By Michael K. Bohn, McClatchy-Tribune News Service April 19, 2012

The Red Sox Nation is about to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the opening of Fenway Park, the oldest Major League Baseball stadium in use. The Boston landmark, which hosted its first American League game on April 20, 1912, has since achieved a status in America sports history unrivaled among inanimate legends. Praise for Fenway runs the gamut from literary understatement to wry humor to dead-on accuracy.

“Fenway Park is a lyric little bandbox of a ballpark,” John Updike wrote in 1960.

“As I grew up,” offered A. Bartlett Giamatti, commissioner of baseball in 1989, “I knew that as a building it was on the level of Mount Olympus, the Pyramid of Giza, the nation’s capital, the czar’s winter palace, and the Louvre – except, of course, that it was better than all of those inconsequential places.”

“To generations of Americans, going to Fenway Park has been like coming home,” ballpark expert Curt Smith concluded in 1999.

The history of baseball in Boston is long and colorful. Hub fans revel in their horsehide heritage, which parallels that of professional baseball in the United States. Despite a rough patch without a World Series championship, 1919-2003, Beantown fans have a right to be proud.

CHARLES TAYLOR. The Cincinnati Red Stockings led the way in American professional baseball in 1869. Two years later, their outfielder and captain Harry Wright moved the team to Boston, and joined the brand new National Association of Professional Base Ball Players. The Boston Nationals won four straight association championships, 1872-1875, while drawing large crowds to their home field, the South End Grounds. The park was located near the current Ruggles train station at Northeastern University.

The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs replaced the fading Association in 1876, and the Boston club became known by a series of names, including Red Caps, Beaneaters and Braves. They also played in three different versions of the South End Grounds as fire destroyed numbers I and II.

This team was not a Red Sox ancestor, despite the footwear connection. The NL club finally settled on the name Braves, moved to Milwaukee in 1953, and then again in 1966 to become the Atlanta Braves.

In 1901, snake oil salesman and promoter extraordinaire Ban Johnson opened the American League for business. He installed a team in Boston, bankrolled by Cleveland coal baron Charles Somers. In turn, Somers built a ballpark for the team on Huntington Avenue near the Frederick Law Olmsted-designed wetlands park, the Back Bay Fens, just a few blocks from the flammable South End Grounds.

A number of NL players jumped ship to the new league, including Boston Nationals third baseman and captain, Jimmy Collins, and a decent St. Louis pitcher – Cy Young. Success bloomed quickly, and in 1903, the “Americans” won the inaugural World Series over the Pittsburgh Pirates.

“Boston Globe” publisher and Civil War veteran Charles “General” Taylor bought the Americans in 1904 and installed his playboy son, John, as president. Prior to the 1908 season, Johnny named the team the Red Sox, pinching the nickname variation from the Nationals. The nearby rivals had ceased wearing red stockings in 1907, reportedly because team officials feared the red dye might cause spike wounds to fester.

It sounds farfetched today, but generations of players wore “sanitaries,” white calf-high socks under their colored stirrup socks for that reason. Sox are a mystery now for the many players who favor long, droopy pants that obscure both ankles and important shoe manufacturers’ logos.

The team’s popularity soon merited a larger ballpark, and the Taylor family went to work on that in 1911.

JAMES MCLAUGHLIN. General Taylor bought an eight-acre land parcel on Feb. 26 for $120,000 in Boston’s Fenway area, named for the Fens Park. Just east of Brookline Avenue, the lot was bounded on the north by Lansdowne Street, on the east by Ipswitch Street and the Fenway Garage, and on the west by Jersey Street. Industrial buildings sat on the adjacent property to the south. After the park’s construction, Taylor added Van Ness Street on the southern property line, naming it for his wife Cornelia’s family.

