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    4-2 Game Rekindles Shot Clock Debate in High School Basketball

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    One of the two teams from Oklahoma, the Anadarko High School Warriors, passed the ball around for nearly the entire game in what an announcer called “stall ball.”Something strange happened during a recent high school basketball game in Oklahoma.The home team, the Weatherford High School Eagles, controlled the tip-off and immediately missed a three-pointer. Then the visiting Anadarko High School Warriors grabbed the rebound and slowed the game down — way, way down.For nearly the entire game, Anadarko played “stall ball” — passing the ball back and forth in the backcourt as the seconds dripped by like molasses, fans shouted scattered boos and the cheerleaders gamely stuck to their routines on the sidelines.The final score, after four eight-minute quarters, looked nothing like the high-scoring games that have defined the N.B.A. this season: Weatherford beat Anadarko, 4-2.The absurdly low score has renewed debate about whether high school basketball needs a shot clock to keep the game moving.Seventeen states and the District of Columbia use shot clocks in some or all high school games, and two more plan to use them starting next season. Oklahoma rejected them last month, citing the cost of the clocks, among other factors.After the Anadarko-Weatherford game last Tuesday, some are questioning whether that was the right move.“What are we doing here in Oklahoma?” Bryan Keating, the sports director at KOCO-TV in Oklahoma City, wrote on Twitter. “We have to play with a shot clock. The players deserve a whole lot better than this.”The game tested the patience not only of the fans who packed into Weatherford’s gymnasium but also the local television announcer, Chuck Ramsey, who repeated the names of the Anadarko players as they tossed the ball around in what he called a game of “keep away.”“Not the best friend of a play-by-play announcer on this type of offense,” Mr. Ramsey said.The game underscored one of the reasons the National Federation of State High School Associations, the governing body for most high school sports, voted last year to allow states to use a 35-second shot clock.Proponents say the clock, by forcing the offense to try to score within a certain period of time, prevents teams from sitting on the ball to kill time, especially if they have a lead with only a few minutes left in the fourth quarter.“It changes end-of-the-game situations,” said Joe Ortiz, who has won four state championships as head coach of the boys’ basketball team at ThunderRidge High School in Highlands Ranch, Colo. “People holding ball like that — that’s not the current game of basketball. It doesn’t make sense.”It once did.Before the N.B.A. adopted a 24-second shot clock in 1954, the league was plagued by slow, low-scoring games. In 1950, the Fort Wayne Pistons beat the Minneapolis Lakers 19-18 in the lowest-scoring league game on record. Fans were not impressed.After several years of experimentation, the N.C.A.A. adopted a 45-second clock in 1985, pushed in part by a 1978 Sun Belt Conference championship game that ended with a score of 22-20. The N.C.A.A. cut the shot clock to 30 seconds in 2015.“The shot clock was about making the game more exciting for spectators,” said Pamela Grundy, an independent historian and co-author of “Shattering The Glass: The Remarkable History of Women’s Basketball.”But thrilling fans is not always a priority in high school sports.Grant Gower, assistant director of the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association, which oversees high school sports in the state, said the board voted 8-7 last month against the use of shot clocks in basketball.He said that board members cited the cost of the clocks, the expense of paying someone to operate them and the training for referees to enforce the time limit. Prices vary, but a set of two clocks can cost between $2,000 and $11,000, he said.“I know it will be addressed again and not in response to the 4-to-2 game but in terms of what the schools want to do,” Mr. Gower said, adding that the low score “sure brings an awareness of situations like this that are completely within the rules of the game.”Some have speculated that Anadarko’s coach, Doug Schumpert, a member of the Oklahoma Coaches Association Hall of Fame, was merely deploying an old-school “freeze the ball” strategy to keep his ninth-ranked team close to third-ranked Weatherford. Indeed, Anadarko almost won with a three-pointer at the buzzer.Mr. Schumpert did not respond to an email seeking comment.Derrick Bull, Weatherford’s coach, faced questions about why the Eagles had not tried to trap the ball and force turnovers. He did not respond to an email, but he pointed out in an interview with WWLS, a local radio station, that his team never trailed after going up 2-0 in the second quarter.“Once we got the lead, we were pretty content to let them do what they were going to do because we were confident that if they were ever able to tie it, we could go down and execute and score,” Mr. Bull said. “Even though we didn’t have the ball, we felt like we were in control of the game, as long as we had the lead.”Mr. Bull told WWLS that he was “never too much for, or too much against” the shot clock.Playing without one can give lesser teams a “fighting chance,” he said, but having one “improves quality of play” and makes it “more entertaining” for players and fans, he said.“I was definitely for the shot clock last night, I will put it that way,” he said. More

