By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner
AUGUSTA, Ga. — One round and nine behind. Tiger Woods is off and — stumbling? Maybe, probably not. A man doesn’t sit out tournament golf for nearly two months then dominate the Masters, an event comprised of competitors who fit that designation. That’s not a bad beginning for him.
© 2015 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
Featured Columnist
AUGUSTA, Ga. — The last we saw or heard of Tom Watson, a classy guy who had the misfortune of being the captain of an American Ryder Cup team that vocally disagreed with his leadership, he was being torn down by much of the media and some of the golfers—most notably Phil Mickelson.
Copyright © 2015 Bleacher Report, Inc. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner
AUGUSTA, Ga. — Now it’s up to you, Tiger. You say your back is fine. Or so you think. You say your game is fine. Or so you hope. It’s time to show us if Tiger Woods can play like, well, Tiger Woods.
“I worked my ass off,” you told us Tuesday about returning to tournament play after the two-month break you chose — or maybe you needed — following a miserable couple of weeks in Phoenix and San Diego. We’re watching if the work pays off.
© 2015 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner
Dead in the water. That's what the coach said late Monday night, and the words seemed dead accurate. Duke was nine points down in the second half of its biggest game of the season, and its biggest man, 6-foot-10 Jahlil Okafor, was on bench with four fouls,
But a Mike Krzyzewski-coached team knows something about basketball because Coach K knows a great deal about the game. He knows who and how to recruit. And his players know that defense wins, which in the end it did.
© 2015 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner
INDIANAPOLIS — We’re big on comparisons. Could Muhammad Ali have beaten Joe Louis — or Rocky Marciano? Could Tiger Woods have defeated Jack Nicklaus? And, as if subjectivity doesn’t enter into the equations, who is the greatest college men’s basketball coach of all time?
Up front, I’ll tell you: I’m a UCLA grad, and I knew John Wooden. So, yes, I’m biased. But if you insist, take Mike Krzyzewski, who tonight has Duke in another NCAA final. Or Adolph Rupp. Or Bobby Knight. Or Dean Smith. Or the man who veritably invented the game and mentored Smith, Phog Allen. Then you have an argument.
By Art Spander
Featured Columnist
INDIANAPOLIS — So the best 38-1 team in college basketball has taken its unexpected leave. What did you think would happen? That they wouldn’t hold the NCAA final Monday night at Lucas Oil Stadium?
That CBS would show re-runs of The Jackie Gleason Show instead of Duke and Wisconsin on runs down the court?
Copyright © 2015 Bleacher Report, Inc. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
By Art Spander
Featured Columnist
INDIANAPOLIS — The big man, Jahlil Okafor, played as we expected. He was in the middle for Duke, a freshman who's supposed to be one-and-done.
Yet, the star of the young team, another freshman we'll never see develop to his full potential as an undergrad, was Justise Winslow.
Copyright © 2015 Bleacher Report, Inc. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner
The guy for the A’s invariably is named Billy. There was manager Billy Martin in the early 1980s, virtually homegrown (Berkeley, next door), who knew what he had in roster talent. So he created a force-the-issue style, which the late columnist Ralph Wiley labeled “Billy Ball.”
The man in charge nearly the last 18 years, from 1997 to the present to be specific, has been general manager Billy Beane. He knew what he didn’t have, mainly cash. Aided by a few people who brought new thinking to the sport, he developed an idea that author Michael Lewis called “Moneyball.”
© 2015 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
Featured Columnist
There’s a saying in golf that no person is bigger than the game…unless that person is Tiger Woods, who turns logic inside out and upside down. And his presence at the 2015 Masters, now that he confirmed his participation, will do exactly that.
Copyright © 2015 Bleacher Report, Inc. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner
Second chances don't come often in sports, especially intercollegiate sports, especially in basketball, where the best players barely stay around for one year, never mind two or three. Or four.
The kids at Wisconsin understand that. The coach at Wisconsin understands that.
© 2015 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander and Mychael Urban
San Francisco Examiner
The K guys were at it again. “Did you ever get picked off in spring training?” Mike Krukow asked Duane Kuiper. Without hesitation or hint of embarrassment, Kuiper told Krukow and all of us fortunate enough to be watching and listening, “I sure did.”
How do we rank our Bay Area teams? Giants? 49ers? A’s? Kruk and Kuip? “On the love meter,” Giants President Larry Baer once said, “as far as the fans are concerned, they’re off the charts.”
© 2015 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
Featured Columnist
Only Tiger Woods knows for sure if he's ready to conquer another Masters. The rest of us are only left to guess. More than guess. We can anticipate. He didn’t spend all these weeks working on his game, didn’t fly to Augusta to get in a presumed practice round for nothing.
Copyright © 2015 Bleacher Report, Inc. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner
Consider it proof that rivalries still matter and thrive in sports. What unfurls again tonight in downtown Los Angeles, and what could await in the second round of the postseason, qualifies as NBA antagonism at its thickest and feistiest. From a near-brawl on a memorable Christmas night to the ongoing commentary of Draymond Green, the Warriors and Los Angeles Clippers truly cannot stand each other, which is a little hard to believe when weighing the respective histories of the franchises.
"We don't like each other," Warriors center Andrew Bogut said, flatly.
© 2015 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner
He ran off the court and yelled to no one in particular, “It’s destiny.” At least that’s what was written. But Butch Beard isn’t quite sure what he shouted. Not from a distance of 40 years.
“Maybe I did say that,” Beard said, searching his memory. “That first game was sort of a miracle. We were way down. And then Hopper got in there.” Hopper was the nickname for Charles Dudley, whose frenzied play that first game of the 1974-75 NBA Finals brought back the Warriors from a 16-point deficit to victory.