Taylor commissioned Boston architect James McLaughlin to design a ballpark that used every bit of the property. The land easily accommodated huge outfield dimensions, at least in terms of the “dead ball” era when a 300-foot fly ball was a jaw-dropper. According to author Glenn Stout, McLaughlin could have laid out a symmetrical park, but gave the idea little thought. “The notion that Fenway is misshapen owing to the restriction of surrounding street is a perception that developed long after the park was built.”

Taylor also wanted a fireproof, concrete and steel grandstand, a testimony to the 20 baseball parks consumed by fire in the 1890s. He also asked for an exterior facade that resembled a regular city building, a trend pioneered by Philadelphia’s Shibe Park in 1909.

While McLaughlin put pencil to paper, the Taylors sold a half-interest in the team in September 1911 for $150,000. Jimmy McAleer, the Washington Senators’ manager, kicked in $50,000 and Robert McRoy, Ban Johnson’s secretary, paid $25,000. A couple of Johnson cronies, including Chicagoan H. W. Mahan, added $60,000. Mahan’s daughter Jeanie was then married to a recently retired Red Sox player, Jacob Garland “Jake” Stahl, who ponied up $15,000 and agreed to become the team’s player/manager.

Taylor added the $150,000 to the construction budget, which ultimately would total $600,000. He planned to lease the park to McAleer and McRoy, and use Fenway Park as the anchor for his other real estate holdings in the area.

CHARLES LOGUE. Taylor faced the usual budget limits, as well as a time crunch. Site work started in October 1911 and the park had to be ready for “Play Ball!” the following April. The stiff Boston winter would soon curtail concrete work, so the rush was on. General contractor Charles Logue, an Irish immigrant who built churches and schools for the Catholic archdiocese, teamed with Osborn Engineering of Cleveland to translate McLaughlin’s design into a ballpark.

The grandstand, which would seat 11,400, was made of reinforced concrete. Wooden forms defined the vertical columns, cross beams and even the seating deck. Crane-delivered buckets dumped concrete into the forms as the structure rose above the ground. Concrete walls separated the field from the concrete box seats, and concrete ramps moved the fans to the upper section of the one-level grandstand. Steel posts supported the grandstand roof, which had a wood plank deck covered with tar and slag. A small press box perched atop the roof above home plate made like a hungry pigeon watching the peanut vendors.

To save time and money, the Taylors elected to use wood for the first base “pavilion” and centerfield bleachers, some of which was recycled from Huntington Avenue. To minimize a possible fire from spreading beyond the wooden structures, McLaughlin left an alleyway between the grandstand and the cheap seats. The pavilion and bleachers offered a total of 13,000 unreserved spots on wooden planks.

Logue finished the field grading in mid-October and the grounds crew broadcast the first stand of grass seed. A problem remained in deep leftfield, however. Since the surface of Lansdowne Street, which defined the leftfield property boundary, was higher than the graded field, Logue, McLaughlin and Taylor decided to leave a raised earthen terrace in place at the base of the leftfield wall between the centerfield bleachers and the leftfield foul line. About 10 feet above the rest of the field at the fence, it sloped down toward home at about a 30 to 40 degree pitch, according to Stout in his book “Fenway, 1912.” Fans and reporters called the long mound Duffy’s Cliff in honor of the Red Sox leftfielder, Duffy Lewis.

In that era of soft, spit-covered balls that the umps used for the entire game, no one expected any batter to hit one deep enough that the terrace would come into play. Similarly, the wooden leftfield wall, which was 25 feet high and sat atop the 10-foot-high Duffy’s Cliff, wasn’t necessarily there to deny home runs. It was plastered with revenue-producing advertisements and kept any building across Lansdowne Street from becoming a distant seating venue.

Little precise information survives on the original park dimensions, according to Stout, but the angled first base pavilion crossed the right field foul line at just under 300 feet. The flagpole, in play immediately in front of the centerfield bleachers, stood 468 feet from home plate. The leftfield wall was 320 feet at the foul line and in the dead-ball era, seemed more in the adjacent county than a short porch for power hitters. Parks in those days didn’t feature distances painted on the outfield fences.

