Slowed down in December, Spieth trying to catch up
AUTO RACING: In his first-year of eligibility, four-time Cup champ Jeff Gordon was one of 20 nominees for the NASCAR Hall of Fame next year. Also added to the list were Harry Gant, a driver whose career spanned two decades and two series, four-time championship winning crew chief Kirk Shelmerdine, and car owners John Holman and Ralph Moody. ... Former Truck series driver Rick Crawford was arrested by federal agents Monday in Lake Mary, Fla., on a charge of attempted enticement of a minor. Crawford, 59, had five career victories in the Truck series and made his last start in 2012 . ... Formula One team Sauber signed Colombian driver Tatiana Calderon as its test driver for this season. Calderon, 24, was the team’s development driver last season. The last woman to participate in an F1 race weekend was Susie Wolff, who took part in a practice session for Williams at the 2014 British Grand Prix . ... Conor Daly will drive for Dale Coyne Racing in the Indianapolis 500 in a joint entry with Thom Burns Racing. Daly has four previous starts in the race.
COLLEGE FOOTBALL: Houston DT Ed Oliver said he will turn pro after his upcoming junior season. Last year, Oliver became the first underclassman to win the Outland Trophy as the nation’s best interior lineman . ... Southern California WR Joseph Lewis IV pleaded not guilty in Los Angeles to five misdemeanors stemming from two alleged domestic violence attacks last month. Lewis, 18, was suspended from all team activities following his arrest . ... Wake Forest and East Carolina announced they will play a two-game series in 2027 and 2028. GOLF: Shubhankar Sharma of India accepted a special invitation to play in the Masters next month. The 21-year-old will be the fourth player from India to play in the major championship. Sharma has two European Tour wins this season and leads the season standings. He tied for ninth last weekend at the WGC Mexico Championship after holding the 54-hole lead.
NFL: Aldon Smith turned himself into San Francisco Police and later was released on $30,000 bond after being charged with domestic violence, assault with force likely to produce great bodily injury, false imprisonment and vandalism. All four charges are misdemeanors. The Raiders released Smith, 28, on Monday . ... The Steelers made it official, placing the exclusive franchise tag on RB Le’Veon Bell for the second straight year. The exclusive designation means that Bell can only negotiate with the Steelers. The tag for Bell is worth $14.544 million for the 2018 season. The Steelers and Bell have until July 16 to agree to a multiyear contract or he will have to play the season on the tag. ... The Rams placed the non-exclusive franchise tag on DB Lamarcus Joyner. The value of the tag is $11.287 million . ... Referee Ed Hochuli retired, the league announced. Hochuli, 67, who started as a back judge in 1990, will serve as an independent consultant to the league.
SOCCER: Cristiano Ronaldo and Casemiro scored as Real Madrid beat 10-man Paris Saint-Germain 2-1 in Paris to advance to the Champions League quarterfinals 5-2 on aggregate. Liverpool also moved on, securing a 5-0 aggregate victory over Porto.
PALM HARBOR, Fla. — 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. 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 tournament of the year at the Valspar Championship, but part of him feels like it’s January. All because of December, when he said he had only four one-hour practice sessions.
“I probably lost a full month, month-and-a-half out of it,” Spieth said. “The problem was in that time coming back, the basic stuff after you take a couple of weeks off is the time you figure out all the basics: the ball position, the alignment issues. And then I was starting to have those problems, especially in the short game, while I was having to play tournaments. And so it adds to that frustration level.”
It hasn’t been a total flop. Spieth has had only two rounds over par, in the opening round of Kapalua and Phoenix. While he missed the cut in Phoenix, his worst other finish was a tie for 20th at Pebble Beach.
“I feel like right now my game is in the shape it would be after playing a couple of events,” he said in Mexico. “The progression of that last three-week stretch (Phoenix, Pebble, Riviera) is the progression I normally experience the first few weeks of the year.”
After the Valspar Championship, he is off next week before Match Play, the Houston Open and the Masters.
Tiger time
Tiger Woods is playing the Valspar Championship for the first time, meaning there are nine events on the PGA Tour schedule (excluding the opposite-field events) he has never played.
One of them only began this year, the CJ Cup in South Korea.
Two others in the fall have only been around for about a decade: the OHL Classic in Mayakoba began in 2007, and the RSM Classic in Sea Island dates to 2010.
Woods has never played the week before the Masters (Houston Open) or U.S. Open (St. Jude Classic). He has never played the Travelers Championship, which is one week after the U.S. Open. Woods has played the week after the U.S. Open three times — never particularly well — in the Buick Classic.
The other events are the Zurich Classic in New Orleans, the Sony Open in Honolulu, and the CareerBuilder Challenge in the California desert.