Warriors historic but can’t get a Sunday playoff slot

By Art Spander

They’re not the Knicks, or the Celtics. Or the Lakers. They’re merely the best team in pro basketball, the team that on a historic Wednesday night set a record for the most wins ever in an NBA season. Yet, perhaps because of their geographical location, or maybe because they still aren’t taken seriously, the Warriors do not get respect due a champion.

Moments after the W’s crushed the Memphis Grizzlies, 125-104, at the Oracle, head coach Steve Kerr learned they would be opening the playoffs Saturday afternoon, which is known as the worst possible viewing period on TV. And as a onetime commentator, Kerr was well aware of the slight.

“I always thought the Sunday time slot was the coveted TV slot,” Kerr remarked. “But maybe that’s changed, because two years in a row we’re playing Saturday afternoon. So very little time to prepare. But obviously, the same goes for Houston.”

But Houston isn’t the defending NBA champion. Houston didn’t finish a regular season with 73 wins (73-9) breaking the record of 72 set by the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls, on which Kerr and Michael Jordan played. The Warriors, who won all three games from Houston during the regular season, are the attraction — but apparently not that much of an attraction.

Unless it’s the Lakers, the people in the NBA, at ESPN, at TBS, have little regard for franchises in the Pacific time zone. The folks in Brentwood and Beverly Hills are sophisticated. Up north? Have you seen those people parading on Market Street or Telegraph?

Of course, when and where should be inconsequential when compared to who and what, and the who and what of the NBA are the Warriors and what they’ve done. So, Kobe Bryant’s farewell was classic Hollywood. He scored 60 in a game that meant nothing except that it was a last hurrah. But Steph Curry scored 46 for the Warriors — and set a season mark of 402 three-pointers, after hitting 10 of 19 attempts — in a game that for the 19,596 spectators, the 175th straight sellout, meant everything.

It likewise meant a great deal to the Warriors players. And so, as they’ve done so often this season, they grabbed it early, building a 20-point lead before the second quarter was done.

“I told our guys I never in a million years would have guessed that record would be broken,” said Kerr. “I thought it was like DiMaggio’s hit streak, really, and I was wrong.”

That’s because his players treat basketball for what it essentially is, a game. They play with élan, with joy. They’re like high school kids out for a good time as well as for wins, and throughout they’ve had both.

“But I will say the same thing now I said 20 years ago,” Kerr offered. “I don’t think this will ever be broken. Somebody’s got to go 74-8, and I don’t see it. I hope our fans aren’t expecting that next year.”

Right now they’re expecting a second straight championship. For good reason. The Warriors play fearless, if not exactly flawless, basketball. They can shoot you to bits — they were 52 percent on field goals and 42 percent (20 of 47) on three-pointers. They can play effective defense, which experts will tell you is where games are won. And they have the confidence born of success.

There was no possibility the Warriors were going to lose last night. By the early part of the third quarter, the only way the W’s were going to lose was to hit two balls into the water on the 12th hole. OK, an obscure analogy, but we’re not that far removed from the Masters.

When asked if with Steph’s and the team’s numbers — Curry didn’t get off the bench in the fourth period — this was as close to perfection as imaginable, Klay Thompson gave a flip answer that was as close to perfection as possible.

“If I would have shot 25 more threes and got to 300, yes,” quipped Thomson, who scored 16, “but I’m amazed by Steph, especially as a shooter. To get to 400 threes in a season, that’s hard to put into words. That’s hard to do ... so congrats to Steph and the 14 other guys in the locker room. We fought hard and didn’t take a night off all year.”

Someone asked Curry the difference between the 2016 Warriors and the 1996 Bulls — not that he would know, since he wasn’t even out of elementary school 20 years ago. 

“I think the game has evolved a lot,” said Curry, “but we have a certain identity of how we play.”

Which by the Bay is considered state-of-the-art but elsewhere isn’t good enough to get them a Sunday spot in the opening round of the playoffs.

Global Golf Post: Langer Makes A Run For The Aged

By Art Spander
Global Golf Post

AUGUSTA, GEORGIA — The fantasy evaporated almost as quickly as it had appeared. "It's going to happen," Bernhard Langer had promised. But not at this Masters and not for Langer, as gallantly as he played, an old man, 58, against the young and in a sense against himself.

"Sooner or later," Langer said. "Someone over 50 is going to win a major."

