Ian Baker-Finch On Phoenix Open: ‘Ideal Conditions For Scoring’

By Dave Shedloski

The seating capacity at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, site of Super Bowl LII, is 65,400. Attendance for last year’s Waste Management Phoenix Open at TPC Scottsdale was roughly 10 times that number, over the span of four days. The two events share the stage again this Sunday on the sporting landscape.

There’s almost no question the loudest fans will be attending the popular PGA TOUR event near Phoenix, Arizona.

The Greatest Show on Grass returns this weekend on CBS Sports, and that show will feature a tremendous mix of golf talent, including five of the top seven in the Official World Golf Ranking — No. 2 John Rahm, No. 3 Jordan Spieth, No. 4 Justin Thomas, No. 5 Hideki Matsuyama and No. 7 Rickie Fowler. Matsuyama is the two-time defending champion after beating Webb Simpson in a playoff last year.

In addition, 23 of the top 30 from the FedExCup standings, including leader Patton Kizzire, will be among the 132 players in the field. And the likes of Phil Mickelson, Bubba Watson, PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year, Xander Schauffele, and 2017 Presidents Cup captain, Steve Stricker, add extra zest.

Designed by Tom Weiskopf and Jay Morrish and given an upgrade in 2014, TPC Scottsdale plays 7,261 yards, par 71. The event is scheduled to finish prior to the big game.

>>MORE: Golf Expert Interviews

Five of the top seven in the world are heading to TPC Scottsdale. What draws top players to this golf course?

Well, [let’s] start with the weather is usually perfect, and the greens are great. That’s a good combination, just ideal conditions for scoring. Obviously, it can get a little rambunctious around there with the crowds, and a lot of guys like that. They embrace that. They like that liveliness, and being a part of something a bit different from the usual tournament.

The course record is 60, shot most recently by Phil Mickelson in 2013. Phil is not a pure bomber, and the other two players who share the mark — Grant Waite and Mark Calcavecchia — weren’t either. How does that fact jibe with today’s long-ball game when it comes to this venue?

I actually think it’s a bomber’s paradise, honestly. Big hitters playing in perfect conditions definitely have an advantage, but just about anyone can do well there, because the greens are always so perfect. Seems like the closing stretch suits the bombers more, where they can knock it onto 17 and they have some par-5s they can reach. [On] 18 they can rip it over the bunkers and just hit a lob wedge on. There’s an opportunity for all types to score well there, though. It provides a great risk-reward situation that always makes it exciting.

Rickie Fowler had a chance to win this event the last two years. Do you expect him to be in the mix again or does that kind of disappointment maybe get in someone’s head, no matter how good they are?

It drives them more. They think the place owes them one, and even if they haven’t won, they know they can play well there. In Rickie’s case, there’s a huge positive to doing well continuously, and he has the mentality to go out and win this thing eventually.

Phil Mickelson is playing TPC Scottsdale for the 29th time (tying the record shared by Gene Littler, Jim Ferrier and Jerry Barber), which he has won three times. He looked good last week for 36 holes at Torrey Pines before fading. He holds a share of the course record. Is this one of his better chances on the schedule to break his winless drought dating to the 2013 Open Championship?

He knows the course well, and it’s kind of a home game where he is always comfortable. (Mickelson attended Arizona State University.) This could be a good, positive week for him.

Can you believe he hasn’t won since Muirfield?

I cannot believe that, as good as he is. He keeps practicing hard and playing well. He works hard, and his mind is in the game. He will win again. Why not this week?

Please give us your favorites and dark horses.

We just talked about Rickie Fowler, so he has to be one of my picks. I like Justin Thomas. And Jon Rahm should be fired up after last weekend, when he struggled a bit at Torrey Pines. A bit of a home game for him as well, like it is for Phil. My dark horse… I like J.B. Holmes (who has twice won at TPC Scottsdale). He might come out and try to prove something. He’s motivated after the criticism he got last week (for slow play). I’d watch out for him.

Journalist and author David Shedloski of Columbus, Ohio, has been covering golf since 1986, first as a daily newspaper reporter and later as a freelance writer for various magazines and Internet outlets. A winner of 23 national writing awards, including 20 for golf coverage, Shedloski is currently a contributing writer for Golf World and GolfDigest.com and serves as editorial director for The Memorial, the official magazine of the Memorial Tournament in Dublin, Ohio. He is the author of five books and has contributed to three others, including the second edition of “Golf For Dummies,” with Gary McCord. His last book was a collaboration with Arnold Palmer for his final autobiography, “A Life Well Played,” published in 2016. He’s a fan of all Cleveland professional sports teams, the poor fellow.

