Barkley’s golf swing is a major project

No doubt there soon will be sports programming devoted to John McEnroe missing layups, Sean Avery shanking penalty kicks, John Daly hitting double faults and sportswriters attempting basic math without a calculator.

Ah, who knew potential failure held such an appealing quality?

A new reality series, “The Haney Project,” will be premiering on the Golf Channel on Monday, and features the most-real guy out there, Charles Barkley, dealing with a most-real problem, a broken golf swing.

If it’s broken, well, it must be fixed. With the help of Hank Haney, who is Tiger Woods’ swing coach, Barkley will try to solve the considerable problem. Think about chef Gordon Ramsay dealing with a horrific kitchen on a five-second delay and you get the general idea.

“I never thought golf coaches screamed,” Barkley told the Associated Press. “I’ve never choked before. That’s what’s been very difficult from an ego standpoint.”

Trivia time

What was Barkley’s career high for rebounds in a game?

Shoe wars

Random thought: Will Renardo Sidney’s dad make his son take off his shoes when he comes home from USC?

Dad works for Reebok.

USC is a Nike school.

Sounds like a sure-fire reality series.

Shoes, Part II

The (Vancouver) Province had an eye-catching list the other day: Cement Shoes: The 10 Worst Contracts in the NHL. Checking center forward Mike Fisher of the Senators made the elite group for a variety of reasons in the Province’s opinion, among them, dating singer Carrie Underwood.

“And if Mike Comrie, Sean Avery and Dion Phaneuf have taught us anything, it’s that dating starlets doesn’t exactly improve your play on the ice.”

They aren’t succeeding on the ice the way their model-dating, skating-it-old-school predecessors did back in the day: Wayne Gretzky (Janet Jones), Ron Duguay (Kim Alexis) and Ron Greschner (Carol Alt).

Got dunks?

Fact: Crystal the Dairy Cow will be outside the Izod Center today before the Nets-Hornets game in East Rutherford, N.J., to encourage fans to drink milk.

Comment: Crystal? That sounds more like the name for the head cheerleader. After all, aren’t cows supposed to have names like Bessie?

Trivia answer

Thirty-three. It came with the Houston Rockets against his old team, the Suns, at Phoenix in the 1996-97 season.

And finally

An oldie but goodie from Barkley, on the goal of the Dream Teamers before a pre-Olympic game against Panama: “To get the Canal back.”

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lisa.dillman@latimes.com