PALM HARBOR, Fla. (AP) Jordan Spieth feels as though he has been playing catch-up all year.

Spieth had a memorable offseason when he proposed (successfully) to longtime girlfriend Annie Verret. What suffered were his preparations for a new year after a bout with mononucleosis. He lost weight. More importantly, he lost time.

That’s one reason he was on the fence about his schedule leading up to the Masters. Spieth didn’t firmly decide to play in the Mexico Championship until the last minute, and that briefly made him rethink whether to play the Valspar Championship, which he won three years ago.

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Ultimately, he did both.

”I was trying to figure out what was the best strategy to be as rested and prepared for Augusta,” Spieth said. ”I just wasn’t sure. I haven’t had a whole lot of rest.”

His December can be understated, much like the time it took Dustin Johnson to fully recover from his back injury before the Masters last year.

Spieth is playing his sixth..

Mitchell LaytonThe first thing most of us think of when it comes to March Madness is the brackets, the upsets and the buzzer beaters. All of those aspects are well and good, but it's the under-appreciated parts of the NCAA Tournament that also make it so great, namely, a heavy dose of the legendary Bill Raftery.
Now, I know what you're thinking, “it's just not the same when he's not with Gus Johnson,” and you may be right, but you're also wrong, because the duo frequently calls Big East Conference games for FOX Sports throughout the season. It's obviously not the tourney, but it's going to have to suffice for the time being until CBS finally comes to their senses and pays whatever amount they want for Gus Johnson to come back, scream his lungs out and PUT THE MADNESS INTO MARCH (GOAT YouTube compilation — tell me I'm wrong).
Anyway, back to Raftery, who has been calling college basketball games for CBS for over 30 years. This season he'll b..

AVONDALE, La. (AP) Defending Masters champion and world No. 11 Sergio Garcia has committed to play in the PGA’s Zurich Classic of New Orleans team event in April.

Tournament chief Steve Worthy, who made the announcement on Tuesday, says Garcia’s partner will be Zurich Classic newcomer Rafa Cabrera Bello, who is ranked 21st in the world.

Garcia last played the tournament, held at the TPC Louisiana, in 2010.

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Worthy says this year’s field also will include 2011 Zurich Classic winner and two-time former Masters champion Bubba Watson, but with a new partner, Matt Kuchar. Last year, Watson played with J.B. Holmes.

This marks the second year of the team format at the Zurich, won last year by Swede Jonas Blixt and Australian Cameron Smith.

The tournament runs from April 26-29.

There are so many layers to this story of a Virginia father who forced his 10-year-old son to run to school in the rain as a punishment for bullying, but let's start with the basic chronology.
— Son is kicked off the bus for three days for bullying
— Father arrives at old-school punishment of making his son run the mile to school instead.
— Father, presumably in the interest of safety, decides to trail his son in his car as the boy runs in the rain.
— Father, presumably in the interest of Facebook likes, decides to narrate a live video of the whole ordeal.
— The video goes viral Tuesday morning.
What happens next is open for interpretation. The father, Bryan Thornhill, could be hailed as a refreshing beacon of hard-line accountability in this snowflake, participation-trophy era. He could be castigated for publicly-shaming a 10-year-old boy for a typical-10-year-old boy lapse in judgment. It is the very type of small debate one could easily use to encapsulate larger societal divisi..

PALM HARBOR, Fla. (AP) Shubhankar Sharma can add another achievement to his rapid rise. He’s going to the Masters.

Two days after Sharma held the 54-hole lead in his first World Golf Championships appearance, the 21-year-old from India accepted a special invitation to play in the Masters next month.

He will be the fourth Indian to play the Masters, and the second to receive a special invitation. Jeev Milkha Singh, a mentor to Sharma, received one in 2008.

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”Golf is a global game, and throughout our history we have extended invitations to deserving international players not otherwise qualified,” Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley said. ”As his results have proven, Shubhankar Sharma is a remarkable young player.”