The crews largely finished the concrete work before winter’s first blizzard arrived on New Year’s Eve. The men shifted to the steel and wooden construction matters and worked straight through to April.

JAKE STAHL. The opportunity to own a piece of the team coaxed Stahl out of his one-year retirement. The player-manager assembled a team of new additions and returning veterans, including the inestimable Tris Speaker, and headed for spring training in Hot Springs, Ark. The players loved the sin-soaked spot. Get in shape during the day, take a quick soak in the springs, and then gamble and chase the, um, local talent at night.

When the club headed north in early April, Stahl had a solid team. He and Hugh Bradley would play first base, Steve Yerkes at second, Heinie Wagner at short and Larry Gardner at the hot corner. Speaker, Lewis, Harry Hooper and Olaf Henriksen would patrol the outfield. Catchers Bill “Rough” Carrigan, Forrest “Hick” Cady and Les Nunamaker would share the “tools of ignorance.”

Howard Ellsworth “Smoky Joe” Wood led the mound corps, and his nickname arose from his smokin’ hot fastball. Other pitchers included Buck O’Brien, Ray Collins, Hugh Bedient and Charley “Sea Lion” Hall. The latter’s real name was Carlos Luis Clolo and the Mexico native reportedly gained his nickname because he had “the voice of a walrus.” Alas, nicknaming ball players is a lost art today as video makes word pictures unnecessary.

Boston played an exhibition game on April 9 against Harvard College. On a cold and snowy afternoon, only 3,000 people showed up, a stroke of luck because Logue’s crew was still hammering, sawing and installing seats. Stahl started pitcher Casey Hageman, who was on the cusp of making the team. Boston won, 2-0, but it wasn’t much of an exhibition.

The Red Sox opened the season on April 11 in New York against the Highlanders, later the Yankees. Boston swept the three-game series at Hilltop Park, and then split two games in Philadelphia against the defending World Series champion Athletics. The team boarded a train for Boston and looked forward to the scheduled home opener at Fenway Park on April 18.

A steady rain forced the cancellation of Fenway’s first major league game between Boston and New York. Team officials quickly rescheduled an unusual morning-afternoon split doubleheader the following day. April 19 was Patriot’s Day and the annual running of the Boston Marathon was the featured sports event in Beantown on that holiday. Since the race occurred at midday, fans could double-up between baseball and the marathon.

Another rainout ensued, and the fans turned to the newspapers for other baseball news. They read that two other concrete and steel ballparks opened that month. Cincinnati’s Redland Field, later Crosley Field, opened April 11, and Detroit’s Navin Field – later Briggs Stadium and finally Tiger Stadium – hosted its first game on April 20.

Clear skies and a spring sun finally greeted Boston baseball fans on April 20 as Fenway’s gates opened at noon. All 24,400 seats were soon full and the club sold another 2,500 tickets to standing-only patrons.

At 3:15 p.m., with Highlander leftfielder Guy Zinn at the plate, Buck Baker threw his first pitch – a ball. He quickly served up three more and Zinn drew the first walk in Fenway history, became the first base runner and so on. It was a day full of firsts in the Red Sox Nation.

Boston won in the eleventh inning, 7-6, when Speaker’s infield hit scored Yerkes.

The Red Sox won the 1912 American League pennant by 14 games with a sparkling 105-47 record. Speaker led the team in batting – .383, 222 hits and 10 home runs. Wood smoked the league with a 34-5 record, and O’Brien, Bedient and Hall each won at least 15 games.

In anticipation of the World Series, Taylor had McLaughlin and Logue add 11,600 additional seats in wooden stands during the final three weeks of the season. New bleachers in right field and along the leftfield foul line added 9,500, and seven rows atop Duffy’s Cliff contributed 1,200. The rest came from three rows in front of the center and right field bleachers and the first base pavilion.

