Author: jeremy2878

By Jeremy Harness

STANFORD – It may not be time to say that Stanford will be the team to give conference front-runner Arizona a run for its money this year – or finish the regular season any better than right in the middle of the Pac-12 standings, where it seems to end up year after year – but the first two weeks have proved to be promising.

The Cardinal got its real test in a tough loss to No. 4 Duke – coach Johnny Dawkins’ alma mater – in last weekend’s Coaches vs. Cancer Classic, and they got back to their winning ways Tuesday night in an 84-47 rout of Delaware at Maples Pavilion.

During Dawkins’ tenure, Stanford’s calling card has been playing sound defense, and that was certainly on display in dismantling the Blue Hens and doing it rather quickly.

Truth be told, the competitive stage of this game came and went after only a few minutes. Stanford got off to a great start, and the Cardinal found themselves with their biggest margin of the first half – 23 points – as they went into into the locker room at the break.

The Cardinal got whatever shot they wanted while holding Delaware to 25 percent shooting in the first half and, for the most part, limiting the Blue Hens to one shot at a time. In fact, for the first 12 minutes of the game, Delaware had only one offensive rebound before collecting three more before halftime.

To put Stanford’s defensive effort in proper perspective, Delaware only had two players score in double figures Tuesday night. Sophomore guard Cazmon Hayes had 15 points, but he made only four of his 21 shots in the process, something that Kobe Bryant can identify with these days.

Freshman swingman Chivarsky Corbett himself was forced into a 4-of-12 shooting night to get his 10 points.

Meanwhile, Stanford converted on 43 percent of their shot attempts in the half, and all it did in the second half is widen its lead, as the 3-point shot became more of an ally and it generally kept the throttle down on Delaware.

The Cardinal opened the half with a 10-3 run in the first five minutes, and from that point, it was time to see if everyone on the Stanford bench was going to get to play.

As the game went along, Stanford had more fast-break opportunities, which padded the scoreboard even more in its favor and helped spread the scoring around.

The Cardinal ended up having four different guys in double figures, with senior Chasson Randle leading the way with 15 points, although he only made four of his 12 shots. Stefan Nastic has the most efficient night of the group, as he converted on six of his 10 attempts for 12 points to go along with seven rebounds.

Standout post man Dwight Powell has graduated, and even though they don’t have anyone to completely fill his shoes, the Cardinal may have someone in Reid Travis.

The freshman forward, who chose to come to Stanford over Minnesota and Duke and has also played for Team USA, had six points on 3-of-8 shooting but also had 11 rebounds on Tuesday and showed a great deal of tenacity on the defensive end.

By Jeremy Harness

It continues to get worse for Stanford.

Stanford’s hopes for a Rose Bowl went by the wayside weeks ago, and the Cardinal’s chances for a significant bowl game took a bigger hit Saturday night, as they fell to Utah at Stanford Stadium, 23-20.

Despite the fact that the Cardinal entered Saturday’s game unranked while facing the No. 23 Utes, this was a very winnable game, particularly after Stanford punctuated its first drive of the game with a touchdown to give itself a 7-0 lead.

In the second quarter, however, Utah rolled right back and tied the game late in the quarter when quarterback Travis Wilson, who had been in and out of the starting lineup for much of this season, punched it in himself from two yards out.

The game eventually went into overtime, and the two teams traded touchdowns in the first extra session. However, Stanford was forced to settle for a 51-yard field goal by Jordan Williamson.

Utah responded by driving down the field on the stout Cardinal defense before Wilson hit Kenneth Scott for a 3-yard walk-off touchdown.

Statistically speaking, the game was a Stanford-like contest. The Cardinal out-gained Utah on the ground, 190-70, while gaining 294 total yards to Utah’s 247. However, Stanford, as was the case in the loss to USC, was unable to capitalize on key opportunities that were afforded to it during the game and instead watched as Utah walked out of Stanford with the victory.

“Offensively, (it was) just as sloppy a game as we’ve had this year,” Stanford coach David Shaw said. “(I am) very disappointed in our overall performance (Saturday).

