April 10, 2016

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Sports April 10, 2016

Willett Wins Masters When Spieth Collapses Around Amen Corner

Defending champion Jordan Spieth, left, speaks to 2016 Masters champion Danny Willett following the final round of the Masters golf tournament on Sunday in Augusta, Ga.

Defending champion Jordan Spieth, left, speaks to 2016 Masters champion Danny Willett following the final round of the Masters golf tournament on Sunday in Augusta, Ga. Chris Carlson/AP hide caption

toggle caption Chris Carlson/AP

Jordan Spieth couldn’t bear to watch, turning his head before another shot splashed into Rae’s Creek. Moments later, Danny Willett looked up at the large leaderboard at the 15th green and couldn’t believe what he saw.

This Masters turned into a shocker Sunday, right down to the green jacket ceremony.

Spieth was in Butler Cabin, just like everyone expected when he took a five-shot lead to the back nine at Augusta National. Only he was there to present it to Willett, who seized on Spieth’s collapse with a magnificent round that made him a Masters champion.

“You dream about these kind of days and things like that, but for them to happen … it’s still mind-boggling,” Willett said.

It was a nightmare for Spieth, especially the par-3 12th hole. Clinging to a one-shot lead, he put two shots into the water and made a quadruple-bogey 7, falling three shots behind and never catching up. Instead of making history with another wire-to-wire victory, he joined a sad list of players who threw the Masters away.

“Big picture? This one will hurt,” Spieth said.

It was a comeback that ranks among the most unlikely in the 80 years of the Masters on so many levels.

Willett wasn’t even sure he would play this year because his wife was due – on Sunday, no less – with their first child. She gave birth to Zachariah James on March 30, sending him on his amazing journey to his first major.

“We talk about fate, talk about everything else that goes with it,” Willett said. “It’s just a crazy, crazy week.”

He became the first player from England in a green jacket since Nick Faldo in 1996, and the parallels are bizarre. Faldo shot a 5-under 67 and overcame a six-shot deficit when Greg Norman collapsed around Amen Corner. Willett also closed with a 67, with no bogeys on his card, to match the best score of the weekend.

The most compelling images came from the guy who suffered.

Coming off two straight bogeys to start the back nine, Spieth still had the lead when he went at the flag with a 9-iron on the par-3 12th and saw it bounce off the slope into the water. From the drop zone, he hit a wedge so fat that he turned his head and removed his cap, not wanting to look. He got up-and-down from the back bunker, and suddenly faced a three-shot deficit.

“I actually heard everyone grunting and moaning or whatever they do to the scoreboard when the scores go up,” Willett said. “He obviously had a terrible run, which basically put it right back in anyone’s hands. And fortunately enough, I was able to seize the opportunities.”

He finished at 5-under 283 for a three-shot victory over Spieth and Lee Westwood (69).

Spieth was trying to become only the fourth back-to-back winner of the Masters, and the first player in 156 years of championship golf to go wire-to-wire in successive years in a major. And it looked inevitable when he ran off four straight birdies to end the front nine and build a five-shot lead.

This didn’t look like one of those Masters that would start on the back nine Sunday.

But it did – quickly.

Spieth made bogey from the bunker on No. 10. A tee shot into the trees on the 11th, missing an 8-foot par putt. He still had a two-shot lead and only needed to get past the dangerous par-3 12th to settle himself, especially with two par 5s in front of him. But he couldn’t. Not even close.

“It was a lack of discipline to hit it over the bunker coming off two bogeys, instead of recognizing I was still leading the Masters,” Spieth said.

The turnaround left him dazed.

Spieth was five shots ahead on the 10th tee and three shots behind when he walked to the 13th tee.

“It was a really tough 30 minutes for me that hopefully I never experience again,” Spieth said.

Willett poured it on with a shot into the 14th to about 4 feet, and a tee shot on the par-3 16th to 7 feet for a birdie that stretched his lead. Spieth still had a chance when he birdied both par 5s to get within two shots, and then hit his tee shot to 8 feet behind the hole on the 16th. But he missed the birdie putt, and when he hit into a bunker and failed to save par on the 17th, it was over.

Spieth had led after seven straight rounds at the Masters, a streak that ended in a most cruel fashion. He shot 41 on the back nine for a 73, and was runner-up for the second time in three years.

Westwood, playing with Willett, made eagle on the 15th hole to get within one shot of the lead, and then three-putted the 16th hole to fall away.

Dustin Johnson also had an outside chance, even after four putts for a double bogey on the fifth hole. He missed eagle putts from 15 feet and 20 feet on the par 5s on the back nine, and then took double bogey on the 17th. Johnson closed with a 71 and tied for fourth with Paul Casey (67) and J.B. Holmes (68).

Smylie Kaufman, one shot out of the lead in his Masters debut, closed with an 81.

Willett moves to No. 9 in the world. He returns home to England with a gift like no other for his infant son.

“People were saying, ‘Try to bring the jacket home for little man.’ I think it’s a little bit big,” Willet said. “But I’m sure in a few years’ time he’ll grow into it.”

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Health April 10, 2016

It's Not Just What You Make, It's Where You Live, Study On Life Expectancy Says

A woman jogs in Oakland, Calif., last February. Healthier lifestyles may be a reason why poor people live longer in some cities than others.

A woman jogs in Oakland, Calif., last February. Healthier lifestyles may be a reason why poor people live longer in some cities than others. Ben Margot/AP hide caption

toggle caption Ben Margot/AP

Poor people who reside in expensive, well-educated cities such as San Francisco tend to live longer than low-income people in less affluent places, according to a study of more than a billion Social Security and tax records.

