Sometimes, You Gotta Show ‘Em Who’s Boss

No ifs, ands or putts, the club that professional golfers respect and fear most is the putter.

That doesn’t mean the golfers don’t occasionally have to discipline their putters.

According to a story by Paul Daugherty in the Dallas Times Herald, Willie Wood used to bash his on hotel beds after particularly poor putting rounds. “It didn’t hurt the club, and it didn’t hurt the bed,” Wood said. “But it sure made me feel a whole lot better.”

Bruce Lietzke drags his across cart paths, explaining that a “putter needs to know who’s boss.”

Fuzzy Zoeller always carries two putters “just to let them know they can be replaced.”

Tommy Valentine once threw a putter out the window of a moving car and into a Florida swamp. That was after he had held the putter out the window for several minutes while shouting well-chosen epithets at it. “I wanted it to suffer a little bit before I killed it,” he said.

At the Houston Open earlier this year, Curtis Strange banged his putter against a bridge adjacent to the 13th green. When the head fell off, Strange picked it up and threw it into the creek. He putted the rest of the round with a wedge and won the tournament.

“We could have taken the safe route. We knew exactly what Bobby Jones could give us. He gave us stability like General Motors gives stability. George McGinnis gives us a new dimension of excitement. I’m confident George McGinnis will play well in Denver, and I’m confident Bobby Jones will play well in Philadelphia.”

That was a statement from Carl Scheer on Aug. 16, 1978, after he traded Jones, guard Ralph Simpson and a No. 1 draft choice for McGinnis and a No. 1 draft choice. At the time, Scheer, who recently was dismissed as general manager of the Clippers, was president and general manager of the Denver Nuggets.

In retrospect, Denver Post columnist Todd Phipers writes: “All that has to be said about the rest of the controversial trade Scheer was discussing that day is that it probably was the worst the Nuggets ever made.”

Jones, who recently retired, played for eight more seasons, made the All-Star team twice, was named to the all-defensive team six times and won the NBA Sixth Man Award in 1983. The unpredictable and disruptive McGinnis played only two seasons for the Nuggets.

“It was a damn mistake. Period,” Scheer said.

In fairness to Scheer, it should be pointed out that he more than compensated for that mistake two years later when he traded McGinnis to Indiana for Alex English and a No. 1 draft choice.

Trivia Question: As a junior at South Mecklenburg High School in Charlotte, N.C. in 1969, Bobby Jones finished second in the state high jump competition. The man who beat him would become Jones’ teammate with the Philadelphia 76ers 17 years later. Who is he?

From Newsday columnist Stan Isaacs: “Vin Scully, for all his brilliance as a wordsmith, sometimes is guilty of pushing too much, trying to top a line by Joe Garagiola when it would be best to leave well enough alone.”

According to Isaacs, that does not appear to bother Garagiola, who said: “Lindsey Nelson once said at another time, ‘It’s not the Amos Show or the Andy Show. It’s the Amos and Andy Show.’ If Vin says something good, people are just as likely to think I said it, and vice versa, as long as we work well together.”

When Boston beat Milwaukee Thursday night in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference championship series, it was the Celtics’ 38th straight victory at home and their 47th in 48 home games this season. That includes three games in Hartford. The other home victories came in the Boston Garden. As the Hartford Courant’s Peter May writes: “That’s a record that would make the Harlem Globetrotters envious.”

The only team to beat the Celtics at Boston Garden was the Portland Trail Blazers, who won, 121-103, on Dec. 6.

But as dominating as the Celtics were at home during the regular season, they have been even more so during the playoffs. In their last five games at Boston Garden, three against the Atlanta Hawks and two against the Milwaukee Bucks, the Celtics have led for all but 49 seconds. Milwaukee’s only lead in Boston was 2-0 in Game 1 of the series last Tuesday night.

Trivia Answer: Bob McAdoo of Greensboro’s Ben L. Smith High School.

Quotebook

Lou Holtz, on the clause in his contract that allowed him to leave Minnesota if Notre Dame offered him a job: “I love my wife dearly and have been married for 25 years. But if Linda Evans calls . . . “