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Super Bowl Picks: Will The Eagles Upset The Patriots?

CBS Local Sports talent from across the country looks at the Eagles-Patriots Super Bowl match-up. Who are our NFL experts picking?

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Baffoe: And The Bulls’ Awkwardness Is Back

By Tim Baffoe–

(670 The Score) Something with the Chicago Bulls made a lot of sense. Then it was too good to be true. Then that thing still made a different sort of Bulls sense.

On Tuesday, it seemed like the Bulls were going to get a first-round pick and rickety piece of nostalgia, Omer Asik, from the New Orleans Pelicans in exchange for mercurial forward Nikola Mirotic. It was everything that is the giddy Chris Pratt gif if you’re a Bulls fan. To think, someone was going to give up a first-rounder to Chicago for a player who prior to this season fans had largely written off and maybe embodied everything that was the underachievement of the last few years of whatever that Bulls era was.

“I said to myself: ‘It’s happening. It’s happening. It could happen.’ That’s the only thing that popped into my head,” Mirotic said Wednesday, seemingly speaking for Bulls fans everywhere. “I said: ‘OK, be calm. Wait. Do what they told you to do. Step off the (practice) court.’ I was doing some calls to my agent and my family.

“The thing I want is the best for me and my future in the NBA. And I’m sure the Bulls are doing what’s the best for them too.” 

Then the trade fell through, according to Joe Cowley of the Sun-Times, “because Mirotic and his representation didn’t like the idea of walking away from a possible guaranteed $12.5 million next season, which would have been the case if they would have waived the no-trade clause and accepted the deal.”

If the Bulls overrode Mirotic, that extra money would kick in, and the Pelicans weren’t about to invest in Mirotic that much. 

Mirotic isn’t stupid and can’t be blamed for his desire to get the hell out of here not being worth $12.5 million, even if his “best teammate ever” is down there. And the Bulls can’t exactly convince the Pelicans that the good that Mirotic has shown this season is indicative of his future when the receipts on his past are more glaring.

Still, this is very Bulls and makes a lot of sense. Meaning not necessarily that it’s the Bulls’ fault but somehow feeling typical of a franchise that has caused a lot of throwing up of hands from fans the last few years saying, “Really?” Maybe we were all just expecting in the back of our minds that something had to slip up at some point while the first year of the rebuild was going so well.

For all the low expectations of this season and the jaw-dropping face-breaking of the Mirotic/Bobby Portis fight that seemed to be a harbinger of some absurd comedy of the year to come, the Bulls have been refreshingly entertaining and hardly dysfunctional. It was almost weird to have the franchise be just about basketball and no bickering or using social media or the press to stir stuff up. Yes, the Bulls weren’t all that great up until now, but they were playing for coach Fred Hoiberg and going on spurts of actual impressive hoops and showing that the franchise wasn’t actually fleeced in the Jimmy Butler trade last offseason.

The desire to trade Mirotic and the mutual feeling on his end was no secret, but it didn’t cast much of a shadow over the basketball the last month. Then it happened, then didn’t happen and then the thing everyone just assumed was going to happen was suddenly this uncomfortable sitcom situation in which characters have to lie to one another that things are fine even though they both just inadvertently saw each other naked.

Then it got more awkward, as K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune wrote: 

By Wednesday afternoon, the Bulls said Mirotic will sit most likely until the Feb. 8 trade deadline as they continue trying to accommodate Mirotic’s desire to be dealt. They are seeking a first-round pick in return.

This isn’t dumb. Risking an injury in meaningless games to someone potentially worth a first-rounder that you desperately need for whatever the plan is would be dumb. Yet doing the smart thing right now still feels laughably silly. Silly like the thumping the Mirotic-less (and Markkanen-less and Dunn-less and Zipser-abundant) Bulls took at the hands of the Portland Trail Blazers on Wednesday night that really wasn’t as close as the 124-108 score would indicate.

Mirotic is going to sit out, decreasing the Bulls’ chances of winning (which is sort of gravy anyway), and he just becomes the elephant in the team hotel, not even allowed on the bench, that’s bigger than he was when he was riding a stationary bike above practice while healing in November like Bart Simpson and his broken leg overlooking his family’s pool while “becoming isolated and weird.”

Mirotic is at team hotel. Hoiberg said its undetermined if he’ll leave trip and fly back to Chicago.

