Texans star J.J. Watt to serve as Daytona 500 grand marshal
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Houston Texans star J.J. Watt will serve as the grand marshal for the Daytona 500, making him the first NFL player to give the command for drivers to starts their engines before NASCAR’s most famous race.
Daytona International Speedway made the announcement Monday, six days before the 61st running of “The Great American Race.”
Watt is a three-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year and well known for his charity work with the Justin J. Watt Foundation, which provides after-school opportunities for children. Following Hurricane Harvey in 2017, Watt set a goal to raise $200,000 for recovery efforts in Houston. He ended up raising more than $41 million, helping earn him the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award.
Country music singer Jake Owen will perform an infield concert before the race. Retired NASCAR star Dale Earnhardt Jr. will serve as the honorary pace truck driver. The 82nd Airborne Division’s All-American Chorus will sing the national anthem.
___
More AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/apf-AutoRacing and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Mickelson finishes off a 5th win at Pebble Beach
By DOUG FERGUSON, AP Golf Writer
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. (AP) — Phil Mickelson is closing in on three decades on the PGA Tour and a half-century on Earth, and he still feels his best golf is good enough.
He was at his best at Pebble Beach, and no one had a chance.
A Monday finish brought on by rain and a freak hail storm was only a minor inconvenience for the 48-year-old Mickelson. He played two holes just as well as the previous 16 and polished off his bogey-free final round with one last birdie for a 7-under 65 and a three-shot victory over Paul Casey in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
Mickelson won at Pebble Beach for the fifth time, matching the record set by Mark O’Meara. He has gone 28 years since his first PGA Tour victory and his 44th, and he joined Tiger Woods as the only players to surpass $90 million in career earnings.
“It’s a lot more work and effort to play at this level,” Mickelson said. “And I have believed for some time that if I play at my best, it will be good enough to win tournaments. The challenge is getting myself to play my best. It’s a lot more work off the course, it’s more time in the gym, it’s more time eating, it’s more time focusing, it’s all these things that go into it.
“And so it’s gratifying to see the results and to finish it off the way I did.”
Making it even more special is Pebble Beach, where he made his pro debut at the U.S. Open in 1992, where he won the first of his five titles in another Monday finish in 1998, this one in August because of rain. It’s where his grandfather, Al Santos, was among the first caddies when the course opened in 1919, and Mickelson still uses as a marker the 1900 silver dollar his grandfather kept in his pocket to remind him he was not poor.
There was plenty of sunlight for the Monday morning finish, just no drama.
Mickelson, who started the final round three shots behind, never came close to a bogey and built a three-shot lead through 16 holes on Sunday night when it was too dark to finish, no matter how hard he lobbied to keep going.
The final round Sunday had been delayed at the start by one hour because of rain, and then sunshine quickly gave way to hail that covered the greens in a sheet of white and led to a two-hour delay.
Mickelson said he could “see just fine” even after sunset, knowing darkness falls quickly on the Monterey Peninsula. Casey could barely see the 3 feet of grass between his ball and the cup on the 16th hole and said there was no way to complete two holes in six minutes. Mickelson was on the 17th tee, shaking his head when he heard the siren to stop play.
On Monday morning, he had a change of heart and said he thanked Casey for standing his ground.
“Paul made the tough call, but it was the right decision in that he protected himself and myself for the competition,” Mickelson said. “I just get in my own little bubble and I don’t see the big picture.”
It worked out well in the end.
Mickelson finished at 19-under 268. Casey needed Mickelson to make a big blunder on the two closing holes, and there was little chance of that. Casey at least birdied the 18th for a 71 to finish alone in second, the difference of $152,000.
He also won the Pro-Am with Don Colleran, the chief sales officer for FedEx.
But the final day, and all week, was about the ageless Mickelson.
This was the fourth time that Casey had a 54-hole lead of at least two shots on the PGA Tour and failed to win. The other three times he was 2-over par or worse in the final round. This time, he closed with a 71 and lost to Mickelson’s 65, which matched the low score of the final round.