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      Tiger Woods Withdraws from PGA Championship

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      Recovering from leg injuries from a car crash last year, he had struggled at the Masters and now again at the PGA Championship.TULSA, Okla. — Tiger Woods, struggling in his comeback from severe leg injuries sustained in a car crash last year, withdrew from the P.G.A. Championship on Saturday night.The decision came hours after shooting a nine-over par 79, the highest score he has recorded during 22 P.G.A. Championship appearances. Yet an unsettling scene of Woods trying to perform a simple pre-round exercise Saturday presaged the interruption of his celebrated return to competitive elite golf.As Woods walked down an incline alongside a common practice area bunker, his right leg, which was surgically reconstructed 15 months ago with a rod, pins and screws, buckled. Woods nearly collapsed into the sand, but quickly used a golf club and a half step with his left leg to remain upright.On the golf course, Woods continued to limp and move slowly and stiffly, descending into a tie for last place on the tournament leaderboard at 12-over par. Because his halting gait and deteriorating game was so striking, Woods was asked afterward if he still planned to play in Sunday’s fourth round.“Well, I’m sore,” he answered. “I know that is for a fact. We’ll do some work and see how it goes.”Earlier in the event, Woods described how his recovery from golf rounds now includes many hours of ice baths and physical therapy. Saturday, he did not address when he might enter another tournament. The U.S. Open outside Boston begins June 16.Long after Woods’s round was complete, it was the weather that proved most vexing to his colleagues.The last time the P.G.A. Championship was played at Tulsa’s Southern Hills Country Club in 2007 temperatures reached 105 degrees. But that was during August in Oklahoma.Tiger Woods’s Lasting Impact and Uncertain FutureThe star golfer, one of the most influential athletes of the last quarter-century, is mounting a comeback after being badly injured in a car crash.The 2022 Masters: After saying that he would step back from competitive golf, Tiger Woods teed off at Augusta once again.Four Days That Changed Golf: When Woods won the 1997 Masters, he remade the game and catapulted himself to stardom.A Complicated Legacy: Our columnist looks back at Woods’s stunning feats and shocking falls.His Enduring Influence: Even when Woods is not playing, his impact on the sport can be felt at a PGA tournament.The P.G.A. Championship is now contested in May and Saturday’s third round of the event brought temperatures in the 50s, blustery winds and a field unnerved by the taxing conditions.With shots made unpredictable by swirling gusts, a bevy of golfers jockeyed for the lead, including unheralded Mito Pereira of Chile, who charged to a commanding advantage at the midpoint of his round. But the second-round leader, Will Zalatoris, who has four top 10 finishes in his last five major championships, caught Pereira several holes later.Then Cameron Young, a young rising star on the PGA Tour, and Bubba Watson, a 43-year-old two-time Masters champion, charged within a stroke of the lead.When play concluded Saturday evening, Pereira, who is 27 and playing in just his second major golf championship, had confidently, even boldly, regained the top spot on the leaderboard. After a third-round 69, he will enter Sunday’s final round with a three-stroke lead over Zalatoris and Matthew Fitzpatrick of England.Pereira, after a mid-round stumble, vaulted past the other third-round contenders with consecutive birdies on the 13th and 14th holes. Then, with a packed 18th green grandstand cheering for him, he closed out his day by sinking a 27-foot birdie putt to move to nine-under for the tournament.While Pereira, who is ranked 100th worldwide, is not a household name in professional golf, he has had three top 20 finishes on the PGA Tour this year and won three times on the Korn Ferry Tour, the tour’s top minor league circuit.Zalatoris had a bumpy start Saturday, shooting a four-over 39 on the front nine but steadied himself by curing some of his putting woes to shoot a rocky 73.After bogeying his first two holes, Fitzpatrick was five-under for the rest of his round to shoot 67.Young, whose father is David Young, the longtime golf professional at Sleepy Hollow Country Club in the suburbs of New