— K.C. Johnson (@KCJHoop) February 1, 2018

Instead, he’s in some strange purgatory, which — again — isn’t exactly the Bulls’ fault but still somehow very Bulls. The uncomfortable grimaces of years past have returned. Like when veterans were dissing Hoiberg, there was blatant tension between coaches and front office, players weren’t trusting certain assistant coaches to not snitch to higher-ups. You remember all that. That’s what is very Bulls.

Mirotic will presumably be dealt by Feb. 8, and hopefully all this hasn’t diluted the value of his return. Meanwhile — for now — what fans were used to about the  Bulls in recent history has returned.

Tim Baffoe is a columnist for 670TheScore.com. Follow Tim on Twitter @TimBaffoe. The views expressed on this page are those of the author, not Entercom or our affiliated radio stations.

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Sheriff’s Deputy Saves Colleagues, DUI Suspect From Being Hit By Passing Car

CHICAGO (CBS) — A Boone County sheriff’s deputy’s split-second decision saved the lives of four people, including his own, when a passing car nearly ran them over Saturday night.

Deputy Charles Schutz and two other deputies were conducting a DUI stop around 11:30 p.m. Saturday along Illinois Route 173 in Boone County, about 65 miles northwest of Chicago, when another suspected drunk driver almost hit all four of them.

Schutz spotted the oncoming car, and quickly pushed his colleagues and the driver they had stopped out of the way just seconds before the car sped past them, coming within inches of where Schutz had been standing.

The incident was recorded on dashcam video.

Schutz was able to joke about the incident afterward.

“I tell people i was trying to get myself out of the way, They just happened to be in my way when I ran,” he said.

The deputy said he thought the passing car was going to hit one of the stopped police cruisers.

“You have to keep your head on a swivel. You’re looking out for everybody,” he said.

After the car passes, the video shows Schutz running to his squad car. He said he was able to catch up with the driver who nearly hit him, and arrest him for driving under the influence.

“I appreciate everybody’s response, but at the end of the day I’m just happy everybody goes home,” Schutz said.

The Boone County Sheriff’s office said drivers get too close to deputies too often, and reminded drivers about “Scott’s Law,” which requires motorists to slow down and change lanes if possible when passing a police car or other vehicle that has flashing emergency lights activated.

The law is named after Chicago Fire Department Lt. Scott Gillen, who was struck and killed in December 2000, when a drunk driver sped past an accident scene. The law was updated last year to include all vehicles using emergency lights, including tow trucks, other commercial vehicles, and passenger cars.

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Eagles Team Headlines: Is This Finally The Year?

By Kevin McGuire

The New England Patriots may have Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, but even the combo of an all-time great head coach and all-time great quarterback has proven to not be invincible in the Super Bowl. Come Sunday, the Philadelphia Eagles will look to hand Belichick and Brady their third Super Bowl loss. Brace yourselves, Philadelphia, because these Eagles have the tools needed to do what few are expecting to see in Super Bowl LII in Minnesota.

Eagles are Underdogs Despite Having the Same Record as the Pats

Despite having an identical record and each having the top seed in their respective playoff fields, the Eagles are still a decided underdog against the defending Super Bowl champions, and that is fair to suggest going in.

The Patriots didn’t lose their MVP quarterback toward the end of the season like the Eagles did with Carson Wentz. While the Patriots traded away their backup quarterback to San Francisco, the Eagles are happy they took the measure of signing Nick Foles and rescuing him from potential retirement last offseason. Foles is certainly no Brady, but to be fair, only a select few quarterbacks throughout the history of the NFL can legitimately compare with Tom Brady. That said, Foles is coming off a game for the ages that has given the Eagles offense a new sense of confidence. And with one game left to play, the Eagles can find ways to exploit the Patriots defense in a variety of ways.

Eagles Can Expose Cracks in New England’s Defense

New England did turn things around with their defense this season after a truly ugly start, but the Jacksonville Jaguars showed some cracks the Eagles are suited to expose. The Patriots will attempt to focus on taking away one key offensive player, but the Eagles have shown an ability to spread the football around to a handful of guys through the air and on the ground. There is not one way to shut the Eagles offense down other than finding a way to disrupt Foles in the pocket. If the Eagles offensive line continues to flex some muscle up front against a Patriots defensive line that can be overpowered, then the Eagles will have an advantage when on offense.