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2016 Global Golf Post

Newsday (N.Y.): At 58, Bernhard Langer is only two shots back in the Masters

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

AUGUSTA, Ga. — The game teases, beckons and most of all equalizes. A 300-yard drive shows up on the scorecard as one stroke, the same as a two-foot putt. And so Bernhard Langer at age 58, 30 years older than his playing partner Jason Day — the No. 1 player in the world — is a contender in the Masters.

Langer won his first Masters in 1985, two years before Day was born. He won his second Masters in 1993, four months before Jordan Spieth was born. The ageless German shot a two-under par 70 Saturday in the third round and his 54-hole total of 215 is tied for third two shots behind Spieth.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.

McIlroy looking at Masters numbers, not names

By Art Spander

AUGUSTA, Ga. — It’s a game where you hope to have control of yourself but understand you have no control over your opponents. In golf, you may be your own worst enemy. Or best friend.

“I don’t really look at the names on the left of the leaderboard,” said Rory McIlroy, who is one of those names. “I’m looking at the number to see how many shots I’m back.”

It was six shots after eight holes of the second round of this 80th Masters on Friday. And even though he wasn’t looking at the name, the rest of us couldn’t help but look, because it belonged to the defending champion, Jordan Spieth.

Six shots behind Spieth, who was sweeping over Augusta National like the chill wind that blew in from the west. Then, whoosh, like that, one shot.

“The comfortable thing for me,” said McIlroy, “is knowing that even if you are five or six shots back, things can change quite quickly. I’ve been on the opposite end where things can start to get away from you.”

The opposite end, the failure, the collapse, the round that leaves the golfer shaken and the critics gasping and harping.

Five years ago, at the 2011 Masters, McIlroy, the Northern Irishman, was in front after three days of well-played golf. Then he shot 80, eight over par, and tumbled so far, into a tie for 15th. To this day, he still lacks a Masters victory to complete the cycle of wins in all four majors.

“But that gives me confidence,” said McIlroy of closing the gap, “knowing that if you are a little bit behind, you can definitely make a comeback.”

After two rounds in a tournament that in a few hours went from decided to dramatic, he is only a stroke behind. He shot one-under 71 to Spieth’s 74. He is at three-under 141 to Spieth’s four-under 140. Change so quickly, McIlroy insisted.

Spieth was eight under, then after the 18th four under. McIlroy was one under after his eighth and three under after the 18th.

“You know,” said McIlroy, “unless someone is playing exceptionally well and really distances themselves from the field, everything sort of evens out.”

That’s the joy of golf. And the agony. There are no sure things, no playing safe, running the fullback up the middle, walking the cleanup hitter with nobody on so he can’t hurt you. In golf, you hurt yourself.

Didn’t Greg Norman begin the final round in 1996 six shots in front and finish second to Nick Faldo by five shots? Didn’t Jeff Maggert lead by two shots after three rounds in 2003 and end up fifth, five back of winner Mike Weir?

“You’re always going to make mistakes here and there,” said McIlroy, “and it all evens out at the end of the week ... A lot can happen.”

A lot happened to Spieth on this day when the sun shone but the temperature never made it out of the 60s — but unfortunately for their scoring, too many of the players did. Nobody in the top 10, Spieth, McIlroy, Danny Lee, Brandt Snedeker, Sergio Garcia or the rest, broke 70.

“It’s Augusta National,” reminded McIlroy, as if any of us needed reminding, “and in conditions like this, with pin positions the way they were, it was tough, and I just needed to stay patient.”

McIlroy is only a month from his 27th birthday, but he is wise beyond his years, especially about the game that is his business. He’s won a U.S. Open, in record fashion, a British Open and two PGA Championships. He’s stumbled here deep in the Georgia pines. He’s handled the triumphs and defeats like a gentleman, every bit as impressive as his 320-yard tee shots.

“I want to win this golf tournament,” said McIlroy, “and I want to finish on the lowest score possible, and whoever is ahead of me, I just want to finish one shot better.”

One shot, the margin by which he how trails the leader. One shot, which can be the result of his own birdie or a bogey by the man whom he had trailed.

McIlroy had been No. 1 in the world rankings but now is No. 3, behind Jason Day and Spieth. In theory, they constitute what so many of us at the moment call the Big Three of golf.

