S.F. Examiner: McIlroy sends Match Play out in style

By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner

Sporting days by the Bay don’t come much better than this. Not for Tim Lincecum and the Giants. Not for Stephen Curry and the Warriors. Maybe most of all, not for Rory McIlroy and the game of golf, which again is a game that he is very much in control.

Oracle Arena in Oakland, AT&T Park in San Francisco and TPC Harding Park — in history and weather so much a part of the cool, gray city — offered us a Sunday beyond compare.

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© 2015 The San Francisco Examiner 

S.F. Examiner: Suns Sets On WGC-Cadillac Field

By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner

Mother Nature won this one. The people running the WGC-Cadillac match play tried to beat the setting of the sun, and in the end neither Rory McIlroy nor Paul Casey could — or beat each other.

The quarter-final between McIlroy and Casey at Harding Park was suspended after 20 holes Saturday, three of them extra, because of darkness, with the match all square at 8:03 p.m. — or two minutes after sunset.

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© 2015 The San Francisco Examiner

S.F. Examiner: Horschel fires up field

By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner

He’s easy to like, a competitor who wants your best against his best. Billy Horschel is friendly and open. He’s just as easy to dislike.

“Yeah,” he says flat out, “I think you’ve got to be cocky.”

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© 2015 The San Francisco Examiner 

S.F. Examiner: Simpson turns back clock at Harding Park

By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner

One day, it was San Francisco nostalgia and a $48 hamburger for Webb Simpson. The next, it was a victory in the World Golf Championship Cadillac Match Play tournament over a former champion, Ian Poulter.

Simpson on Tuesday went to Olympic Club, where three years ago he won the U.S. Open, ate one of the classic burgers from a stand on the course and recreated the chip shot on the 72nd hole which saved par and the tournament.

Read the full story here.

© 2015 The San Francisco Examiner

S.F. Examiner: Match Play at Harding Park is test of character

By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner

San Francisco? Herb Caen’s cool, gray city of love? Rudyard Kipling’s town of mad people? Golf capital of the universe? Indeed, all of the above.

Last week, it was the ladies at Lake Merced Golf Club, the Swinging Skirts LPGA Classic. Thanks, girls, you were great, and mostly, in this place of wind and chill, so was the weather. Please, no reference to the comment Mark Twain never made, that the coldest winter he ever spent was, well, enough already.

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© 2015 The San Francisco Examiner