And now we wait and hope, hope the next major golf championship of 2012, the U.S. Open at San Francisco’s Olympic Club in June, can be as full of tension and greatness — and, of course, drama — as the Masters.What an ending Sunday, in the shadows after the setting sun dipped below the Georgia pines, a day of history, only the fourth double-eagle in 77 Masters and, because the winner couldn’t be determined until a sudden-death playoff, mystery. Read More

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- This is where it begins, on the fairways and under the pines. This is where the golfing year starts. It’s all been a warmup until now, until the first weekend of April, until the Masters.Jack Nicklaus defined his year by the majors, and if that idea were good enough for Jack, still the greatest until proven differently, it’s good enough for the rest of us. And the rest of the pros.The Road Ends Here is the copyrighted slogan for the NCAA’s Final Four, which in fact ended Monday night in New Orleans with Kentucky sweeping to victory. Read More

You’ve heard it before. No good deed goes unpunished. What the man who owns the Warriors heard was a backlash of boos, which while reprehensible, also was understandable.Joe Lacob has the keys to a kingdom he is trying to upgrade. The team is a work in progress. Patience is needed, we’ve been told.Patience is a rare quality among sports fans, especially when their hero was been traded, especially when the home team looks awful in the first half, as did the Warriors on Monday night against Minnesota. Read More

So, isn’t that a heck of a deal for the Warriors, trading one of the NBA’s best scorers, Monta Ellis, to Milwaukee for a tall Australian with a broken ankle?   But hey, it proves the front office is willing to make moves, and didn’t Dante say something like, in times of moral crisis, the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who stand around using a zone defense? Read More

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.-- Angel Pagan had another hit Sunday. Melky Cabrera had two more. They got things started, and seemingly everybody else, Pablo Sandoval, Aubrey Huff, Brett Pill, wouldn’t let it stop. Only an exhibition game, but for the Giants, a telling one.And because of the attack of the killer bees — not Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell, but genuine bees who make honey — a game which threatened to last until sundown, but in fact took a mere 2 hours, 53 minutes (plus 41-minute bee delay), was a weird one. Read More

PHOENIX-- Green-collar baseball? When Manny Ramirez is in camp for the A’s, it’s green do-rag baseball. It’s “Guess who’s in the cage?” baseball. It’s “Can he still do it?” baseball. It hasn’t been like this for a while at Papago Park, the A’s training complex, a ball player who has to be watched, if even to find out whether he still deserves to be watched. He won’t be eligible to play until May 30, the day on which Manuel Aristides Ramirez turns 40. Read More

‘This is unbelievable. I’ve never been part of something like this,” Jeremy Lin said. But not about becoming the toast of New York, about signing with the Warriors. Hey, the young man had to start some place. He was a curiosity, a hometown kid, an Asian-American, a Palo Alto High grad, a Harvard grad and he was off the bench now and then, when he wasn’t off the team, shuttled off to the D-League, as in Developmental. Read More