Proof That Golf Isn’t Child’s Play -- Even for an Amateur Tiger Woods

Also-ran Tiger Woods may have shot poorly in the just-completed PGA Championship, but he’s been known to play much more erratically in Southern California.

A scorecard in a glass case at Heartwell Golf Course in Long Beach commemorates the day Woods shot 48 over par, which would be a disastrous day for a 40-year-old hacker.

Then, again, Woods was only 4 years old at the time.

And his score of 120 was low enough to place first in the 10-and-under category.

Guide to adventurous dining: Today’s specials du column (see accompanying) include:

* Pies that are grown on branches (from Harriett Porch of Laguna Hills).

* A menu maker who may have sampled too many of his concoctions (from your columnist).

* A jumbled bit of phrasing about kids that W.C. Fields would have loved (from Charles Kudas of Culver City).

* And, finally, a yard sale that would seem to involve old French fry cookers and rusty milkshake machines (Henk Friezer of Eagle Rock).

What have you done lately? Some locals celebrated in Ripley’s new “Encyclopedia of the Bizarre”:

* Michael Rice of San Diego “ate 91 large fishing worms in 91 minutes” in 1991.

* Ted Coombs of Hermosa Beach “traveled from L.A. to New York City and back to Yates Center, Kan. -- 5,200 miles -- on roller skates” in 1979.

* Joe Horowitz of L.A. (“The Man with the Iron Nose”) balanced “an 18-pound sword on the tip of his nose.”

* Jim Purol of L.A. stuffed “his mouth with 151 drinking straws.”

Mind if I smoke 12 dozen cigarettes? Somewhere I have a photograph of the versatile Purol puffing on 152 cigarettes simultaneously -- not because of a bad nicotine habit but because he wanted to emphasize how silly the habit looked.

I doubt that the Man with the Iron Nose would have been able to stand all that smoke.

MiscelLAny: The mention of Rice’s worm consumption follows publication here of a restaurant ad proclaiming its “worm ambience.”

This is old stuff to Bob Noble of Santa Monica.

He points out that in 1521, Martin Luther was condemned as a heretic in a German city at a famous gathering. Its name: the Diet of Worms.

Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LA-TIMES, Ext. 77083; by fax at (213) 237-4712; by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A. 90012; and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.