York, made a late charge when he eagled the 296-yard par 4 17th hole by driving the green and making a short putt. With four birdies in his round, Young shot 67 and was in fourth place at five-under overall.After a sparkling front nine, Watson, who knocked his ball into seven bunkers during Saturday’s round, faltered and shot 73 and was tied for seventh.Woods’s troubles on Saturday were not doubt exacerbated by the Tulsa weather. With a back that has been operated on five times, Woods has not enjoyed playing in cold, damp conditions for more than a decade because it reduces the flexibility and fluidity of his golf swing. He is also still adjusting to modifications to his game required since the operations on his right leg.Once his round began, it was obvious Woods’s reduced physical capabilities were going to dramatically affect his score. His tee shot on the second hole was driven into a creek and led to a bogey. He recovered with three pars but then bungled the 218-yard par 3 sixth hole. By then, Woods already looked in pain and he was especially having trouble hitting his irons the necessary distances. Several were not on line either.On the sixth hole, his tee shot was short and left and landed in a water hazard. After a penalty shot drop, his third shot was in the rough just off the green and a subsequent chip that needed to go about 30 yards traveled only half that distance. Two putts later, Woods had a triple bogey.He then bogeyed six of his next seven holes. Woods appeared to be alternatively embarrassed and exasperated, but marched on. Always the grinder, he rallied for four pars and a birdie in his final five holes to avoid shooting 80.“I didn’t hit the ball very well and got off to not the start I needed to get off to,” Woods said later. “I thought I hit a good tee shot down 2 and ended up in the water, and just never really got any kind of momentum on my side.“I couldn’t get off the bogey train there. As I said, I just didn’t — I didn’t do anything right. I didn’t hit many good shots. Consequently, I ended up with a pretty high score.” More

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      in Golf

      The Scramble at Southern Hills

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      P.G.A. Championships are planned years in advance, but the club had less than two years to prepare when the event was moved from Trump Bedminster.When players tee off at this week’s P.G.A. Championship at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Okla., they will be playing a course that has been renovated since the last time it hosted a P.G.A. in 2007 (when Tiger Woods won by two). Gil Hanse, who has become the go-to architect for courses hoping to host a United States Open or P.G.A. Championship, renovated the course in 2019.But the players are also competing on a course that wasn’t selected until early last year — an unheard-of rush for a major championship — and one that had not been planning to host its first major after the renovation until 2030.How this came about was something no one involved could have imagined when the course for the 2022 P.G.A. Championship was announced in 2014.Every major golf championship is planned years, if not decades, in advance. The courses that will host are locked in, and the process to get them ready for players, and sponsors, usually requires years.The U.S. Open has planned out past some people’s lifetimes, with Oakland Hills in Bloomfield, Mich., tapped to host the 2051 tournament. The British Open is set for courses until 2025. The Masters, of course, will be at Augusta National Golf Club, unless the world ends.The P.G.A. Championship, which is organized by the Professional Golfers Association of America, has long been on a four-year activation cycle. This means teams have time to get to the next site to plan the tournament, drum up sponsorships and plan the course setup, which includes asking for course modifications.Rory McIlroy putting on the fourth green at Southern Hills on Monday. The course was chosen for the P.G.A. Championship just last year.Michael Madrid/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe P.G.A. Championship is planned out to 2031 — or 2034 if you count a few open years until the championship is at the P.G.A.’s new headquarters in Frisco, Texas.The only exception was this year, when a course and all the planning for the 2022 championship happened in 16 months.So why and how did the P.G.A. of America and Southern Hills have to get ready so quickly?In 2014, the P.G.A. awarded the men’s major to Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J. Its owner, Donald J. Trump, was then a businessman with a portfolio of 17 golf clubs in the United States and Scotland.That same year, Mr. Trump bought Turnberry, a Scottish course that had hosted the British Open four times. He had a reputation for investing heavily in his clubs and also for wanting to host big tournaments, which can be a hassle for private clubs that have members who can’t play as the tournament gets close.It seemed like a solid plan to host the tournament at what is better known as Trump Bedminster.