What A Relief: Tiger Inks Deal With Japan Pain Cream Brand!

The blue chips may start lining up now that agent Mark Steinberg reportedly stops the itching, err...bleeding because, according to his Keeler Darren Rovell, the agent has locked up Japanese pain cream brand Vantelin Kowa for Tiger's first post-accident endorsement deal.

A moment of silence is in order for the ten-percenters at IMG who must be feeling the pain today after losing both Tiger, Mark Steinberg and now, Vantelin Kowa.

And if you had Vantelin Kowa in the pool--collect!

Rolfing's Relentless Shilling For Kapalua Could Subside; Fate Of Charitable Beneficiary Status Unclear

Robert Collias of the Maui News obtained a Mark Rolfing email revealing that Tim Finchem's deep-sea fishing buddy will no longer serve in the breathtakingly conflicted capacity as tournament announcer, tournament organizer and presumably, charitable beneficiary of the season opening Hyundai Tournament of Champions. The story does not make clear if Rolfing's foundation will continue to benefit from the event.

"The PGA Tour and its title sponsor, Hyundai, have decided to take a new direction with the Hyundai Tournament of Champions' management, including bringing in a new executive director," he wrote. "I will be assisting with the transition and will provide counsel to the PGA Tour and tournament staff when requested.

"However, I will no longer be serving in my former capacity as tournament organizer. I would like to thank each and every one of you for the support you gave me and your help in making the 2011 Hyundai Tournament of Champions a truly special event."

Interestingly, Collias notes that he spoke to Rolfing a week ago and there was no indication that such a move would be made by the tour.

Golf Girls "Tribute" To Golf Boys Confirms Hellaciousness Of The Original Video?

I would like to say a tribute was inevitable, but considering how painful the "Golf Boys" video was and how it mercifully escaped our collective consciousness (not before 1.8 million views), it is with great regret that I ask you: is this tribute a spoof or an admiring tribute? Honestly, I can't tell. I must be getting old.

Q&A With Don Van Natta

If you are in search of the perfect summer biography to sink your beach reading chops into, look no further than Don Van Natta Jr.'s study of the short but incredible sporting life of Babe Didrikson Zaharias.

A correspondent for the New York Times who has previously written about our golfing presidents in the fantastic First Off The Tee, Van Natta answered questions via email while on tour promoting the release of Wonder Girl. His stops included a Beaumont, Texas visit last weekend on what would have been the Babe's 100th birthday on Sunday. He filed this excellent Times story from Babe's hometown and site of a museum dedicated to her feats.

Van Natta also reads from Wonder Girl and was interviewed by NPR's All Things Considered.

Van Natta sifted through many accounts and remembrances to present a tight, highly-readable and definitive look at a life cut short by cancer at 45, but not before Didrikson-Zaharias had mastered numerous sports and even tried her hand at stage performances. Her golf accomplishments are particularly astonishing: she once won 14 consecutive tournaments, was the first American to win the British Women’s Amateur Championship, first woman to play and qualify for a PGA Tour event, three-time U.S. Women's Open winner, co-founder of the LPGA and winner of the 1953 U.S. Women's Open by 12 after major cancer surgery.

GS: What prompted you to do a book about the life of The Babe?

DVN: In 2004, after publishing my first book, First Off the Tee, I wanted to write another golf book. At the time, I was living in London and considered writing about St. Andrews or, perhaps, the great Bobby Jones. But my friend, Rand Jerris, an author and historian at the United States Golf Association, suggested a biography about Babe Didrikson Zaharias. Babe is Rand’s hero.

I had vaguely recalled hearing Babe’s name from my father, who admired her grit. The more I investigated Babe’s life, the more impressed and inspired I became. She wasn’t just America’s greatest female athlete; she is arguably the greatest all-sport athlete, male or female, in American history. And when I first visited Babe’s hometown of Beaumont, Texas, I was surprised and saddened to see her museum was empty, and would go many days without anyone stepping foot inside.

Despite her many athletic achievements and super-stardom – and being the top-ranked woman athlete of the 20th century -- Babe had become America’s all-but-forgotten sports superstar. Even in Babe’s hometown, she was largely unknown. Most young people don’t know her name, but when they hear about her achievements, they’re awed and want to know more. During my first visit to Beaumont, I became more motivated to do my best to bring the Babe’s inspirational story to a new generation of readers.


