He’s Still Looking for a Ball He Can Drive

Is golf ready for a Big Mac attack?

Former baseball slugger Mark McGwire has taken his big swing to the links, and is considering trying to qualify for the PGA’s Champions Tour when he turns 50.

“I don’t know what I’m going to be doing in 10 years,” McGwire, 40, told Associated Press. “If I’m still playing golf, yeah, I’d take a shot at it. Why not? I think that would be exciting. But it’s a long way away. I look at myself as a minor league player right now in golf.”

Before you think of Big Mac as a big hack, consider that McGwire won the ADT Skills Challenge, a series of contests including long drives, bunker shots, trouble shots, putting and chipping.

McGwire, a scratch golfer who has been playing since he was 5, won $122,500 and donated it to Cardinals Care, a charity arm of the St. Louis Cardinals.

More Mac: Among the current PGA players McGwire bested in the ADT Challenge were Peter Jacobsen, Paul Azinger, Padraig Harrington, Nick Faldo and Colin Montgomerie.

“What surprised all of us was his short game,” Jacobsen said. “That’s generally the area that separates a very good amateur and a tour professional.”

Trivia time: Who was the last Mighty Duck to score a hat trick in the regular season?

No Great Scott: The hiring of Isiah Thomas as the New York Knicks’ president Monday caught many NBA followers by surprise. But columnist Ian O’Connor of the Journal News in suburban New York was ecstatic that former team president Scott Layden was removed.

Wrote O’Connor: “Layden was a non-face whose apparent mission was to light up the Garden with undersized, under-skilled and overpaid players, reducing the Knicks to a big-city afterthought on George Steinbrenner’s slowest day.”

The safer sport: Boxing writer Burt Sugar, during an interview with the Amateur Athletic Foundation’s online SportsLetter, on the state of the heavyweight division:

“The heavyweight has gone north -- as in, north of 250 pounds. A kid who’s 250 pounds and reasonably coordinated is better off being a football player. He gets a college scholarship, a signing bonus when he turns pro, a pension plan, all kinds of safety nets. A fighter gets his brains bashed in. Anyone with a quarter of a brain who thinks this out will choose football.”

Row your own boat: The annual reenactment of George Washington’s 1776 Christmas Eve crossing of the Delaware River is in trouble, as volunteers are reportedly threatening to boycott the event.

Comedian Jerry Perisho said he saw it coming.

“Personally, I thought it lost a touch of realism last year when a high-speed boat pulled wetsuit-clad water skiing members of the Continental Army across the river,” Perisho wrote.

Trivia answer: Former Duck Paul Kariya, on Oct. 31, 2002, against Boston.

And finally: Jeff Gordon in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, after Joe Namath told Suzy Kolber of ESPN, “I want to kiss you,”: “If that interview had gone on much longer, would Suzy have needed a restraining order?”