On Oct. 8, the Red Sox beat the New York Giants in the first game of the World Series in New York’s Polo Grounds, and the umps called the second game because of darkness the following day in Boston. The teams were tied 6-6 after the 11th inning, and the game was a wash. The game’s most modern sports venue shared the same daylight restrictions as Rome’s Coliseum.

Boston ultimately won the Series, 4-3, with Wood winning three games, including the decisive seventh at Fenway. The championship capped a monumental first year for Fenway Park.

THE GREEN MONSTER. A fire at Fenway on Jan. 5, 1934 prompted team owner Tom Yawkey to undertake a major remodeling of the park. Among other changes, construction crews raised the leftfield wall to 37 feet 2 inches, remaking it of concrete and steel. Players and fans called it “the Wall” for years, and the term Green Monster did not see widespread use until the 1980s.

By MICHAEL K. BOHN – McClatchy-Tribune News Service

Although he struggled at The Masters, before that Tiger Woods’ recent win at the Arnold Palmer Invitational in Orlando, Fla., brought joy to him, his many fans and, most importantly, television advertisers. Woods’ 30-month victory drought in official events finally ended and the news media heralded the return of red shirts and fist pumps on Sundays.

But there is a parallel Tiger Woods story that has been running lately – one concerning the revelations about Tiger’s private life and golf game in a new book by the player’s former coach, Hank Haney. Published a few weeks ago, “The Big Miss” recounts Haney’s six-year experience with Woods through his swing changes, a temporary return to form, and then, suddenly, the train wreck in November 2009 when his marriage and personal integrity imploded.

Of the many insider stories in Haney’s book, one really caught my eye – Tiger’s infatuation with the U.S. Navy’s special operations force, the SEALs. Haney writes that Woods repeatedly participated in SEAL training and exercises during 2006 and 2007, and that Woods had considered chucking his golf career and enlisting. Moreover, Haney reported that in 2007 Woods tore the ACL in his left knee during a drill in a SEAL “kill house,” an urban warfare simulator. He had it repaired in 2008 after his amazing, one-legged win in the U.S. Open.

As a retired career naval officer, I saw Tiger’s SEAL affair as a stunt, especially in view of Haney’s portrait of a remarkable but selfish golfer trying to be a superstar jock. Unlike the NFL’s Pat Tillman joining the Army Rangers in 2002, this appeared as if Tiger wanted a macho merit badge at the expense of the American military’s greatest fighting force. In my opinion, Tiger has not been the kind of man the SEALs want.

I served with SEALs in the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War in a support unit that repaired their boats. We called them the “snake-eaters” because they were tough guys who could live and fight in the jungle. I worked with them ashore and have friends who were SEALs. Their unmatched capabilities at “SEa, in the Air and on Land (SEAL)” – think Osama bin Laden’s death – are equaled by their integrity and preference for recruits, who, as one former SEAL put it, are “good citizens.”

Also, I occasionally have reported on PGA Tour events and have observed Tiger on the golf course and in press conferences. Sure, he’s fit and mentally tough, and his focus can burn holes in the side of a ship. But SEALs tell me that 80 percent of making it as a SEAL is from the neck up. While I marvel at Tiger’s brilliance in golf, I have formed a less glowing assessment of his personal traits.

The new book exposes a good bit of the inner Tiger, so I have compared his character strengths and weaknesses, as described by Haney, to the profile that the Naval Special Warfare Command uses to assess potential SEAL candidates. In my view, Tiger would have whiffed.

But first, the public affairs office at the Special Warfare Command would not confirm Haney’s account of Tiger’s near-war activity with the SEALs – multiple visits, parachuting, hand-to-hand combat exercises, and live weapons training. Instead, the Navy offered a bland statement:

“Mr. Woods visited the Naval Special Warfare Command on several occasions in 2006 as part of the command’s public outreach program. During his visits, Mr. Woods received command briefs, toured the facilities, and was provided the opportunity to learn about and shoot a few weapons. His visits were informational in purpose. Naval Special Warfare Command, like other U.S. Navy and Department of Defense commands, hosts individuals from various fields with the purpose of raising their awareness about today’s military.”