GS: It seems every story about her life and particularly her start in golf has multiple versions, how did you go about researching the book and separating fact from fiction?

DVN: Babe is an enormous challenge to her biographers because she lied about so much of her past history. She told fibs about her age, her background and her athletic achievements. Her 1955 autobiography, “This Life I’ve Led,” is littered with half-truths and fanciful stories. When she died, The New York Times reported Babe was 42 years old (she was, in fact, 45). As an investigative reporter, I saw her story as a challenge to try to separate fact from fiction.

Babe counted on reporters to regurgitate whatever story she told them without looking deeply into her background. And she had the audacity to tell many contradictory stories about how she began golf – from picking up a club on a whim in her early 20s to becoming inspired to play after watching a round played by Bobby Jones. None of these stories were true. The truth had less sparkle: Babe learned to play at a young age at Beaumont Country Club and for two years she was a member of the Beaumont High School golf team.

GS: You open by painting a picture of her vaudeville show and asking the question of whether there was anything she could not do. Was there anything she did not do well?

Only five months after winning two gold medals and a silver at the 1932 Olympic Games, Babe was performing vaudeville because there was no other way for the world’s greatest athlete to make money.

Babe was a multi-sport athlete who excelled at every sport and game she tried. The one thing she was not good at was sportsmanship. She would show up in women’s clubhouses and tell her competitors, “The Babe’s here! Who is coming in second?” When she stepped off the train in Los Angeles before the 1932 Olympic Games, Babe told reporters, “I came out here to beat everybody in sight -- and that’s just what I’m going to do.” Well, the only athletes in sight were her US track and field teammates, who bristled at her declaration.

After helping to create the LPGA, Babe rubbed her leading money-winning success in the noses of her competitors. One golfer, Shirley Spork, another LPGA founder, told Babe, “If it wasn’t for us pigeons, you wouldn’t have a tour.” Babe just laughed, telling Spork and her other fellow golfers: “Let me tell you girls something – you know when there’s a star, like in show business, the star has her name in lights on the marquee? Right? And the star gets the money because the people come to see the star, right? Well, I’m the star and all of you are in the chorus. I get the money. And if it weren’t for me, half of our tournaments wouldn’t be.”

Babe was right, of course. But if she had kept such things to herself, she might have won a few less tournaments and a few more friends.


GS: Her spat with the USGA over amateur status seems so petty, especially when you see today's "amateurs" fully outfitted in logoed clothes and receiving free gear.  A recurring theme of the book seems to be the surprising amount of struggle and backlash she received despite her vibrant personality and incredible athletic skills. What do you attribute this to?

DVN: The “amateur” ideal for athletes, who were never paid a nickel to compete, was revered in the 1930s and 1940s. No one tried to uphold this ideal more than the leaders of the Olympics, who stripped the great Jim Thorpe of his gold medals because he was paid a few bucks to play semi-pro baseball. But more than just that was working against Babe. Her poor background and coarse manner offended the wealthy, high-society Texas women who didn’t like losing to Babe in the mid-1930s. After Babe defeated one of those women, Peggy Chandler, in the 1935 Texas Women’s Amateur, Chandler and her friends complained to the USGA that Babe was a professional athlete masquerading as a golfing amateur. This was based on Babe being paid for endorsements and to play semi-pro basketball. The USGA agreed, and disqualified Babe from competing in amateur golf tournaments for three years. The penalty made Babe even more determined to come back and win. It also inspired her to soften her image and her manners in a bid to win acceptance to the gilded golf world that had so rudely snubbed her.

One of the things that most amazes me about Babe was her incredible will to succeed. She was constantly told what she couldn’t do and who she couldn’t be, and she just flat-out refused to listen. This was seen most dramatically after Babe’s cancer diagnosis in 1953. Doctors told her she would never play professional golf again. Babe believed it, at first; she tried to give away her golf clubs to a friend. But she quickly became determined to not only play again but win again. And fifteen months after a colostomy, Babe won the U.S. Women’s Open by 12 strokes at Salem Country Club in Massachusetts. It was one of the greatest comebacks in the history of sports. And during her victory speech, she shared in her great triumph with her doctors and the thousands of strangers who wrote her get-well cards and letters. By then, Babe felt as if she was playing to win not only for herself but the cancer patients who looked to her as a strong role model.