“I can’t get wrapped up in that and buy into the Big Three,” said McIlroy. “Of course it’s great for the game, but when I’m out there playing and competing that’s absolutely not what I should be thinking about.

“I should be concentrating on myself and thinking about what I need to do to win this golf tournament, regardless of who else is up there.”

Which, of course, is the only way to beat everyone else who is up there.

For Spieth, who talks in plural, a singular Masters round

By Art Spander

AUGUSTA, Ga. — He speaks in the plural, as if what Jordan Spieth does in golf, that most individual of games, is like football or basketball, with handoffs, screens or other group efforts. Spieth has a teacher and caddy, certainly, yet only he drives the balls or sinks the putts.

Spieth’s frequent use of “we” in talking about his brilliant 66 Thursday, when he began the quest for a second straight Masters, brings to mind the comment of Mark Twain, who contended: “Only kings, presidents, editors and people with tapeworms have the right to use editorial ‘we.’“

Twain also was the man who said, “Golf is a good walk spoiled,” a viewpoint destroyed by the manner in which Mr. Spieth plays. So Jordan’s choice of words become inconsequential when judged against his choice of clubs and his scores.

Having won the 2015 Masters with a 72-hole score of 270 (18 under par) that tied the tournament record set by Tiger Woods in 1997, Spieth was on course — Augusta National, that is — to become the first back-to-back winner since Woods in 2001 and 2002.

“We must stay patient with what we’re doing,” said Spieth of a philosophy and strategy he makes seem like governmental planning or a kingly degree. Twain would cringe, perhaps, but he’d delight in the round with six birdies and no bogeys.

“We know how to win this golf tournament,” Spieth added.

We — uh, he — definitely does. And other tournaments as well. In 2015, Spieth became the first golfer in 43 years, since Jack Nicklaus, to win the first two majors. Then he missed a playoff for the third, the British Open, by a shot.

“We believed in our process,” said Spieth, “and if the putts are dropping, then hopefully it goes our way.”

Meaning his way. meaning the way of young man who won’t be 23 until July.

Spieth does get plenty of advice and encouragement from his caddy, the onetime intermediate school teacher Michael Greller. And there has been more than a decade of instruction from Cameron McCormick of Brook Hollow Country Club in Dallas. Still, no matter how you practice and what you’re told, you — not we — swing the clubs and make the birdies or, rare as they were for Spieth on Day One of the 80th Masters, bogeys.

Great golfers have greater egos, because they must. Self-belief is a requisite in a sport where nature and opponents over which one has no control can beat you and beat you down. Golfers lose confidence as fast as they can lose a ball in a pond. Spieth, however, appears wonderfully humble. If we’re impressed with Jordan 
Spieth, he doesn’t act impressed with himself.

On Tuesday, in a pre-tournament interview, Spieth was explaining how “cool” it was to enter the champions locker room upstairs in the Augusta National clubhouse — the room restricted to winners — and see his name on a plaque and find he was sharing a locker with the immortal Arnold Palmer. “A pleasant surprise," he described it.

It’s no surprise that Spieth is atop the leader board. He knows the course. He knows his game. He also knows the unpredictability of golf, where a gust of wind — and it was blowing on Thursday — or a bizarre bounce can affect a score either positively or negatively.

“I would have signed for two under (Thursday),” said Spieth, this time sticking to first person, “and not even played the round, knowing the conditions that were coming up, Got a lot out of the round with what I felt was average ball-striking. Just scored the ball extremely well, which is something I’ve been struggling with this season.”

A year ago, Spieth began with an eight-under-par 64 and never backed up or backed away.

“The way I was playing," he said, "I would say I was better a year ago, but the score that came out of the round may have been impressive today ... so I’m just very pleased with it.”

Spieth had a chance in 2014, then had a victory in 2015, and someone wondered if there is an innate comfort level when he tees up on a historic course deep in the Georgia pines.

“The fact I didn’t make any bogeys, with the kind of loose — I just didn’t feel confident after the first couple mid-iron shots I hit. The good news out here is so much of it is feel-based, where you have so many different slopes you’re hitting off. It’s most important what the ball does at impact, and I felt like I was still here.

“I enjoy this tournament more than anywhere else. It’s easy for us. We don’t have many distractions in our preparation.”

That would be us as in Jordan Spieth, a man without tapeworms but who excels at golf with a kingly manner.