Here’s the Latest Golf Story From Prodigies R Us

There’s a young Tiger on the loose in Warley, England. Robert Aldred is only 4, but he can reportedly hit a golf ball 140 yards and can par a 345-yard hole.

“At first I thought it was luck, but he does it far too often for it to be luck,” said his father, Bob Aldred.

“He started off when he was 18 months old. We bought him a metal driver with a plastic head from Toys R Us and some plastic balls. Unfortunately, he found one of my real golf balls and disintegrated the club head.

“After seeing what he could do as an 18-month-old, I decided to cut some of my clubs down to size for him. As soon as he got hold of them, he was whacking balls all over the place.”

Trivia time: Who holds the NBA playoff record for minutes played in a game?

Vicious: Among David Letterman’s “Top Ten Things Overheard at Brooke Shields’ Wedding to Andre Agassi”: “He must really love her--he’s actually seen all of her movies.”

Slithery types: Before the draft, the NFL took nine players, among them Orlando Pace, Darrell Russell and Shawn Springs, to a screening of “Jerry Maguire.”

Said Michael Ventre of MSNBC, “Apparently, it was an attempt to indoctrinate players to the ways of big-time sports agents. I have to assume that ‘Anaconda’ was sold out.”

Kids like Shaq: Shaquille O’Neal is more popular than Michael Jordan, according to a poll of children by the Nickelodeon cable channel.

Shaq was named the favorite male athlete and figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi the favorite female. The Green Bay Packers were the children’s choice as favorite professional sports team.

Tough talk: Wilt Chamberlain was quoted in the New York Post as saying the Knicks’ Patrick Ewing is not the intimidating player he was at Georgetown.

“His game has changed,” Chamberlain said. “I would like to see him be more physical. He needs to get back to his college days, when he was feisty and took nothing from nobody.”

Looking back: On this day in 1980, the Lakers defeated the SuperSonics in Seattle, 98-93, to take a 3-1 lead in the Western Conference final series. The Lakers won the series three days later and then went on to beat Philadelphia in six games for the NBA championship.

Reason enough: Casey Stengel, on why he never visited Montreal: “Because there would be two languages I couldn’t speak--French and English.”

Trivia answer: Red Rocha and Paul Seymour of the Syracuse Nationals, with 67 minutes each against Boston on March 21, 1953, in a four-overtime game.

And finally: Scottie Pippen told Melissa Isaacson in the Sporting News of his relationship with Chicago Bull teammate Michael Jordan:

“I think Michael and I have a great relationship, but I don’t see it as tight as me and Horace [Grant] were. It would be like trying to be best friends with Michael Jackson.”