“You can see the defense played really hard and kept us in the game. But gosh, we still gave them way too much and too many opportunities. And we’ve missed some throws. We dropped passes. We missed protections.”

Meanwhile, Utah continued its quest to get itself in a quality bowl game, perhaps the Holiday Bowl, with its win.

“Another gutty performance by our guys,” Utah coach Kyle Whittingham said. “It’s a tough group that we have in our locker room, and (I am) very proud of them.

“There’s no quit in these guys. “They’re physically tough, they’re mentally tough, and I’m proud to be associated with them.”

By Jeremy Harness

STANFORD – Stanford has been carried in most part this year by its defense, but Saturday afternoon was much different.

In a game that coach David Shaw said afterwards was the first time that they “felt like us” offensively, the Cardinal started quickly and was relentless in erasing the memory of last week’s stinging loss to Arizona State, as it obliterated Oregon State, 38-14, before an announced crowd of 48,401 at Stanford Stadium but appeared to be half-empty.

Stanford gained 438 yards of offense compared to Oregon State’s 221, and the defense put the brakes on the pass-happy Oregon State attack, surrendering only 12 first downs. The Cardinal sacked Oregon State quarterback Sean Mannion, a Pleasanton native and a Foothill High grad, six times and held him to 122 passing yards.

“When we can support our defense with an offense, we have a chance, and outside of a late touchdown and a short field given to the defense, the defense was phenomenal.”

Stanford set the tone very early, scoring on its eighth play of the game, as quarterback Kevin Hogan hooked up with Christian McCaffrey for a 42-yard touchdown at the 11:45 mark of the first quarter.

Oregon State was able to tie it up later in the quarter, after (Oakland Tech grad Ryan Murphy) intercepted a Kevin Hogan pass and returned it to Stanford’s 5-yard line before running back Chris Brown, another Northern California product, punched it in to make it 7-7.

From there, it was all Stanford on both sides of the ball. The Cardinal were dominant in every category, and this time, that included the scoreboard, as they scored three unanswered touchdowns to close out the first half and give themselves a 28-7 advantage at the break.

There were a few mistakes along the way, though. Two Hogan interceptions in the half yielded those seven Oregon State points, but the other miscue is becoming more alarming and can become critical down the stretch. After Stanford got the ball to the Beavers’ 9-yard line near the close of the first half, it settled for a field-goal attempt by Jordan Williamson, which he missed wide to the right.

However, Williamson was given an opportunity to rebound early in the fourth quarter, and he was able to come through with a 33-yard field goal.

“It’s a big thing with Jordan,” Shaw said. “He’s really matured a lot. He doesn’t go through the ups and downs. He comes back, he works extremely hard, and we want to give him those opportunities because right now, he’s our guy.

“When he’s in rhythm as a field-goal kicker, he’s been good. It’s our job to keep him in rhythm.”

Otherwise, it was smooth sailing for Stanford.

Despite not having a clear No. 1 running back even at this juncture of the season, the Cardinal were able to run the ball effectively against Oregon State, amassing 83 yards on the ground in the first quarter alone and finishing with 151 yards.

Thirty-seven of those yards came on one play, as Hogan scooted away from the Beavers defense into the end zone with 34 seconds to play in the quarter to give Stanford a 14-7 lead.

Stanford didn’t take its foot off the gas pedal to start the second half, adding another touchdown after forcing a three-and-out. On the ensuing punt, Ty Montgomery zig-zagged his way to a 50-yard touchdown return to give the Cardinal a commanding 35-7 edge.

Midway through the third quarter, Oregon State got a big special-teams play to get its offense into the red zone. After a Stanford three-and-out, Ricky Ortiz shot up the middle and blocked the ensuing punt to put the Beavers in scoring position.

Once again, Stanford’s defense tightened up and kept Oregon State out of the end zone. The Beavers picked up a first down but then faced a fourth-and-goal at the Cardinal 5, when Mannion took one more shot at the end zone. Cornerback Alex Carter got in perfect position and knocked the pass away to turn the Beavers away.

