Eyes on Tiger’s heel, Peyton’s place

Planet Golf — 19 March 2012 by Bob Sherwin

This is the Foursome Forecast for this week:

One: Tiger Woods is front and center focus. He had to withdraw in the final round of the WGC-Cadillac on March 11 because of an inflamed left Achilles tendon. He rested for a week but is now playing six of the next seven days. He’ll be in the two-day Travistock Cup that begins Monday near his home in Florida. Then he’ll compete in the regular tour stop, Arnold Palmer Invitational, at the end of the week. Of course, his progress is always relative to his fitness for the Masters April 5-8.

Two: Sweet 16 in the NCAA Tournament still features all four No. 1 seeds, Kentucky, N.C., Michigan State and Syracuse, along with three double-digit-seed survivors, No. 13 Ohio, No. 11 N.C. State and No. 10 Xavier. Syracuse and Carolina already are without two of their best players. Watch out for Kansas, which will be playing in fan-friendly St. Louis.

Three: Two baseball teams, Seattle and Oakland, have finished phase I of spring training. The Mariners and A’s depart for Japan Thursday to play a pair of exhibition games against Japan League teams then open the regular season against each other in the Tokyo Dome March 28-29. They will return to Arizona for phase II before re-opening the season.

Four: NFL free-agent kingfish QB Peyton Manning, who said he wanted to make a decision by last Tuesday, is still fishing. What has changed is his choices. Arizona is out. Washington is out. Tennessee and San Francisco are in. Denver and Miami are on hold. Denver is probably the favorite but the dark horse s SF. The 49ers could lose free agent QB Alex Smith to Miami, leaving them desperate for a quarterback.

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About Author

Bob Sherwin

Bob grew up in Cleveland, an underdog city with perennial underdog teams, and that gave him an appreciation and an affinity for the grinders in golf, guys such as Rocco Mediate, Jhonattan Vegas and star-crossed John Daly. This is the 53rd year for Bob as a sportswriter, the first 34 working for newspapers throughout the west, Tucson (Daily Star), San Francisco (Examiner) and Seattle (Times), and the past 19 years as a freelancer. He has covered just about every sport, including golf tournaments, Tucson Open, Bing Crosby/AT&T Pro-Am, the 1998 PGA Championship, the 2010 U.S. Senior Open, the 2010 U.S. Amateur the 2015 U.S. Open and the annual Champions Tour Boeing Classic. He also writes articles for Cascade Golfer Magazine and Destination Golfer. For most of his 20 years at the Seattle Times his primary beat was the Mariners. He then picked up Washington men's basketball in the winter. He also was the beat writer for the Sonics, including 1996 when they played the Bulls for the NBA title. After a lifetime hacking on public courses, he finally gave in and joined a country club in 2011, Aldarra near Seattle. Despite (or perhaps because) of his 14 handicap, he won the 'Super Senior'' (65 and older) championship in 2017. He has a pair of aces – 37 years apart – and in 2009 came agonizingly close to his ultimate golf goal of scoring in the 70s when he finished with an even 80. He lives in Seattle.