Back to the selection criteria. The Navy’s analysis points toward a favored demographic for applicants: males with a bachelor’s degree who often hail from the upper Midwest and New England, areas that statistically produce more young men with outdoor and environmental interests. Additionally, SEAL officer candidates must have a four-year college degree. Tiger only finished two years at Stanford University. Also, the then-31-year-old Woods was too old to be a SEAL in mid-2007. The maximum age for SEAL applicants is 28, but Tiger told Haney that the SEALs were considering a waiver for him. A few waivers are available, but only in well-defined situations that didn’t seem to fit Tiger in 2007. Likely fail.

The Navy’s list of disqualifying physical ailments for special operations applicants is as long as Moby Dick’s tail. Specifically, Woods told Haney that in 2002 the surgeon who cleaned out his left knee told him that his anterior cruciate ligament was 80 percent torn. Article 15-105 of the Navy’s medical manual disqualifies special operations applicants for a “musculoskeletal condition which is chronic or recurrent, predisposes to injury, or limits the performance of extremely strenuous activities. Likely fail.

SEAL aspirants must score well on two armed forces intelligence and aptitude tests after their physicals. They also must grade high on a specialized test of their mental toughness and resilience on the Computerized-Special Operations Resilience Test, or C-SORT. Tiger’s bright, and millions have observed his mental toughness. Pass.

If applicants have passed through all of these preliminary gates, they must take the Physical Screening Test. It includes a 500-yard swim; push-ups, pull-ups and sit-ups; and a 1.5-mile run, all with minimum times and numbers. His left knee likely would have held up only after the 2008 surgery. Unable to determine.

Now, the tricky part.

The SEALs value certain personality traits in applicants. Using descriptors supplied by the Navy Special Warfare Command and drawn from www.sealswcc.com, as well as Haney’s observations, here’s my assessment of the non-quantitative factors integral to screening SEAL candidates.

Motivation – Achievement, resolve, self-confidence. These are all observable Tiger traits. However, when Haney began as Tiger’s coach in 2004, one of the big problems he saw in his student’s game was fear. Haney wrote that the “fearless” Tiger Woods “played his driver with a lot of fear.” Pass on achievement and resolve, and Fail on self-confidence.

Tactician – Mission focus, learner, listener, investigative thinker. Woods routinely tuned out Haney when the coach offered constructive advice that he didn’t like. Likely Pass.

Aspiration – Competitiveness, courage, persistence. Haney marveled at Tiger’s burning desire to win and win big. Pass.

Attitude – Camaraderie and positivity. Haney believes that Tiger’s immense and laudable drive for perfection yielded a host of accompanying, less desirable traits that he lists in the book- “selfishness, obsessiveness, stubbornness, coldness, ruthlessness, pettiness, and cheapness.” Hank gives several examples of Woods’ rudeness to his support team – caddie, coach, agent and trainer – and his bouts of moody sullenness. Further, Woods has erected a barrier around himself to keep even friends at bay. On the other hand, the SEALs treasure “team-ability.” Fail.

Protect my teammates – Today’s professional golf is not a team sport, despite what the Ryder Cup organizers say every other year. Haney watched Tiger remain distant from other skilled players, even fellow Americans. Woods didn’t want them to feel comfortable around him, which gave Tiger a competitive edge. Haney called this and other similar Tiger practices “competitive bullying.” When it was time to play a foursome or four-ball match at the Ryder Cup, Tiger’s approach made for bad chemistry. The best example is Tiger’s teaming with Phil Mickelson in the 2004 Cup, which resulted in two first-round losses. Further, Haney writes that Tiger’s trainer, Keith Kleven, frequently grew concerned when Tiger went silent and sullen on him, thinking he was in Woods’ doghouse. “Rather than taking Keith’s concern as a show of loyalty,” Haney writes, “Tiger saw weakness.” Fail.