The Cardinal did not allow a single point in the third quarter, which is really nothing new to this team. Stanford has only allowed two field goals in the third quarter thus far in the 2014 season.

Oregon State did not threaten after that, although the Beavers scored a late touchdown in the final minutes of the game.

NOTES: With Saturday’s win, Stanford improved to 10-0 following a loss with Shaw as the head coach. The Cardinal has also allowed fewer than 30 points in each of their last 31 games, which is the longest such streak in the nation.

By Jeremy Harness

NAPA – After sinking his par putt at the 18th on Sunday, Sang-Moon Bae’s manager tried to spray him with champagne, only to have his client dodge the shooting suds.

Bae didn’t exactly run away from the competition and wasn’t the birdie machine that he was the day before, but he did just enough on Sunday to win the Frys.com Open. He held on for pars for the last four holes and, with a final round of 73, finished 15 under par and two strokes ahead of a hard-charging Steven Bowditch, who had played the back nine four under and simply ran out of holes.

With the victory, Bae takes the initial lead in the FedEx Cup standings with 500 points while extending his exempt status on the PGA Tour through the 2015-16 season. In addition to this being the 28-year-old’s first win since the Byron Nelson, but it was also his first top-10 finish since then as well.

He played the front nine one under, but he started feeling the heat on the back nine, as he made only one birdie against three bogeys down the stretch. He admitted that the nerves, which were non-existent throughout the first three rounds, started to kick in as the end got closer.

“I think I was a little nervous, had (lost) a little focus, too,” Bae said. “I didn’t want to look at the scoreboard, but I did. I looked a lot. That’s why I made a lot of bogeys.”

It was his second win on the PGA Tour, the first coming in the 2013 Byron Nelson Championship, which he also won by two strokes.

“I think my swing was really, really good this week, so that’s why I played good this week,” Bae said. “My confidence level is much higher than last season.”

Meanwhile, his playing partner, Zac Blair, could not generate the kind of momentum it needed to make a serious run at Bae and had a round of 74. He was continually faced with long, low-percentage birdie putts and had to work very hard for the pars that he was able to salvage, which makes it impossible to win in those circumstances.

The 24-year-old started with two bogeys on the first three holes but battled throughout, but he was visibly frustrated towards the middle of the round, particularly at the par-five ninth hole that saw his third shot – a chip from 10 yards off the green – had no bite and rolled 10 feet past the hole.

Blair ended up missing the putt and settled for a par, and from that point, he could not make putts when he really needed to. He did have an encouraging finish, however, as he was able to get up and down from the greenside bunker for a birdie to finish 10-under and a tie for 12th

Bowditch, on the other hand, started the day eight strokes off the lead and appeared to play considerably looser, particularly on the back nine.

After a birdie followed by a bogey to close the front side, he went on a tear on the back, starting with a birdie at the 12th and then at the 14th. He then put even more pressure on at the par-five 16th, as he reached the green in two before rolling in a 34-footer for an eagle.

He then birdied the 18th for a 67 to finish the tournament at 13-under, but since he was seven groups ahead of Bae, all he could do was wait anxiously for Bae to make a big mistake.

That never came, and Bae, although he didn’t clearly play his best, limped to the finish line.

“The first (tour victory) was hard, but the second one was more difficult,” Bae said. “But now that I’ve got the second one, I think the third and fourth will come easy since I have the confidence.”

By Jeremy Harness

NAPA – Silverado Resort and Spa is not known as an easy course by any stretch of the imagination. Just ask anyone who plays there on a regular basis.

On Saturday, Sang-Moon Bae made Silverado’s North Course look like a beginner’s track and not one designed for a PGA Tour event that is supposed to test the best players in the world.

With the exception of a pair of three-putt bogeys, the South Korea native who now lives in the Dallas-area had a rare-air round with a seven-under 65 to take a commanding four-stroke lead going into the final round of the Frys.com Open.

Bae’s putter got hot almost immediately from the start, as he went on a birdie barrage from holes two through six. He started the run at the 240-yard par-three second by sticking a hybrid four feet from the hole and draining the birdie putt.

