Been down at Pebble Beach working for the Monterey Herald all weekend.  Here’s a link to my column on Dustin Johnson the leader heading into today’s final round.

Here is a link to the story I wrote on Tom Watson.

And the first-roud column on Tiger Woods.

Should be an interesting final round today.

I know it was a bad call. I know it all seems terribly unfair. I’m already getting nasty twitter responses to my thought that good breaks and bad breaks all kind of even out.

Look people, I don’t mean that literally. I can do the math. I know that the total gift goal against England resulted in one point and the nullified goal against Slovenia resulted in minus-two points. But, karmically, in soccer you take the good and the bad.

The U.S. is willing to take the good: the major, major, “my 12-year old could stop that shot” break against England. And the lack of call in the opening seconds against Slovenia that could have had Clint Dempsey sent off and left them playing a man down the entire match.

But the bad? Team USA is awfully good at dwelling on the things that go against them. Right now, their anger is fueled by the outrage back home. Cool that people care so passionately. But the team needs to disassociate from all that emotion.

They need to stop talking about Slovenia and phantom calls and focus on the task at hand.  A win still gets them through.  Time to stop moaning and questioning and study Algeria, which is clearly better than advertised.

The U.S. team came out in the first half looking like they thought their result against England had already put them through. It wasn’t until they fell behind 0-2 that they found a passion and energy and resilience that was wonderfully impressive. As good as anything they’ve done in the World Cup since 2002.

Remember that.  Forget the call. Move on.

It’s the summer of the vuvuzela. There are even Iphone apps for the noise.

They are cute but, oh, so annoying, providing the same buzzsaw backdrop to every single game in this World Cup.

And robbing the South Africa World Cup of one of the event’s great beauties – the ability to hear the fans of each team sing their own songs. In the U.S.-England game, it was really troubling not to hear the English songs, which are profane, loud, proud and hilarious. In the opener that featured Mexico we couldn’t hear the Mariachi music. Today, for Brazil, we couldn’t hear the drummers or the samba sounds.

The beauty of the World Cup event is that each team comes with its own flavor, history and its own soundtrack. And the vuvuzelas – which might be appropriate for the South African team (they’ve become standard fare at SA matches and are not simply an ingeneous marketer’s World Cup dream realized) are stealing the sounds of the World Cup.

We should be able to hear the music of each individual team.

Well, except for maybe one. You guessed it – ours. The U.S. has yet to come up with any great cheer or song besides the chant of “USA, USA,” which is just as annoying in its own way as the vuvuzela.

The vuvuzela is so irritating that it could have been invented by Americans (but wasn’t). Still, it’s not as bad as thunder stix at a baseball game.

I’ve got my Sam Adams beer and my Ruffles potato chips. I’m ready for the big game on Saturday.  The Revolutionary War revisited. The Colonial uprising. The only thing missing is, sadly, David Beckham – because it would be fun to see him and Landon Donovan on opposing teams after all the nastiness that went on between them.

I hope something else isn’t missing on Saturday: good old American swagger.  The U.S. soccer team has a tendency to shrink on the big stage.  To look nervous and unprepared. To look like guests at the wrong party.

Four years ago, that’s what happened to the U.S. in Germany. Expectations were high back then, too. Maybe even higher than they are now, thanks to the Americans success is 2002 and the fact that many of players were World Cup veterans.

Yet they came out and flopped, horribly, against the Czech Republic. They lost 3-0 and though the U.S. team rallied admirably for a tie against eventual champion Italy in the next match, the damage was done. The Americans fell to Ghana and didn’t advance. It was a tough group (far tougher than this year’s group), but the way they played was bitterly disappointing.

Will they do that against CTIS? (the Country That Invented Soccer).

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