© 2015 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner
It has to do with saints, and that’s not the New Orleans franchise, but the ones after whom the two cities were named.
The 49ers were fine when they played in the city of St. Francis. Six appearances in the Super Bowl, five victories. Everything’s come apart since they moved to the city of St. Clare, even though she’s, yes, the patron saint of television.
© 2015 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — The temperature was 89 degrees when Roger Federer finished another match without figuratively working up a sweat.
The man seemingly never grows old. He’s 33, which in tennis age is somewhere between remembering what used to be and reminding yourself to retire.
Unless you’re Federer, who said he planned his career to last and not flame out.
And, despite traveling with a wife and two sets of young twins, he figuratively carries no baggage.
Doesn’t carry his opponents either. On Sunday, he beat some poor kid named Diego Schwarzman, 6-4, 6-2. That’s a problem for tennis: the nobodies — Schwarzman, a 22-year-old Argentinean is ranked 63rd — get sent in like cannon fodder to face the stars.
It’s like a high-school kid trying to guard Stephen Curry. You lose confidence as quickly as you lose matches.
Yes, everyone started down there. In his postgame musings to the big crowd at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden’s 16,100-seat Stadium Court, Federer recalled his first appearance 15 years ago in the tournament now called the BNP Paribas Open.
“I was way out there,” he said pointing to an unseen court of the desert complex east of Palm Springs, “in a sandstorm.”
Once a player breaks through, finally gets beyond the first and second rounds, earns enough points to get matched against someone of, for that moment, his or her own skill, it all changes.
For Federer, an emotional player as a teenager in his native Switzerland, the great leap was when he defeated Pete Sampras, a seven-time champion, in the fourth round at Wimbledon in 2001.
Suddenly Federer was the player the other guys had to get past. And they rarely did.
He took Wimbledon seven times. He has a men’s record 19 Grand Slams. And if he’s still not at the summit, occupied now by Novak Djokovic, No. 2 is impressive. And reassuring.
“I’m very happy,” said Federer. “I was feeling good in practice. Today I was moving well, which is the key on this surface (slower hard courts) because the easy shots and easy points are not going to happen here like they maybe do in Dubai or Australia or the indoor season.
“So I always have to adjust my game accordingly.”
It was Justin Gimmelstob of the Tennis Channel, a one-time ranked player, who asked Federer if he were surprised by his longevity.
“I organized my career this way,” said Federer, who later in the mass press conference went into greater detail.
“The idea,” explained Federer, “was always trying to be around the game a long time.”
To his satisfaction, to the satisfaction of tournament organizers, the idea was realized.
If the fault of tennis, using an unintended play on words, is that it’s difficult for the young players to move ahead, the other side is that fans cheer for the favorites, not the underdogs. They come to see the stars, to see Federer, Serena Williams and Rafael Nadal, all winners on Sunday.
Without team loyalty, tennis needs individuals who not only are champions but are famous. Federer meets that requirement.
He does Mercedes commercials. He does espresso machine commercials (for the Swiss company Jura Capressa). And he did in Schwarzman in 1 hour 3 minutes.
“Whatever we do, we will plan long-term,” Federer said, alluding to a template designed by him and his advisers. “Sure we can chase money or more tournament victories. We can play more frequently, more often, train harder.
“But we decided to stay around 20 tournaments a year, which is a lower number . . . I want to play good. I want to play injury-free if possible. Of course, we all play hurt. But the goal was to stay around a long time. I think I did get inspired by seeing 32-year-olds, 35-year-olds. They almost did a favor that I could play against them. Would they have retired at 28, I would never have seen them on tour.”
He saw them. Now we continue to see Roger Federer, graceful, elegantly smooth, popular. Every point he scored drew an overwhelming roar. You felt sorry for Schwarzman.
The Tennis Garden is owned by Larry Ellison, and does he need to be identified? (A couple of nights ago, in the first row, John McEnroe sat between Ellison and Bill Gates. Nobody was diving for dropped change.)
“He likes to talk about tennis,” Federer told Gimmelstob about conversations with Ellison, “and I like to talk about other things. He doesn’t just sit there and act like, ‘Uh, I own the tournament.’ He really knows the details.”
So, in a different way, does Roger Federer, Mr. Forever.
By Art Spander
Featured Columnist
INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — She’s spoken out before. Well, shouted out. At a linesperson during the 2009 U.S. Open. Endless invective. Serena Williams was never afraid to show her passion.
Or now after years of boycotting one of the more important tennis tournaments in the world, her compassion.
Copyright © 2015 Bleacher Report, Inc. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
By Art Spander
Los Angeles Times
It was all about timing and about Time, the magazine. It was about the act of forgiveness, which Serena Williams, after the years and the memories, said she at last found a reason to offer.
Fourteen years ago, in 2001, Williams, a teenager but already a champion, was booed at Indian Wells, booed in a final by a crowd angry that in the scheduled semifinal two days earlier older sister Venus defaulted moments before the start because of announced knee tendinitis.
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles Times
By Art Spander
Los Angeles Times
She's the Wizard of Woz, the woman who ran the New York City Marathon — "You don't know what the wall is until you hit it," she said — who posed, tastefully, for the recent Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue . . . who once was ranked No. 1 . . . who only Sunday won the Malaysian Open, her 23rd WTA tournament victory,
Caroline Wozniacki, one of the many stars at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, at age 24 has done almost everything. Other than win a Grand Slam tournament.
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles Times
By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz — We’re in a bubble down here, Sesame Street with Saguaro.
The Niners are coming unglued. Bruce Miller arrested? What next? Jim Harbaugh coaching third for the A’s?
© 2015 The San Francisco Examiner