“I felt like I played perfect (Saturday), besides two bogeys,” Bae said. “Five birdies in a row was really fun. I read every break on the green (well). It was a really easy game.”

His signature shot, however, came at the drivable, 292-yard par-4 17th hole, as he hit a left-to-right fade off the tee that did not appear to be on a good line, particularly with a deep bunker guarding the front of the green.

However, his drive landed about 10 feet past the front edge of the green – directly over the front bunker – and rolled to about six feet away from the hole. Bae then drained that putt for an eagle to pad his lead, moments after rookie Zac Blair had birdied the same hole one group ahead of him.

“I knew the pin position is really hard on that hole, only three (yards) from the right (edge of the green),” Bae said when asked if he considered laying up to a wedge distance to approach the green more conservatively. “If I hit a wedge shot, it’s a really hard hole.

“I really hit a solid drive, a pretty solid high shot that was a little lucky, too.”

He didn’t hit as good a drive at the 18th, as he ended up in the fairway bunker on the right side. However, he quickly regrouped on the par-five and, after blasting his second shot into the fairway and knocking his approach into the middle of the green, he put a perfect roll on a 15-footer that found the hole to close the round with a birdie.

It hasn’t been all about the putter for Bae – even though it has had a big hand in his current position – as the Frys.com Open has seen a remarkable turnaround with his short game, as has been the case with 36-hole leader Martin Laird.

Bae was only able to salvage par from off the green 57 percent of the time last season, ranking him 112th on the PGA Tour. Conversely, he has gotten it up and down 11 of 12 times this week.

Meanwhile, Blair had closed to one stroke of Bae after his birdie at the 17th, which saw him hit a long iron off the tee and hit a wedge to 10 feet to set things up.

The 24-year-old, who really looks more like a teenager than a recent college grad, finished his round with a three-under 69 and recovered very nicely from two straight bogeys on the 12th and 13th and, with his second position, will be paired with Bae Sunday afternoon.

“It’s been a great start so far,” said Blair, who shot a six-under 66 on Friday to get himself into the mix. “I’d like to go out and play well tomorrow and finish it off.”

Laird didn’t quite get on a the tear that he did on Friday and appeared to be sliding out of contention a bit, as his wedges and putter gave him trouble while three-putting the fifth and eighth greens.

However, he was able to steady himself and scored two-under on the back nine to finish with a one-under 71 for the day and is currently tied for third with Brooks Koepka and Scott Langley, Bae’s Saturday playing partner.

“I putted great yesterday and today, the speed – I thought the greens were maybe a little slower today and just struggled with the speed a little bit,” Laird said. “(But) I just said to my caddie coming down the last (hole that) I really didn’t play very well and still shot one-under, so I’m still in the tournament.”

By Jeremy Harness

Martin Laird did not have a very good putting season in 2013-14, but his flat stick has gotten him off to a great start to this campaign.

Laird has been a model of consistency in these first two days, and his matching rounds of 67 have placed him on top of the leaderboard, as he currently holds a one-shot lead over both first-round leader Sang-Moon Bae of South Korea as well as Zac Blair.

After suffering a bogey at the sixth that saw him hit his drive into the fairway bunker and then hit his second shot into a greenside sand trap, Laird rallied by running off four straight birdies on holes eight through 11, a streak which saw him roll in a 19-foot putt at the 10th and capping it off with a 23-footer at the 11th.

After the round, Laird credited the fact that the course itself sets up very well for his game.

“When I played (a practice round) on Tuesday, I liked the golf course right away,” Laird said. “I think it does suit my game because the greens are getting kind of firm, and with the course not being the longest golf course to play, there are some tight pins on the front of the greens that some guys can’t get to if you don’t hit it high.

“And you know, I hit it high.”

He used that to his advantage to grab the one-stroke lead at the 18th, as his high wedge shot to a front pin spun back four feet from the hole before he draining the birdie putt.

“I probably worked more on my short game in the last month than I have in a long time, and I’ve definitely seen it this week,” he said. “My wedge game was pretty bad last year, and it’s nice when you do the hard work and then you hit (a) wedge shot on the last hole to tap-in range almost. It makes it worthwhile.”