The study, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, bolsters what was already well known — the poor tend to have shorter lifespans than those with more money. But it also says that among low-income people, big disparities exist in life expectancy from place to place, said Raj Chetty, professor of economics at Stanford University.

“There are some places where the poor are doing quite well, gaining just as much in terms of life span as the rich, but there are other places where they’re actually going in the other direction, where the poor are living shorter lives today than in they did in the past,” Chetty said, in an interview with NPR.

For example, low-income people in Birmingham, Ala., live about as long as the rich, but in Tampa, Fla., the poor have actually lost ground.

Chetty and his co-authors collected more than 1.4 billion records from the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service to try to measure the relationship between income and life expectancy.

“There are vast gaps in life expectancy between the richest and poorest Americans,” Chetty said. “Men in the top 1 percent distribution level live about 15 years longer than men in the bottom 1 percent on the income distribution in the United States.

“To give you a sense of the magnitude, men in the bottom one percent have life expectancy comparable to the average life expectancy in Pakistan or Sudan.”

And where lifespans are concerned the rich are getting richer.

Since 2001, life-expectancy has increased by 2.3 years for the wealthiest 5 percent of American men and by nearly 3 percent for similarly situated women. Meanwhile, life expectancy has increased barely at all for the poorest 5 percent.

Among the study’s findings was that poor people in affluent cities such as San Francisco and New York tend to live longer than people of similar income levels in rust belt cities such as Detroit, he said.

What accounts for the disparity isn’t clear, Chetty says.

It may be that some cities such as San Francisco may be better at promoting healthier lifestyles, with smoking bans, for example, or perhaps people tend to adopt healthier habits if they live in a place where everyone else is doing it, he says.

The study suggests that the relationship between life expectancy and income is not iron-clad, and changes at the local level can make a big difference.

“What our study shows is that thinking about these issues of inequality and health and life expectancy at a local level is very fruitful, and thinking about policies that change health behaviors at a local level is likely to be important,” he says.

Chetty notes that the study has clear implications for Social Security and Medicare. The fact that poor people don’t live as long means they are paying into the system without getting the same benefits, a fact that needs to be considered in any discussion about raising the retirement age, he says.

The study was co-authored by Michael Stepner and Sarah Abraham of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Benjamin Scuderi, David Culter and Augustin Bergeron of Harvard University; Shelby Lin of McKinsey and Co.; and Nicholas Turner of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Analysis.

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Business April 10, 2016

It's Not Just What You Make, It's Where You Live, Study On Life Expectancy Says

A woman jogs in Oakland, Calif., last February. Healthier lifestyles may be a reason why poor people live longer in some cities than others.

A woman jogs in Oakland, Calif., last February. Healthier lifestyles may be a reason why poor people live longer in some cities than others. Ben Margot/AP hide caption

toggle caption Ben Margot/AP

Poor people who reside in expensive, well-educated cities such as San Francisco tend to live longer than low-income people in less affluent places, according to a study of more than a billion Social Security and tax records.

The study, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, bolsters what was already well known — the poor tend to have shorter lifespans than those with more money. But it also says that among low-income people, big disparities exist in life expectancy from place to place, said Raj Chetty, professor of economics at Stanford University.

“There are some places where the poor are doing quite well, gaining just as much in terms of life span as the rich, but there are other places where they’re actually going in the other direction, where the poor are living shorter lives today than in they did in the past,” Chetty said, in an interview with NPR.

For example, low-income people in Birmingham, Ala., live about as long as the rich, but in Tampa, Fla., the poor have actually lost ground.

Chetty and his co-authors collected more than 1.4 billion records from the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service to try to measure the relationship between income and life expectancy.

“There are vast gaps in life expectancy between the richest and poorest Americans,” Chetty said. “Men in the top 1 percent distribution level live about 15 years longer than men in the bottom 1 percent on the income distribution in the United States.

“To give you a sense of the magnitude, men in the bottom one percent have life expectancy comparable to the average life expectancy in Pakistan or Sudan.”

And where lifespans are concerned the rich are getting richer.

Since 2001, life-expectancy has increased by 2.3 years for the wealthiest 5 percent of American men and by nearly 3 percent for similarly situated women. Meanwhile, life expectancy has increased barely at all for the poorest 5 percent.

Among the study’s findings was that poor people in affluent cities such as San Francisco and New York tend to live longer than people of similar income levels in rust belt cities such as Detroit, he said.

What accounts for the disparity isn’t clear, Chetty says.

It may be that some cities such as San Francisco may be better at promoting healthier lifestyles, with smoking bans, for example, or perhaps people tend to adopt healthier habits if they live in a place where everyone else is doing it, he says.

The study suggests that the relationship between life expectancy and income is not iron-clad, and changes at the local level can make a big difference.

“What our study shows is that thinking about these issues of inequality and health and life expectancy at a local level is very fruitful, and thinking about policies that change health behaviors at a local level is likely to be important,” he says.

Chetty notes that the study has clear implications for Social Security and Medicare. The fact that poor people don’t live as long means they are paying into the system without getting the same benefits, a fact that needs to be considered in any discussion about raising the retirement age, he says.

The study was co-authored by Michael Stepner and Sarah Abraham of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Benjamin Scuderi, David Culter and Augustin Bergeron of Harvard University; Shelby Lin of McKinsey and Co.; and Nicholas Turner of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Analysis.

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