Babe’s lessons for young people today are simple: Never give up. Never let anyone tell you who what you should do or who you should be.


GS:  She met George Zaharias when she entered the LA Open in 1938 when there weren't any real restrictions, but qualifying in 1945 and making the cut was a genuine accomplishment that essentially was ignored a few years ago when Suzy Whaley and Annika Sorenstam played PGA Tour events. It seems as if the lack of respect for her accomplishments continues. Wouldn't she have her own magazine, ESPN channel and syndicated show if she were around today?

DVN: American sports fans love two-sport athletes. When Michael Jordan retired to play a year of minor league baseball in Birmingham, Alabama, Americans were fascinated by his quest. Never mind that Jordan hit .202 and returned to the hard court to win more NBA championships. Fans were transfixed by a legendary athlete struggling to master a second game. Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders are other two-sport athletes who fired Americans’ imagination.

Well, Babe was an all-sport athlete who conquered every sport and game she played – basketball, track and field, baseball, swimming, tennis, bowling. I agree that there is a startling lack of respect these days for all that Babe had accomplished and had to overcome. If she were around today, she would likely have her own sneaker line, like Jordan, and a syndicated TV show. She would also want to kick everyone’s butts. Babe not only was a great athlete but, like Ali and, more recently, Shaq, she was a born entertainer who knew how to keep the members of the gallery laughing and shaking their heads with wonder.  


Here's a link to a book "trailer" featuring some excellent footage of Babe playing golf.

And you can order the book here.

"It's just what I think the game really needs right now, someone that's going to set an example that says you can play fast and win at the highest level."

Nice catch by Jonathan Wall at Yahoo regarding Rory McIlroy, fast play and Jim Nantz, with one caveat:

His dominating performance at the U.S. Open has been talked in the ground, so much so that CBS's Jim Nantz decided to point out something else besides McIlroy's demeanor and swing that kids should take note of.

"One thing I really enjoyed last week while watching Rory McIlroy's incredible performance at the U.S. Open was how fast a player he is," Nantz said. "Here's a guy that's going to be a superstar and a lot of people are going to try and model things after him ... especially kids watching him play. It's just what I think the game really needs right now, someone that's going to set an example that says you can play fast and win at the highest level."

The caveat: Nantz mentioned this as Johnson Wagner was preparing what one could only surmise was the last shot of his life. It was agony and credit to Nantz for showing no hesitation in sharing his thoughts on Rory, without calling out Wagner. That's for us bloggers to do!

"I realized that I’d gone through every one of those stages, but not as a terminal patient...as a golfer."

Larry David has finally accepted that he'll never be a good golfer, or so he writes in The New Yorker. Warning, it opens with a glitch (Riviera's 175-yard 4th...where are the vaunted New Yorker fact checkers calling Larry to ask if he's really playing the forward tees?).

Think what I could’ve done with all that time. Learned French. Piano. I’d be playing Chopin now if it weren’t for golf. Playing Chopin for Julie Delpy. But instead I wasted my life on this game. It looked so easy. The ball just sits there. Any idiot could do it. But every instinct I had was wrong. You’re supposed to hit the ball down to make it go up. That’s absurd. I want to hit it up to make it go up. When I try to hit down, it’s like I’m splitting a log with an axe. All I do is chop up the course. And then there’s this one: the easier you swing, the farther the ball goes. How can that be? So you hit down to make it go up and swing easy to make it go far?

More Rory...

...John Strege has several Rory McIlroy anecdotes from the last week of coverage, including his girlfriend's uh, interesting Tweet and this more wholesome item from the Boston Globe.

Will it go to his head? Not likely. One of the better stories post-Open was his ride to Logan Airport in Boston following a charity outing on Monday, as reported by Brian McGrory in the Boston Globe. A canine officer, Barney Murphy, offered McIlroy a police escort to the airport. McIlroy, eschewing the limo, asked whether he could ride in the police car. The Irish-born policeman agreed, then pulled out an iPad, opened his Skype account and contacted his sister, Joan Dodd, in Dublin.

"You'll never guess who I have with me," Murphy said to her. He then turned the iPad's camera on McIlroy, who waved at her. McIlroy ended up speaking to her and her young son, Sean, who said he'd watched the entire Open telecast.