Meanwhile, Blair is already well on his way to a great career. The 24-year-old Utah native, who just graduated from BYU this past May with a degree in recreation management, turned around and earned his PGA Tour card for the 2014-15 season by placing in the top-25 on the Web.com Tour.

To kick off his rookie year, he followed up an opening-round 69 with a lights-out 66 on Friday to close to one stroke back of the lead.

After an especially-subpar first round of play, defending champ Jimmy Walker bounced back in a big way on Friday. He got himself far away from the cut line with a 66 of his own to put himself in a tie for 36th and a total score of three-under.

Among those who missed the cut Friday and will not play through the weekend were 2008 U.S Open winner Heath Slocum, 2003 Masters champion Mike Weir as well as Vijay Singh, who once overtook Tiger Woods to become the No. 1 ranked golfer in the world.

By Jeremy Harness

After about a month-long break, the PGA Tour was back in the swing of things on Thursday.

This week, Silverado Resort and Spa is holding its first tour event since 1980, when it hosted the Anheuser-Busch Golf Classic, and the event itself has its most notable field in quite some time.

In addition to defending champ and U.S Ryder Cup participant Jimmy Walker, but other recognizable names in this year’s event include former FedEx Cup champion Brandt Snedeker as well as Ryder Cup players Hunter Mahan, Matt Kuchar and Lee Westwood.

Making his PGA Tour debut this week is Max Homa, who played his collegiate Golf at Cal and spent last season on the Web.com Tour, which is considered to be the minor leagues of the PGA Tour. Another Cal grad in this week’s field is James Hahn, who is best known for his “Gangnam Style” dance following a birdie in the 2013 Phoenix Open.

So far, though, there are no big names on the leaderboard after the tournament’s first day, but there was plenty of good golf to be seen.

Andres Gonzalez and Sang-Moon Bae currently share the first-round lead by going six under par.

Meanwhile, Martin Laird is in third place all by himself after carding a five-under 67, while Brooks Koepka, who held the 54-hole lead in last year’s Open before falling to Walker, is tied for fourth with eight others with a score of four under.

Walker, on the other hand, had quite a rough opening round, as he finished Thursday with a three-over 75 and certainly has a lot of work to do if he hopes to make the cut and earn the right to play into the weekend.

He parred the first 13 holes of the opening round, but then he ended up three of the last five holes to find himself outside of the projected cut line.

Hahn is in the same category, as he struggled mightily on Thursday with a five-over round of 77.

By Jeremy Harness

When you talk to any PGA Tour player, you will inevitably come across a story of adversity that has caused them to dig down deep and decide if playing professional golf is really worth the grind.

Of those stories that will make their way into the mainstream, few are as compelling as the ones of Jarrod Lyle and Erik Compton, both of whom are in the field for this week’s Frys.com Open. Playing on the tour is certainly a grind, as maddening as at is rewarding, but it is undoubtedly a cakewalk in comparison with the journeys of these two men.

When he was nine, Compton was diagnosed with a condition called cardiomyopathy, where the heart muscle is inflamed and cannot pump as hard as it should. As a result, he has had to undergo two heart transplants, the first one at age 12 and the second procedure coming in 2008.

Compton has not only survived on the PGA Tour, but particularly based on his 2013-14 season, he has thrived. After playing mini-tours, as well as on the NGA Hooters Tour over the years, he won the Mexico Open on the Nationwide (now the Web.com) Tour in 2012 to win his first major tour event.

He made 16 of 26 cuts on the PGA Tour in 2012 before getting his first top-10 finish on the PGA Tour in the 2013 Honda Classic, and then finished tied for second in last year’s U.S Open, considered the tour’s most difficult major.

“Last year was an awesome year,” said the 34-year-old Compton, who tees it up with Tim Wilkinson and Ben Martin on Thursday at 1:05 pm PST and on Friday at 8:05 am PST. “They’re doing great things with transplants (now), and today, I watched someone who just reached their 30 years after their first transplant.