The Navy emphasizes that their best applicants come from backgrounds in water polo, triathlon, lacrosse, boxing, rugby, swimming or wrestling.

Uncompromising integrity, “My word is my bond” and lead by example – Tiger appears to be a serial fibber given multiple anecdotes from Haney, including misleading and lying to the news media on subjects on which he spoke more truthfully with Haney. Of course, then there’s Tiger’s confession of repeated marital infidelity. Fail.

Mental toughness – Honor obligations, relationship honor, be a self-challenger. According to Haney’s book, Tiger repeatedly used nonverbal or oblique means to tell his coach, “When I play bad, when I don’t win, it’s your fault.” Throughout his professional career, Woods has fired coaches and caddies, and that’s common on the PGA Tour. But blaming his team is another matter. Fail on the honor parts and Pass on challenging himself.

Most of the former SEALs with whom I spoke about positive SEAL attributes asked to remain in the background. However, I did talk on the record with former SEAL Dick Couch about desirable traits in SEAL applicants. Dick now writes novels and nonfiction works about special operations and he has a new book due out in June, “Sua Sponte: The Forging of a Modern American Ranger.”

“The best candidates come from families with high expectations,” Couch explained. “Parents who help their children set goals and teach them how to gain them are important.” As many know, Earl and Tida Woods raised their son that way, although Tiger seemed to grow up overly enabled along the way. Had Tiger started SEAL training, his expectations of special treatment might have caught the attention of SEAL instructors, who lean hard on recruits to find character flaws. As one veteran SEAL said, instructors seeing a hint of aloofness or self-importance would jump on a trainee like “vultures on carrion.” Pass.

Couch also offered a crucial point. “The best warriors are the best husbands and the best fathers. A stable family life and an overall balance in life will yield the best SEAL.” Fail.

In July 2007, Mark Steinberg, Tiger’s agent, confronted the player about his military preoccupation. Haney heard less about the issue afterward.

In a final comment, Tiger Woods has been an enormous rainmaker for the PGA Tour. Between 1996, when he turned pro, and 2006, the annual PGA Tour prize money increased 254 percent in constant dollars. Television ratings during individual tournaments jumped 50 to 100 percent when he played. During the injury-prone, scandal-plagued years of uneven play, 2007-2011, ratings and purses flattened or fell, an economic recession notwithstanding.

Tiger’s dalliance as a “hard guy” hurt his body, his family, and even golf tournament sponsors and advertisers. His selfishness in this didn’t match the SEALs’ search for men of character and honor, and likely undermined a legend of golf genius.

By MICHAEL K. BOHN — McClatchy-Tribune News Service

Veteran PGA golf instructor Hank Haney has a new book about Tiger Woods. But it isn’t a “tell-all” mainly because Tiger doesn’t share all with either his friends or swing coach. That said, the book does provide a rare look behind the veil that Woods has constructed around himself, a barrier that allowed only the genius of his golf to escape until running his SUV into fireplug on Thanksgiving 2009.

In “The Big Miss, My Years Coaching Tiger Woods,” published last week by Crown Archetype, Haney offers fascinating insights on the broad duality that underlies Tiger’s persona. Haney believes that Tiger’s success springs from “the Package,” a mixture of opposing extremes, or as Haney writes, “the sum of all of Tiger’s qualities and characteristics, the good and the bad.” Accompanying the foundation of his incomparable play – the ability to stay focused and calm under stress, the ying, perhaps -are other facets of his personality, the yang – “selfishness, obsessiveness, stubbornness, coldness, ruthlessness, pettiness, and cheapness.”

The book is full of the dichotomies and contrasts swirling about Tiger, and his relationship with Haney, like slices and hooks.

Woods’ public image versus his private life. Tiger’s fairly warm embrace of nice guys on the PGA Tour who don’t threaten his reign – Steve Stricker and Jim Furyk, but nothing but alpha dog slights and “competitive bullying” for the super talents – Phil Mickelson, for example. Tiger’s passive-aggressive behavior. The objective examination of Tiger’s swing from Haney, alternating with his subjective psychoanalysis of Woods. Haney’s sincere admiration for Woods’s achievements and talent versus his settling of some accounts.

