Tiger, Phil, Peyton, Tom: $20 million and a ton of rain

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By Art Spander

“Like throwing a little swing pass to the running back.” That was Phil Mickelson, coach Phil, giving advice to partner Tom Brady, before Brady had a little chip shot only a few people not named Phil Mickelson could hope to execute.

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Copyright 2020, The Maven

The return of sports? Not so fast

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By Art Spander

The Masters was supposed to begin Thursday. But you knew that. You also knew it has been shifted to a weekend in November, one of the few apparent certainties we’ve been offered in sport.

Otherwise, it’s a series of possibilities and wishes. And worries.

We keep hearing there will be improvement, the coronavirus will be limited if not controlled, and life and sport will return to normal — schedules full of games, stands full of fans.

People would be in church on Easter, we were promised. The country would be open. The only masks needed would be worn by catchers.

Then another medical person told us in so many words, “Not so fast, folks.” Never mind searching for a place in the bleachers or lower boxes while epidemiologists still are searching for a vaccine. And before you even think of selling tickets for an NFL game, you’d better sell the players on the idea there’s no danger coming together in a huddle or the locker room.

Only the other day, Dr. Jeffrey Smith, the Santa Clara County executive officer, said he didn’t expect sports until Thanksgiving. “And we’d be lucky to have them then,” he added.

Thanksgiving, when high school football usually concludes. When college football often plays its traditionals. When the NFL — and the 49ers are based in Santa Clara, of course — would be three-quarters of the way into the schedule.

Baseball? Basketball? They’ve almost reached a point of desperation. Or resignation.

By the time the NBA figures how and when to resume a season that never made it past the halfway mark, it will be time to start the next season. Major League Baseball have a bizarre scheme to play every game, all 30 teams, in Arizona, without fans. That doesn’t work.

It can be done. But it shouldn’t be done. Our sports are more than digital matchups among distant athletes. We need people in the seats, behind the ropes, as well as people inside the lines.

Sport is not silence. Sport is huge galleries lining the fairways at Augusta National. Sport is obsessed fans tailgating in the parking lots before Auburn-Alabama. Sport is parents and kids unloading at the 161st Street station in the Bronx to see the Yankees play the Red Sox.

Sport is jerseys and T-shirts, golf hats and baseball caps, anticipation and excitement.

But before any of that, we need a go-ahead from those best qualified to judge our health and safety. Not politicians or football coaches or businessmen who want the economy to rebound and our entertainment to return. But from medical professionals.

The numbers of those stricken by the virus, those who have died from the virus, ought to be warnings not to take chances, not to allow, say, a Warriors-Lakers game to take place until all doubts are eliminated. Sure, we want to see Steph or LeBron, but what we don’t need to see is one more victim.

Impatience? Indeed. Would you expect another response? The head football coach at Oklahoma State, Mike Gundy — remember how he challenged the media a few years back? — insisted his team is getting back to business on May 1. “We’ve got to get these guys back in here,” he said.

Back in where, the locker room? Or since they are student-athletes, the classroom? Most schools around the country have been shut down because of the contagion. And if Oklahoma State hasn’t, the guess is at least the schools of some opponents have.

“From what I read,” said Gundy on a teleconference, “the healthy people can fight this ... we all need to go back to work.”

Until, if we’re callous, careless, the healthy people become infected. As has been the case virtually everywhere.

The future is a question. If it is not safe enough to hold a 49ers game or a Cal or Stanford — or De La Salle — game in September, will it be safe enough to hold the PGA Championship in early August at San Francisco’s Harding Park?

With luck, and maybe a vaccine, the threat of the virus may be diminished to the point where a golf tournament or football game will return to being the attractions and joy that sports are meant to be.

We hardly can wait. But wait we must.

The Masters in November? Better than never

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By Art Spander

Be prepared for disappointment. This is what a senior researcher at Johns Hopkins University told the Washington Post, when asked when sports would return to normal.

“And I’m a huge sports fan,” said Jared Evans, the researcher.

Disappointment? Hasn’t there been enough already? Wasn’t the Open Championship, the British Open, cancelled Monday, joining the Final Four — the title game would have been Monday night — and Wimbledon?

Hasn’t the NBA been placed in limbo, along with baseball? And weren’t so many high school championships scrubbed because of, yes, that apparently unbeatable opponent, the novel coronavirus.

We understand. Our world, the world of fun and games, is not the real world, the one where people are dying from a disease we were barely conscious of three months ago, the one with which doctors and nurses are struggling gallantly and officials debate the distribution of ventilators.

Hard to think of people trying to find ways to win games or tournaments when epidemiologists are trying to find a vaccine against the virus — a necessity, we’re told, if stadiums and arenas are to be packed once more.

Golf is a hope. Not, in this case, as a participant sport but a spectator sport.

We lost The Open, the announcement of cancellation interestingly coming only a few hours after Queen Elizabeth II tried to rally fellow Britons against the crisis created by the virus.

The 149th Open was scheduled for July at Royal St. George’s on the English Channel, but the R&A said a change in date was not possible. For the major events in the United States, fortunately, date changes — if extreme ones — could be made.

The PGA Championship, to be played at Harding Park in San Francisco, has been moved from May to Aug. 6-9, which is ironic. For most of the past 50 years the PGA was played on the first weekend in August, but the decision was made that starting in 2019 the event would shift to May to get away from the start of football season. And now, for a year at least, it’s back against football.

If not positioned as the last year’s major, as it used to be. That slot is to belong to the Masters, which in normal times is an introduction to spring. This year, anything but normal, the Masters will be played Nov. 12-15.

The U.S. Open is moved to Sept. 17-20, from its traditional mid-June dates. As of yet it hasn’t been moved from Winged Foot in the suburbs of New York, although on Monday there were stories it would go to Pebble Beach — site of the 2019 Open — or Torrey Pines, and either of those might happen.

So much of sport is tradition. We know what’s coming and when, from the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day to the last NFL regular season games in December. But the suspensions and cancellations have disturbed our rhythm, thrown us off balance.

No basketball, no baseball, no golf, no tennis, no hockey, not even any Premier League soccer. How are we supposed to know what day it is? Or even what week or month?

The Masters in November is going to be strange, yet better in November than never. If there are no azaleas, there will still be birdies.

What historically has been the start, of the season, of golf — of baseball certainly — will instead become the finish, more or less. That’s if everything works out, and despite the optimism, there’s no promise it does work out.

NFL games in California in September with stadiums — the new one for the Rams and Chargers, Levi’s in Santa Clara for the 49ers? “I’m not anticipating that happening” said Gavin Newsom, the state’s governor. “I would move very cautiously in that expectation.”

Moving cautiously is better than not moving at all. We’re prepared for disappointment. We’re ready for some satisfaction.

Sporting tradition can’t compete with the coronavirus

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By Art Spander
For Maven Sports

OAKLAND, Calif. — Every few minutes there’s another email, another postponement or cancellation, another disappointment.

The Kentucky Derby to September; the PGA Championship, the one at San Francisco’s Harding Park, from May to who knows when; the Ryder Cup from September to next year.

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Copyright 2020, The Maven