Writers Mark Well the Loss of the Tiger

Tiger Woods fell short at the Masters and, for a while, headline writers across the country were in mourning.

But luckily for them, veteran Mark O’Meara stepped into the breech with a name worthy of some decent word play. A sampling of O’Meara headlines after his Masters victory:

New York Daily News: O’Meara-cle.

Newsday: The Mark of a Champion.

New York Post: Re-Mark-Able.

Toronto Sun: Mark O’Excellence.

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Trivia time: Vice President Al Gore became the highest elected official to finish a marathon. What marathon did he complete in 1997?

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Fuzzy’s pitch: New York Post columnist Phil Mushnick took note of Fuzzy Zoeller’s new television commercial for Daiwa golf clubs, which has Zoeller sitting in a church, saying to a priest, “Forgive me, for I have sinned.”

“The commercial plays out on a double theme--the forgiving qualities of Daiwa’s driver, and unmistakably the Tiger Woods incident,” Mushnick writes. “And so last week, as the media finally agreed with Zoeller that the time was right for the Tiger-Fuzzy episode to go away and for Zoeller’s dignity to return, someone waving some cash at Fuzzy asked if he might be willing to resurrect the issue if the price was right.

“And Fuzzy’s price was met.”

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Real trouble: Real Madrid was playing at home against Borussia Dortmund in a European Cup game when one of the goals collapsed.

It took 75 minutes to find and set up a new goal.

Real Madrid won but club officials were fined $850,000 by FIFA, the international soccer federation.

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Be like Mike: Mike Tyson’s namesake, Mohamed Ndao “Tyson,” won Senegal’s so-called “fight of the century”--dumping unbeaten veteran Toubabou Dior on his back in less than three minutes.

Reuters reported that the former heavyweight boxing champion’s daughter, Khadija Tyson, 11, watched Sunday’s contest to determine the champion of champions in traditional wrestling, a national sport that combines bare-knuckle boxing and orthodox wrestling.

The real Mike Tyson was too busy training to attend, according to organizers. Then again, it might have been a matter of money. The Senegalese fighters each took home $24,200, so there probably wasn’t a lot to pay Tyson an appearance fee.

Anyway, Iron Mike never made an entrance like Ndao’s.

Ndao emerged wrapped in the U.S. flag, chewing a wooden stick--a juju aid calculated to bring him victory.

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Trivia answer: The Marine Corps Marathon. His official time was 4 hours 58 minutes 25 seconds.

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And finally: Chris Childs of the New York Knicks, after teammate Allan Houston’s last-second tip-in was disallowed by officials in Miami’s 82-81 victory Sunday:

“The shot was good. You all know it, the Heat knew it, the referees knew it, NBC knows it and the world knows it. The shot was good. But nobody had the courage to say it was good.”