Sharma was at No. 462 in the world three months ago when he shot 61 in the second round and won the Joburg Open. He closed with a 62 last month to win the Malaysian Open, making him the only two-time winner on the European Tour this season.

Sh..

Golf intersects with history as Faldo Series junior event concludes in Vietnam 50 years after the most destructive battle of the Vietnam War

Lance KingIf sports fans agree on anything, it’s that when networks pre-emptively change the delivery system of historically important sports news, it’s always a WISE AND FINE MOVE. My kids and I still talk about where we were during The Decision.
So hey, here’s a terrible idea: According to Adam Zagoria on Twitter, this weekend’s Selection Sunday Teevee Telethon and Variety Hour will find CBS revealing all 68 teams, which will be then “followed” by the brackets. So instead of immediately learning who goes where, what far-reaching corner of the nation your team will fly to lose in and how late you will have to energy-drink yourself to stay up on a work night, you will get: A list of teams! A roster of 68 university names! Which will then resolve themselves, eventually, after a while, I guess, into the tournament format to which all basketball fans in the history of the game have become accustomed. Fantastic news, because lists make great television.
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David CrottyBy now, you probably know that Kobe Bryant won an Oscar on Sunday night, and if not, let that sink in for a moment. Kobe Bryant won an Oscar on Sunday night, which means his home now has as many golden statues as NBA MVP awards. Someone check on Shaq. [Checks Shaq's Twitter feed] Actually, Shaq is handling this news better than expected.
https://twitter.com/SHAQ/status/970490112814600192
Of course, like all of his five championships in L.A., Bryant had plenty of help from his big men. Not in actual height this time, but in stature. Bryant wrote the poem “Dear Basketball” and was a producer for the winning animated short that was crafted by Disney's Glen Keane with music from film score GOAT John Williams.
RELATED: The Rock admits “Baywatch” sucked in Razzie acceptance speech
But this post isn't really about Bryant's win. It's about the scenes that happened after as Bryant made the rounds with his newest prize. Kobe walked the red carpet with his wif..

It's hackneyed to complain about the Oscars running long, lacking creativity or just generally being a bummer to watch. And it's a cliche because, well, it's true. Which makes the exclusion of this beautiful work from the Lonely Island a tragedy.
The comedic group, comprised of Akiva Schaffer, Andy Samberg, and Jorma Taccone, took to Twitter on Monday to announce one of their pitches for the Academy Awards was turned down because “It was overly ambitious (expensive and a logistical nightmare)” and thus not produced. Luckily for us, they shared the song with storyboards on YouTube, and oh boy, is it a delight:
The hell with Best Makeup and Hairstyling and Best Film Editing. We need the Best Chris! (For the record, that honor would go to Hemsworth this year. Thor: Ragnarok was fantastic.) Admittedly, we're guessing the production value would have been a pretty penny to put this together. Then again, the entire stage is covered in crystals. You're telling me the a..

A few weeks ago, we showed you Hafþór Björnsson—better known as the “The Mountain” on Game of Thrones—deadlifting over a 1,000 pounds with the help of a probably not-doctor-recommended quantity of smelling salts and the howls of his Icelandic viking horde egging him on. As intense as that 30-second blast of testosterone was, however, it pales in comparison to Russian rock monster Mikhail Shivlyakov, who—in the throes of a 963-pound deadlift at the 2018 Arnold Sports Festival this weekend—suddenly began spewing blood from his face like that moment in a zombie movie when it all goes to shit:
RELATED: Gary Player watching the Masters while doing curls is the most Gary Player thing ever
If this freaks you out, it should. Shivlyakov was able to walk it off, but involuntarily detonating blood vessels in your skull is A. medically not good, and B. a warning that something worse is waiting just around the arterial bend. Catastrophic hemorrhage be damned, however, Shivlyakov will be back out th..