With Help Like This, They Are Better Off Remaining Amateurs

During pro-am golf tournaments, do the pros try to help the amateurs with their games? Of course.

Art Spander of The Sporting News recalled a Crosby Pro-Am in which an amateur, who had had been struggling all day, finally asked Dutch Harrison, “How should I play this one?”

Said Harrison: “Under an assumed name.”

Complaining that he suffered from acrophobia, which is the abnormal fear of heights, the athlete said: “I went to Paris and visited the Eiffel Tower last year. I started going up and then I quit. I couldn’t stand the height.”

The athlete was Billy Olson, who had just set a world indoor pole vault record of 19-5 1/2.

Trivia Time: Is Spud Webb, at 5-7, the shortest player ever to make it to the NBA out of North Carolina State? (Answer below.)

Rollie Fingers has been invited to the spring training camp of the Cincinnati Reds on the condition that he shave off his trademark handlebar mustache.

“I’d have to think about it,” the 39-year-old reliever said. “I don’t know how I’d look without it.”

He said he’s had it since 1972 when he was with the Oakland A’s.

“Reggie Jackson came to camp with a mustache and wouldn’t shave it off,” he said. “So Charlie Finley said he would offer $300 to anybody who grew one. Me, Catfish Hunter and Ken Holtzman all grew one. I just went one better.”

Note: In the World Series that year, the A’s beat the Reds in seven games. Fingers, appearing in six games, struck out 11 in 10 innings and had an ERA of 1.74. Pete Rose hit .214 for the Reds.

Let’s hear it for acupuncture. It’s on a roll. It started with Jim McMahon in the Super Bowl. In following weeks, LPGA winner Ayako Okamoto of Japan and U.S. figure skating champion Brian Boitano revealed they overcame injuries through needle treatments.

McMahon was one of a number of Chicago Bears to undergo acupuncture, causing Cincinnati disc jockey Buddy Baron to say, “It’s a good thing William Perry didn’t need it. They’d have had to use a harpoon.”

Wait a Minute: Said Michigan Coach Bo Schembechler as he received the Woody Hayes Award as the nation’s top college football coach at the Touchdown Club of Columbus awards banquet: “I played for Woody at Miami of Ohio, and I coached for him at Ohio State, and then for 10 years he and I were adversaries on the field. Woody, in my opinion, is one of the greatest football coaches we’ve ever had and by far the greatest the Big Ten has ever had.”

Wonder if Bo knows that Michigan has had three coaches, including himself, with better winning percentages? Fielding Yost was .828, followed by Fritz Crisler and Schembechler at .768. Hayes finished at .759.

Also, Bo might get some mail from Minnesota. Bernie Bierman, from 1934 to 1941, led the Gophers to four national championships. In 1938-40, his Gophers scored a clean sweep over Crisler’s Michigan powerhouses, led by Tom Harmon and Forest Evashevski.

Trivia Answer: No. Monte Towe, who played with the Denver Nuggets in 1976-77, was 5-6. Towe was a member of the 1973-74 North Carolina State team which beat Bill Walton and UCLA in the NCAA semifinals, then beat Marquette, 76-64, for the championship. The team was led by David Thompson and included 7-4 Tom Burleson at center.

Quotebook

Boston guard Dennis Johnson, explaining how Philadelphia forward Charles Barkley missed a couple of tomahawk dunks against the Celtics: “He had plenty of Tom, but not enough Hawk.”