“The P.G.A. of America is excited to begin a new chapter of major championship history by taking two of our premier championships to venues that bear the Trump label of excellence,” Ted Bishop, then-president of the P.G.A. of America, said at the time.Mr. Trump said: “Having the P.G.A. is a very, very big deal. So, it’s very important to me. It’s a great honor for me.”Then he was elected president in 2016. Fast forward to Jan. 6, 2021, when President Trump gave a speech that fired up a crowd in Washington, which then stormed the Capitol to stop the certification of the 2020 election results.Five days later, the P.G.A. of America announced it had voted to pull the 2022 major from the Trump course.“It has become clear that conducting the P.G.A. Championship at Trump Bedminster would be detrimental to the P.G.A. of America brand and would put at risk the P.G.A.’s ability to deliver on many programs and sustain the longevity of our mission,” Jim Richerson, the P.G.A. of America’s president, said.And that left the organization scrambling to find a course to host the tournament and get a team there. While a major championship is about top golf, it’s also about building the equivalent of a small town that can bring in the maximum revenue for the governing bodies. Rushing that isn’t ideal.Some 30 courses raised their hands. One of those was Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio, which has hosted the tournament three times.“When the P.G.A. of America said we’re going to move the tournament, I said we need to step in and help,” said David Pillsbury, chief executive of Invited (the new name for ClubCorp), which owns Firestone, and a former PGA Tour executive. “I said we can do this. We have a world-class-tested course. We have had the Senior Players Championship there, so there’s a senior staff there.”In the end, none of the suitors were selected. And the P.G.A. went with Southern Hills, which it knew well because it was hosting the Senior P.G.A. Championship that year.“One of the main reasons we ended up selecting Southern Hills when we decided to move it is because we had the Kitchen Aid Senior P.G.A. there in 2021,” said Kerry Haigh, chief championships officer for the P.G.A. “We were working with the community, the city, we had a lot of plans together.”But a senior tournament is not the same as a P.G.A. Championship. For one, the course is set up shorter and easier. And there just aren’t as many fans or sponsors to accommodate. The dollars are much less.But Southern Hills had something that other courses didn’t. “We had staff on site,” Haigh said. “We also had a contract in place for them to host a P.G.A. Championship, albeit for a later year. All the things that needed to happen — agreeing on a contract, moving staff, having relationships with all those people — were already in place.”Tiger Woods playing a shot from a bunker at Southern Hills during practice on Monday.Andrew Redington/Getty ImagesThe course, though, would have to play longer. At a par 70, it was set at 6,968 yards for the Senior P.G.A. This week it will measure 7,635 yards for the P.G.A. That added distance can change the angles that players have to take; it can also alter the setups.While Pillsbury wished Firestone had been selected, he said the selection of Southern Hills for a quick turnaround made a lot of sense. “To organize a tournament quickly, the first thing you have to do is mobilize the membership,” he said.And Haigh said they had that from the start. “A big part of selecting Southern Hills was the support of the membership, who is passionate about major championship golf,” he said. “They were very quick to remind us of how much they wanted to host the P.G.A. Championship and that they had the support of the city and the community to turn this around immediately to support the P.G.A.”A major tournament, though, is more than the course. It’s about the fans and the sponsors who will help fund a prize pool worth over $12 million, with more than $2 million going to the winner.“It’s a midsized market, so that concern was raised that they wouldn’t have enough money to go again,” said John Handley, director of championship sales and marketing at the P.G.A. “We didn’t experience a whole lot of that. The membership at Southern Hills was incredibly helpful. We felt we had a good pulse of the market. The concern never materialized.”The experience had the chief executive of the P.G.A., Seth Waugh, pondering if planning years in advance was even worth it. In an interview with Gary Williams, a golf commentator, Waugh said this past year had taught him that a major could be planned more quickly.“Frankly, when you say 20 to 25 years, I think it’s a little bit, possibly irresponsible, because who knows what’s going to happen between then and now,” he said. “You certainly don’t need that much time to lock something in. When I made the decision to move to Southern Hills a year and a half ago, we had 30-plus venues that were willing to take us on.” More