“A phenomenal round of golf,” Casey said.
Mickelson’s longest putt for par was 4 feet. He played the final 26 holes in cold, damp and windy weather without a bogey.
How it bodes for the rest of the year — particularly in June when the U.S. Open returns to Pebble Beach — was of little concern to Mickelson. The U.S. Open remains the final piece of the career Grand Slam for Mickelson, who already holds the record with six runner-up finishes. He finished three shots behind Graeme McDowell in 2010, the last U.S. Open at Pebble.
And while the fairway lines already have been cut much tighter at Pebble, the conditions were so soft that balls plugged in the fairway when they landed and greens easily held shots even from the rough.
“It’s nothing like the course we’ll see,” Mickelson said. “I’ll deal with that in six months.”
Mickelson lives for the moment. He says he had as much fun winning at Pebble Beach as when he finished one shot behind in the Desert Classic three weeks ago.
It’s the thrill of competition. And even at 48, that never gets old.

Kyler Murray chooses NFL over baseball and A’s
By CARRIE MUSKAT, Associated Press
MESA, Ariz. (AP) — Heisman Trophy winner Kyler Murray says he will pursue a career in the NFL over playing baseball for the Oakland Athletics.
Murray was the ninth overall pick in last June’s baseball amateur draft, and the outfielder agreed to a minor league contract with Oakland for a $4.66 million signing bonus. He is a football quarterback and is eligible for this year’s NFL draft, which starts April; 25.
Oakland, which started spring training workouts Monday, had a locker with a No. 73 jersey waiting for him.
“I am firmly and fully committing my life and time to becoming an NFL quarterback,” Murray tweeted Monday. “Football has been my love and passion my entire life. I was raised to play QB, and I very much look forward to dedicating 100 percent of myself to being the best QB possible and winning NFL championships. I have started an extensive training program to further prepare myself for upcoming workouts and interviews. I eagerly await the opportunity to continue to prove to NFL decision makers that I am the franchise QB in this draft.”
“Things have certainly changed since the draft,” Billy Beane, Oakland’s executive vice president of baseball operations, said before the announcement. “The situation is fluid right now and based on a historic college football season that the young man had.”
Murray’s baseball deal called for him to receive $1.5 million within 30 days of the deal’s approval last summer by Major League Baseball and $3.16 million on March 1.
Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders played both football and baseball, but Sanders was a running back and Sanders a cornerback.
“Quarterback is a very demanding position, as is being a Major League baseball player,” Beane said. “To say somebody could or couldn’t, I’m not here to say that. Something like that is something that is part of our private discussions.”
“He’s one of those rare athletes, who I think any sport that he played, he’d probably excel at,” A’s manager Bob Melvin said.
Murray passed for 4,361 yards and 42 touchdowns for Oklahoma last season. He ran for 1,001 yards and another 12 scores, posting the second-best passer efficiency rating in FBS history.
“Obviously the fact that he would want to play quarterback, if he chooses the football route, is a little different than Deion or Bo or some of those guys,” Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley said in November. “But he athletically is so gifted and can transition between the two.”
___
More AP MLB: https://apnews.com/MLB and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Browns sign running back Kareem Hunt, on NFL exempt list
CLEVELAND (AP) — The Cleveland Browns have signed Kareem Hunt, the running back cut by Kansas City in November after a video showed him pushing and kicking a woman the previous February.
Hunt was placed on the NFL’s commissioner’s exempt list hours before the Chiefs released him. He was in his second season with Kansas City and was one of the team’s most productive players as it won the AFC West the last two years.
Hunt still could be suspended by the league under its personal conduct policy for the February incident at a hotel in Cleveland and for two others that surfaced after he was released by the Chiefs.
Cleveland general manager John Dorsey, who drafted Hunt while working for Kansas City, on Monday said the Browns “fully understand and respect the complexity of questions and issues in signing a player with Kareem’s history and do not condone his actions.”