Philadelphia Will Find Ways to Get to Brady

The Eagles are also the type of aggressive defensive team you need to get to Brady. Make no mistake, Brady will certainly make some plays, and tight end Rob Gronkowski, who should be expected to play in the game despite coming off a concussion in the AFC Championship Game, will get his touches. But the Eagles have just dominated the Atlanta Falcons and Minnesota Vikings in back-to-back playoff victories, showing why they are among the top defenses in the NFL. Beginning with the pressure up front with Fletcher Cox and Brandon Graham causing problems in the trenches, the Eagles can find ways to get in Brady’s face, and they will. Brady will counter by making some quick passes, but the linebackers and secondary will be ready to avoid giving up huge plays often enough to seriously hurt them.

“The Eagles Have a Superior Roster”

The Eagles lost a big piece of their team dynamic when they lost Carson Wentz, but the rest of the team is still as strong as they have been all season long, and there are more than enough ingredients left to take the field and win the Super Bowl. Don’t believe me? Maybe you’ll find it comforting to know Will Brinson of CBSSports.com is calling for the Birds to take home the Lombardi Trophy as well.

“[It’s] clear outside of Brady and Rob Gronkowski… the Eagles have a superior roster,” Brinson said. “It mostly happens on defense and mostly on the defensive line, with Fletcher Cox, Timmy Jernigan, Brandon Graham, Vinny Curry, Chris Long and Derek Barnett forming a rotation that cannot be matched in football right now.”

There are mismatches on paper that favor New England, but the Eagles have not backed down from embracing this underdog mentality. Maybe, just maybe, they aren’t the real underdogs here anyway.

Get ready Philadelphia. This is finally the year.

Kevin McGuire is a Philadelphia area sports writer and college football editor for The Comeback and host of the No 2-Minute Warning Podcast. Follow McGuire on Twitter and like him on Facebook.

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Bernstein: Sitting Niko Mirotic Is Just Smart Business For Bulls

By Dan Bernstein–
670TheScore.com senior columnist

(670 The Score) Nikola Mirotic wants to be anywhere but the Bulls anyway, so having him miss three games before the NBA trade deadline would seem to be the obviously correct call for all concerned.

He won’t play between now and the Feb. 8 deadline as the team works the phones to find a deal amenable to all parties. Mirotic has some leverage due to the rules surrounding his $12.5-million team option for next year, in that he can veto a trade unless that’s picked up — that was reported to be the sticking point in the arrangement with the Pelicans that fell through Tuesday, but the teams are said to still be talking.

There’s no upside to him playing at the moment, because he has already played his way back to the top range of his value in his return from the Bobby Portis incident. Mirotic is in his prime at 26 and putting up some of the best and most consistent numbers of his career, with no performances in the next week altering upward the perception of what he’s worth.

It’s only the downside of injury that lurks, potentially scuttling everything. There’s no good reason to take on that risk when you’re the Bulls looking at a chance to add a first-round draft pick or Mirotic looking to continue his career somewhere else.

It also makes the Bulls worse for the moment, and we have to remember that they need to get on with more losing to assure themselves of a meaningful spot in a draft that’s considered four or five deep in impact players.​ More outcomes like a 124-108 defeat in Portland on Wednesday night are a good thing, even as their young core develops.

It’s all a bit counter-intuitive, but the Bulls need to go backward to go forward, and Mirotic needs to sit idly to move on.

Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score’s “Bernstein and Goff Show” in afternoon drive. You can follow him on Twitter @dan_bernstein and read more of his columns here.

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Rep. Peter Roskam Shares Moments Of GOP Train Crash In Virgina

CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — West suburban U.S. Rep. Peter Roskam was among the Republican lawmakers aboard the chartered train that hit a garbage truck Wednesday in Virginia.

Roskam said at first all he felt was a bump. But he said it quickly became obvious what they had hit.

He told the WBBM Noon Business Hour that within moments members of Congress and their families who are doctors and nurses, and aboard the train, began making the rounds in the train and on the ground.

“What impressed me was how quickly and how intuitively the doctors and nurses were…almost walking out of instinct,” he said.

Roskam said their quick reassurances helped maintain a sense of calm aboard the train, which was bound for a policy conference at the historic Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. He said several of the doctors and nurses disregarded Amtrak crew requests to stay on board so that they could check on those who had been aboard the garage truck.

U.S. Rep. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) performed cardio-pulmonary resuscitation on a member of the Amtrak crew. The exact number of those treated and transported was not immediately clarified, although Roskam said that no members of the Illinois delegation were hurt.

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