“This is a special week to be here.”

Lyle hopes to mimic Compton’s success on the course, but he has already shown as much courage off of it. Lyle, who qualified for this week’s event on Monday with a round of 66, was first diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia at age 17 and then suffered a recurrence of the disease in 2012.

Having that kind of condition can easily get one’s spirits considerably down, but Lyle does not show any of that, especially these days.

“In all honesty, I think the two times that I’ve had it, I don’t think I’ve ever said ‘why me,’” Lyle, 33, said. “It’s something that makes me very proud, that I’ve never sort of backed away from the fire. I’ve sort of come straight up to it.

“I’m not going to let it beat me because I’ve had things I’ve wanted to achieve.”

Lyle, who is grouped with Heath Slocum and Tom Gillis and tees it up Thursday at 7:15am PST and on Friday at 12:15pm PST, has certainly caught the admiration of Compton.

“He’s a hero to many people,” Compton said of Lyle. “What a strong individual he is for what he’s been through.”

By Jeremy Harness

Unlike most other professional sports such as football, baseball, basketball and hockey, golf season really never ends.

As proof of that, the 2014-15 PGA Tour season kicks off on Thursday at Silverado Resort and Spa’s North Course, only four weeks after Billy Horschel claimed the season-ending Tour Championship that earned him the FedEx Cup trophy and a healthy $10 million prize for doing so.

Horschel is not in the field this week, but defending champ Jimmy Walker, fresh off his first-ever appearance in the Ryder Cup, is.

In an otherwise-subpar performance for the U.S team in a 16.5-11.5 drubbing at the hands of the European squad, the third straight time that the Americans have fallen to Europe, team captain Tom Watson called Walker one of the few bright spots of that weekend.

The 35-year-old from Boerne, Tex., earned 2 ½ points for Team USA, including a half-point in Friday afternoon’s play while securing a tie with teammate Rickie Fowler against Europe’s vaunted duo, Sergio Garcia and Rory McIlroy, the only points that the Americans earned in that particular session that saw the cup begin to slip away from them.

He finished his Ryder Cup on Sunday with a 3&2 (led by three holes with two to play) win over Lee Westwood, a veteran of this competition who was a part of each of the past three Europe victories.

“The outcome wasn’t what we wanted, but I wouldn’t change anything that happened that week,” he said. “I think once you play in one, you really don’t want to miss it again.”

To help him get to this point, Walker jump-started his 2013-14 season by winning last year’s Frys.com Open at CordeValle with a 17-under total score of 267. Heading into the final round of the event, he trailed Brooks Koepka by three strokes.

Using a classic example of the saying “drive for show, putt for dough,” Walker used a deft putting stroke to eventually overtake Koepka with a five-under 66 to claim the title.

He sure didn’t do it with his driving accuracy. For the week, he hit just over 39 percent of his fairways, making him only the fourth tour player since 1983 to win a four-round event after hitting fewer than 40 percent.

But he certainly made up for it where it really counts: on the green. He led the entire field by an entire stroke per round in strokes gained while making a total of 446 feet of putts, including 24 putts longer than 10 feet, which is certainly a recipe for winning on the PGA Tour and has proven time and again to be the difference between a winner and the average player.

He used that momentum to catapult him to two more victories last season, the Sony Open in Hawaii in January as well as February’s AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am.

A relative unknown going to last season, he said that he has experienced a difference in not only his game, but also his appearance off the course.

“It’s funny, you get recognized more, especially after the year we had,” said Walker, who held the No.1 spot in the FedEx Cup for 36 of the 37 weeks last season, which includes a tour-record 30 consecutive weeks in the top spot, a streak that began with his win at the Sony. “But nothing has really changed for me as far as going about doing the things that I do, golf, how I do it, how I practice.

“I feel like I’ve got a good formula going, but I’m always continuing to try to get better, (and) still always trying to keep the pedal down and look down the road.”

Walker, along with Ryder Cup teammates Hunter Mahan and Matt Kuchar, is scheduled to tee off at 7:45am PST on Thursday and 12:45pm PST on Friday.