___
More AP NFL coverage: https://apnews.com/NFL and https://twitter.com/AP_NFL

Byron wins Daytona 500 pole, puts Hendrick up front again
By MARK LONG, AP Sports Writer
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — William Byron put Hendrick Motorsports in a familiar position: on the pole for the Daytona 500. His bigger goal is to make the starting spot pay dividends for the NASCAR powerhouse.
The 21-year-old Byron and 25-year-old teammate Alex Bowman locked in the front row for “The Great American Race” during qualifying laps Sunday at Daytona International Speedway. They comprise the youngest front row in Daytona 500 history.
The coveted starting spot hasn’t meant much for NASCAR’s season opener over the last two decades, though. The last Daytona 500 pole-sitter to win the race was Dale Jarrett in 2000.
The last four — Hendrick’s Jeff Gordon, Chase Elliott (twice) and Bowman — have failed to notch a top-10 finish.
“To have them on top of each other means the organization did a heck of a job,” Hendrick said. “This is the deal to sit on the pole at Daytona.”
Byron and Bowman edged the other two Hendrick drivers: seven-time Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson and fan favorite Chase Elliott.
“That’s a pretty amazing feat, I feel,” said longtime Hendrick crew chief Chad Knaus, who is entering his first season with Byron after 18 years with Johnson.
Knaus and Johnson landed the Daytona 500 pole in their first race together in 2002. After splitting with Johnson at the end of last season, Knaus essentially repeated the feat with Byron.
“I think it’s huge,” Knaus said. “We’ve had a lot of late nights, a lot of long hours. The last time I came here with a new driver, we sat on the pole. This is really special for me.”
Byron reached a top speed of 194.304 mph in the final round of qualifying, nearly two-tenths of a second faster than Bowman (194.153).
“I thought we were going to be somewhere in the hunt,” Byron said. “I was excited to get down here and see what we had. It’s really cool.”
The rest of the 40-car lineup will be set by two qualifying races Thursday. Thirty-six of those spots are already filled because of NASCAR’s charter system.
Former Hendrick driver Casey Mears and Tyler Reddick secured two of the remaining spots in the Daytona 500. They posted the top speeds of the six drivers vying for four open spots in NASCAR’s season opener.
“I really feel like we’ll be able to be competitive,” Mears said. “I can tell you this: I’ve been at Daytona with a lot less and ran inside the top five.”
Joey Gase, Ryan Truex, Parker Kligerman and Brandan Gaughan likely will have to race their way into the 500 during the qualifying races. Two of them will make it, and the other two won’t.
Byron and his teammates will spend the week being lauded as the Daytona 500 favorites. They also will try to stay out of trouble in the qualifying races.
“We want to take care of the cars for sure,” Hendrick said. “We don’t want to put the cars in any unnecessary harm’s way. It’s kind of a two-edge sword on the front row. You don’t want to take a chance of tearing up a really good car, but you’ve got to figure out what to race.”
Hendrick has been outspoken about how difficult the 2018 season was on the organization, calling it one of the worst in team history.
The Hendrick cars were mediocre at best — Johnson failed to win for the first time in his Cup career — and it took 22 races for the organization to get its first victory. The final tally included three victories for Elliott and no drivers in the championship-deciding finale for the second consecutive year.
Hendrick responded by splitting up Johnson and Knaus, tasking Knaus with building another team around Byron. A new racing package in 2019 also should benefit Bowman and Byron because neither had much experience under the old rules.
For at least one day or maybe even a week, the moves are paying off.
“You work all these years coming down here and you want all the cars to run well,” Hendrick said. “And if you have one up front and a couple in the back, in the middle; but this is a tribute to our organization, the engine shop, the chassis, body shop, and the teams to come down here and run with four cars running that good. I can’t believe it.”
___
More AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/apf-AutoRacing and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports