevard. Officials said 84 people were killed and 202 were injured.
Copyright © 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
TROON, Scotland — This was the kind of day Phil Mickelson rarely gets at home, golf against the elements, when a cool head and a dry grip are no less important than a consistent swing. The kind of day — classic Scotland, wind and rain — that Mickelson, a California kid, said he relishes.
It was the kind of day — gray, gloomy and mainly wet — that Soren Kjeldsen has experienced during much of his golfing life in his native Denmark. “I’m used to playing in bad weather,’’ he said. “You don’t stay inside, because you miss too many days.”
Copyright © 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
TROON, Scotland — After others, especially those involved with Great Britain’s Olympic team, had taken their shots at him, verbal of course, Rory McIlroy on Thursday took his shots at Royal Troon in the British Open, the golfing kind. With one exception, they were effective.
In his first Open Championship round in two years — the winner in 2014, he missed 2015 because of an ankle injury — McIlroy shot a two-under 69. But for one 6 iron hit too well, he would have been further under.
Copyright © 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
TROON, Scotland — Phil Mickelson’s try at history missed by the distance of a gnat’s eyelash. An 18-foot putt on the final hole of the British Open’s first day agonizingly spun out of the cup, coming to rest oh so close to the first 62 ever in a major golf championship.
“I want to shed a tear right now,” said Mickelson, only half joking. “That putt on 18 was an opportunity to do something historical. I knew it, and with a foot to go, I thought I had it done.
Copyright © 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
TROON, Scotland — He was the skinny, blond kid from out in the avenues, a student at San Francisco’s Lincoln High, not far from the Coast, just another golfer in a school rich with them.
Some you might not remember or ever knew, but they could play, people such as Bob Lunn, who won the Amateur Pub Links, Doug Nelson, Ron O’Connor and Tom O’Kane. And one person you certainly would know, Johnny Miller.
©2016 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
TROON, Scotland — Golf has returned to its homeland, to the rain, wind and green hills of Scotland, a place of kings, kilts and courses with rhythmic names such as Auchterarder, Machrihanish, and the one where the 145th British Open — known here as the Open Championship — begins Thursday at Royal Troon.
The game was created on the Scottish links land in the Middle Ages. It is old as forever and modern as now, with changes in personnel certainly, in attire and equipment yet still affixed to the basic principle: Each swing of each club, from driver to putter, counts one stroke.
Copyright © 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
TROON, Scotland — Todd Hamilton won the 2004 British Open here, but it was an elephant that became the story.
Back then nobody really knew much about Hamilton except that he was from the Illinois town where a circus elephant named Norma Jean was hit by a bolt of lightning and buried in the city square.
Copyright © 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
TROON, Scotland — Jordan Spieth insisted the decision not to play golf in the Rio Olympics, which came only 24 hours earlier, was the hardest he has been forced to make in his young life.
“I can honestly say that,” the 22-year-old Spieth said Tuesday. “Harder than trying to decide what university to go to. Whether to turn professional and leave school. This was something I very much struggled with.”
Copyright © 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Global Golf Post
OAKMONT, PENNSYLVANIA — He had telegraphed his feelings clearly upon arrival. "I'm obviously excited to be here," Rory McIlroy told us a few days earlier at Oakmont. But now after missing the cut he wasn't saying anything other than, "I'm not talking."
Copyright 2016 Global Golf Post
By Art Spander
The Sports Xchange
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — For Bubba Watson, it was two weeks filled with trouble, with joy and finally with yet another victory in the Northern Trust Open, his second in the Los Angeles-area event in three years.
With birdies Sunday on the 16th and 17th holes at Riviera Country Club, Watson overcame a one-shot deficit to win by one stroke.
Copyright © 2016 The Sports Xchange
By Art Spander
The Sports Xchange
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — One moment Jason Kokrak was in front of the Northern Trust Open. Then it was Chez Reavie. When the third round came to a close, it was Bubba Watson.
Two-time Masters champion Watson, who won this tournament in 2014, shot a 4-under par 67 on Saturday at Riviera Country Club to take a one-stroke lead over Kokrak (70), Reavie (69) and Dustin Johnson (68) with a 54-hole total of 12-under 201.
Copyright © 2016 The Sports Xchange
By Art Spander
The Sports Xchange
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — The PGA Tour chooses to describe golfers' skills with a tidy phrase: These guys are good.
That might be an understatement. As the leaderboard of the Northern Trust Open verifies, these guys are fantastic.
Copyright 2016 The Sports Xchange
By Art Spander
The Sports Xchange
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — Bubba Watson warned of the dangers that can befall a golfer at Riviera Country Club.
"This place will bite you," Watson said.
Copyright 2016 The Sports Xchange