Golf Officials Plan to Rein In Clubs With New Tests

Golf’s governing body in the United States said Monday it will adopt a controversial test that could make the next generation of golf clubs illegal.

In a related effort to limit the distance that players can drive a golf ball, the U.S. Golf Assn. also said it would like to update methods for testing balls.

“These measures will not take balls or clubs out of golfers’ bags,” USGA executive director David Fay said, asserting that the best players will be affected the most, not average players.

Club manufacturers, however, have maintained that the new test for clubs is not needed because the current crop of high-tech drivers has not changed the game, despite the hoopla surrounding ultra-long hitters such as Tiger Woods and John Daly.

These “metal woods,” which cost up to $500, have been embraced by many of the nation’s 25 million golfers and are credited for sharply increasing club sales, to $1.7 billion wholesale in 1997.

The manufacturers also maintained the test stifles innovation, is technically flawed and doesn’t measure how balls are really struck.

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Golfer Se Ri Pak, exhausted and bedridden with a cold, missed a medal ceremony with South Korea’s president in Seoul. Dodger pitcher Chan Ho Park and golfer Pearl Sinn received the Order of Sport Merit.

Baseball

Former Dodger catcher Mike Scioscia, bench coach last season, will manage triple-A Albuquerque next season. The Dodgers also announced that Claude Osteen and Matt Wilson will return as Albuquerque’s pitching coach and trainer, respectively. Del Crandall, the organizational catching coordinator last season, has been named a special advisor on player development.

Dave Wallace has turned down an offer to become the Angels’ pitching coach in order to remain with the New York Mets as a senior advisor to General Manager Steve Phillips. Wallace, one of Angel Manager Terry Collins’ best friends, spent 15 years in the Dodger organization as a minor league coach and roving pitching instructor before becoming the Dodger pitching coach from 1995-97. Wallace took the Mets job in 1998.

Collins will now choose Marcel Lachemann’s successor from a list of candidates that includes Boston Red Sox bullpen coach Dick Pole, Angel bullpen coach Joe Coleman, Angel minor league instructor Mike Couchee, and three pitching coaches who were released by their teams this season--Mike Pazik (Chicago White Sox), Frank Funk (Colorado) and Bruce Kison (Kansas City).

Don Baylor, fired as manager of the Colorado Rockies after a 77-85 season, was hired as the Atlanta Braves’ hitting coach.

San Diego Padre pitching coach Dave Stewart is expected to decide today if he will become an assistant general manager for the Florida Marlins, Oakland Athletics or Toronto Blue Jays.

Reliever Rod Beck, who saved 51 games last season for the Chicago Cubs, agreed to a $9.5-million, two-year contract with a club option for 2001.

Mark Langston, a 38-year-old left-hander who helped lead the San Diego Padres to the NL West title, was among six players filing for free agency Monday. Also filing were San Francisco’s Orel Hershiser and Ellis Burks, Atlanta’s Ozzie Guillen and Dennis Martinez and Arizona’s Andy Stankiewicz.

Names in the News

Richie Adams, a former Nevada Las Vegas basketball star, was sentenced in New York to 25 years in prison for the beating death of a high school student, prosecutors said. Adams, 35, was convicted of manslaughter in the 1996 killing of 15-year-old Norma Rodriguez.

The head of the baseball umpires’ union is being sued on charges of sexual harassment by an employee of a company he runs. In a lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, Gepke Wils alleges Richie Phillips pressed her for sexual favors from 1995-1997 while she was an employee of Pilot Air Freight Inc.

Three Kentucky basketball players will sit out the Wildcats’ first four games under suspensions announced by Coach Tubby Smith. The suspension of forward Myron Anthony, guard Ryan Hogan and center Jamaal Magloire had been expected since June, when Smith said all three would be punished for misdeeds off the court.

Coach Denny Crum left a Louisville hospital two days after he collapsed at an airport, and will return to basketball practice. Doctors said Crum suffered from “a lack of blood flow to a certain part of the brain that controlled his right arm and legs that lasted for about 10 minutes, then seemed to go away.”

Steffi Graf’s latest tennis comeback began with a doubles loss at the $450,000 Leipzig Open in Germany. Graf, playing for the first time in 56 days after undergoing an operation on her right hand, teamed with inexperienced Mia Buric in a 7-5, 6-4 loss to Arantxa Sanchez Vicario and Natasha Zvereva.

Former U.S. national team soccer coach Bora Milutinovic, who took over the New York-New Jersey MetroStars late in the recently completed MLS season, will return to MetroStars next season.