FanHouse Golf

Last week the New York Times reported that President Barack Obama was criticized by women's advocates and liberal bloggers for hosting male-only pick-up basketball games.

The Times continues:

Tiger Woods is a decent golfer (duh). He can hit the ball farther than most normal humans off the tee (again, duh). And if he ever went head-to-head in a driving contest against some random person from New Jersey on a golf course in North Carolina, and said random person was a 12-year-old, he would win the driving contest pretty easily, right?

In the words of the Lee Corso, "Not so fast my friend." Turns out, Tiger actually got beatdown by New Jersey native Mark Beneveto, Jr., while showing off his new course in Asheville.

And so ends the fairy tale relationship that most of us thought would last forever. That's right, 15 months after getting hitched, 50-somethings Greg Norman and Chris Evert have separated.

The announcement came Friday, days before Norman was to captain the International side in the President's Cup. I can't imagine it'll have any effect on the team event, and if anything, maybe it'll take some of the focus off Adam Scott, who hasn't played well in oh, I don't know, 15 months.

Good news, though: Norman and Evert part on good terms. Via the Associated Press:

Elie Seckbach, the Embedded Correspondent, brings his exclusive video reporting to FanHouse. Check back regularly for more videos.

Actor and comedian Cedric the Entertainer is a huge sports fan who tells us that he use to be a boxer and these days he enjoys golf. In this FanHouse exclusive we talk to Cedric at the Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks, California (not to be confused with the Sherwood Forest -- home of Robin Hood). Cedric who hangs out with lots of top athletes tells us about the time he was doing Vegas with Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Charles Barkley.

Check out the video after the jump.

This seems like a great idea: a Segway-styled golf experience for the player who has no interest in walking the course, but also isn't quite ready to commit full-time to the golf cart.

(Trumpets play, curtain opens.)

Jim Thorpe isn't your stereotypical professional golfer. He wasn't born into the country club lifestyle, Wake Forest didn't offer him a scholarship, and he didn't breeze his way through qualifying school on his way to fame and fortune on the PGA Tour.

Thorpe grew up in Baltimore (on the wrong side of the tracks, no doubt) and before he made an honest living as a golfer, he made a dishonest living as one. Which, coincidentally, is pretty much Phil Mickelson's story*.

From Pete McDaniel's 2002 interview with Thorpe for Golf Digest:

I've often wondered if Tiger Woods ever wears anything other than Nike-issued apparel. The answer, apparently, is no. Tiger was on the Colts sideline during the Monday Night Indy-Miami game and save a Stanford hat (Nike, no doubt), he looked like he just finished a tournament round. It certainly simplifies the "What am I going to wear today?" conversation.

He was shrinking into someone else, wilting and cracking and melting down. Try as he did, he couldn't generate sufficient torque and let his first serve turn wilder than a podunk mayor throwing out a first pitch. He lost tiebreakers, which rarely happens, and he committed 15 unforced errors in the fifth set to merely four for a 20-year-old foe in his maiden Grand Slam final experience. Worse still, Roger Federer did something unbefitting a dignified, placid champion who speaks elegantly, wears stylish sweaters and counts Vogue editor Anna Wintour among his friends.

A gentleman lost his famed equlibrium, crashing for the shocked masses to see after Juan Martin del Potro challenged a shot via the electronic line-calling system -- which, by the way, Federer loathes. "No, no, no. I wasn't allowed to challenge after two seconds. The guy takes, like, 10. Every time. You can't allow that stuff to happen. Do you have any rules in there, or what?" he barked at chair unpire Jake Garner. When he was basically told to shut up, Federer responed with the latest obscenity in an expletive-filled tournament that should have been called the U.S. Bleeping Open.

Steve Blass spent 10 years in the Major Leagues as a starting pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates before his retirement in 1974 when he suddenly lost the ability to throw a baseball anywhere near home plate (it's now referred to as Steve Blass disease). Prior to that, he was an excellent pitcher, winning 103 games and posting a 3.63 ERA while helping lead the team to a World Series title in 1971 (he was the winning pitcher in Game 7) against the Baltimore Orioles.

On Thursday, he earned his 15 minutes of fame on the golf course while taking part in a Pirates alumni outing in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. The ex-big leaguer defied seemingly impossible odds and managed to hit two holes-in-one ... during the same round.

The chances of such an accomplishment? One in 67 million.

CHASKA, Minn. -- His Sunday shirt is red, of course, as in the blood he usually extracts from his rivals. But this time, the blood sprayed all over Tiger Woods, staining him in ways we'd never observed in the final round of a major championship. He missed makeable putts. He hit tee shots into bunkers, off trees, into galleries. He cursed and talked to the golf ball and, in a revealing snapshot, leaned over and placed his hands on his knees, looking as desperate and exasperated as we've seen him.

"I did everything I was supposed to do,'' he said, "except get the golf ball in the hole.''

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