Tiger Goes Against The Grain
Golf Digest’s current issue presents a dozen unusual feats performed by Tiger Woods over and above the unusual feats he performs in one tournament after another.
He has taken batting practice with Ken Griffey Jr., hit zero gravity in an F-16 with the Thunderbirds and bungee-jumped backward from a 200-foot bridge.
And then there’s this business of making 200 one-handed 6-foot putts.
“After about 20 balls, you’ll see a light patch going toward the hole,” Woods told the magazine. “Now you’re making the grain go that way. You just get up there and hit it. It’s not that hard.”
He passes, with high honors
Davis Love III, on Tiger Woods: “When Ernie Els has his A game, he can shoot (18 under) like Tiger. Or, I can. But we can’t do it week after week.
“Tiger is playing everybody’s A game every week. Remember when he used to grade himself? He’s about an A-minus every week and an A-plus some weeks.”
Attention, press
Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press, offering out-of-town writers a primer on dealing with Michigan State hoops:
“Good question: `How does it feel, after all those years playing in the shadow of Michigan, to be the preeminent college basketball program in the state?’
“Bad question: `Isn’t anyone around here going to light a police car on fire?”’
It figured
The Sandbox.com Web site’s contest offering $10 million to anyone who could pick the winner of every NCAA Tournament game didn’t last long.
When Wisconsin beat Arizona last Saturday, all 610,705 contestants had a loser. No surprise, of course with odds of 5.7 billion to 1 against.
No wash and wax?
Grant Fuhr, 37-year-old goalie for the Calgary Flames, recently had another of his semiregular knee arthroscopies.
“They cleaned out a little more junk in it - cartilage and whatever else they found floating in there,” Fuhr said. “And gave me a free lube job on top of it. I get one of those every year.”
Rocker ribbing
Comedy writer Alan Ray in the San Francisco Chronicle on Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker working his first game in spring training: “He slurred the first nine men he faced.”
The last word …
“Results of the Indiana investigation are in. The kid’s neck had it coming.”
- Gary Shelton in the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, on the Bob Knight squabble.