He’s No Giant but Jolly’s Green Poses a Hazard

Barry Jolly, who built a home just off the sixth green on a golf course in Newport, Ky., wasn’t so jolly when an errant shot by Don Spraker broke his window in July.

He took Spraker to small claims court and asked to be reimbursed $867.

Mickey Foellger, a district judge, denied the request on Thursday.

“The court finds that a golfer has no duty to hit the ball straight,” he ruled.

Then Foellger, an occasional golfer, added: “I don’t hit the ball very straight, either.”

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Trivia time: UCLA has won or shared 26 conference basketball championships. Which school is runner-up?

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Painted lady: Included among gold-medal swimmer Amy Van Dyken’s numerous post-Olympic activities was posing underwater with a milk mustache for the current series of print advertisements featuring celebrities promoting milk.

“Everyone asks, ‘Was it really underwater?’ ” she said. “Yeah, and it was paint. They were worried it might come off. I was more worried it might not come off.”

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Unexpected catch: New York Jet owner Leon Hess, who as a 12-year-old dug for clams on the beach near his home in Asbury Park, N.J., on getting Bill Parcells as coach:

“Little did I know that 70 years later, eight miles away in Sea Girt, there’d be a tuna.”

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Hot idea: The Phoenix entry in the Women’s NBA will be known as the Mercury.

“The league wanted us to have a name that would tie in with the NBA franchise. What is closest to the Sun? The planet Mercury,” said Mercury President Bryan Colangelo.

Colangelo’s father, Jerry, is president of the NBA’s Phoenix Suns.

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Not so glamorous: Bob Pettit, one of NBA’s “50 Greatest Players,” on earlier days in the league:

“When I came in 1954, we were traveling in buses. Every time we had an off day, we played an exhibition somewhere so the owner could make money and survive.”

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True patriot: NBC’s Marv Albert says broadcast partner Bill Walton “was so impressed with Riddick Bowe’s decision last week to join the Marines, that he has decided to join the Salvation Army.”

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Trivia answer: California, with 14.

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And finally: Any day now, Bernie Lincicome of the Chicago Tribune expects this press release:

“Turned down in her bid to figure skate for another country in the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, Tonya Harding has announced that she is considering trying out for the American biathlon team.

“ ‘I don’t know why it appeals to me,’ she said. ‘Other than wearing a ski mask and carrying a firearm, I mean.’ ”