Other than a tease at the start about the dissolution of the Haney-Woods association, the book follows the chronology of their time together, 2004-2010. With able assistance from collaborator Jaime Diaz of “Golf Digest” and “GolfWorld” magazines, Haney tells of his unbridled excitement when Tiger asked for his help. He had been coaching topflight players for years, but this would be a career mountaintop.

Woods parted with his previous coach, Butch Harmon, in the summer of 2002, and in 2003, he didn’t win a major. In the spring of 2004, Haney viewed Tiger as a “diminished golfer,” a real player with real problems, not a mythic athlete. In Haney’s view, Woods had three major problems. First, his left knee was hurting. Second, he moved his head too much during his swing. Last and the biggie -Tiger played the driver “with a lot of fear.” He feared the “big miss,” inside golf-speak for a momentum killer such as driving out of bounds.

As they worked together, Haney found that Tiger’s stubbornness made for tough sessions on the range. The coach had to devise ways of making the student believe swing changes were his own ideas. It was a slow process, netting only one official win for Tiger in 2004, the WGC-Accenture Match Play. The relationship became more productive the following year – six official wins, including two majors. In 2006, Woods won two majors and six other official tournaments. In 2007, Tiger won one major and six others, but Haney sensed a subtle change in Woods.

“The 2007 season was when I first began to think that Tiger was closer to the end of his greatness than he was to the beginning,” Haney writes. “In hindsight, I think Tiger did, too.” Further, again in retrospect, Haney thinks Woods had started to tire of his career, and cites Tiger’s obsession then with all things military.

With his father Earl as a model, Tiger had always admired military men. But in 2006 and 2007, Woods started entertaining the idea of becoming a Navy SEAL, a member of the elite special operations force. Haney writes that Woods attended multiple sessions with SEALs, which included parachuting, hand-to-hand combat exercises and live-fire weapons training. The 31-year-old Woods even told Haney that the SEALs would waive their age maximum, 28, for him. This proved worrisome to Team Tiger -agent, caddie, coach and others. Recalling the NFL player who joined the Army Rangers, Haney recalls, “This was Pat Tillman times 100.”

The U.S. Navy has acknowledged that Tiger made several unofficial visits to the Navy Special Warfare Command in 2006, but offered no significant details.

Haney writes that information available to him points to Woods tearing his already deteriorated anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee during a 2007 SEAL exercise in “kill house,” an urban combat simulator. Woods told Haney that he tore it while running on the golf course.

The coach also was opposed to the military-style weight training Tiger affected during this period. The macho pull-ups favored by the SEALs were hard on his shoulders, and Olympic-style lifts appeared to be at least one source for his right Achilles tendon injuries. Haney also believed that he was carrying too much weight for his bad knee.

In July 2007, Mark Steinberg, Tiger’s agent, confronted the player about his military preoccupation. Haney heard less about the issue afterward, but another distraction had him worried.

It was that year that Tiger’s cell phone seemed to ring more often than before. Unknowing at the time, Haney later saw the activity as evidence of Tiger’s extramarital affairs. As exposed by the news media in late 2009, Woods made a deal in 2007 with the “National Enquirer” to keep an affair quiet in return for posing for a photo spread in a sister publication, “Men’s Fitness.” Haney thought it odd at the time for Tiger, who was always tight-lipped about his training, to speak on the record about his lifting and bare his buff chest.

Haney professes to have been in the dark about Tiger’s sexual escapades, and that’s not surprising considering Tiger’s titanium privacy curtain. Haney did notice coolness between Tiger and his wife Elin in 2007, as well as Tiger’s self-centered style at home. At dinner in their Orlando house, Tiger routinely left the table when finished, regardless of whether Hank and Elin were through eating.

Lean, fit and powerful, Woods matched the American stereotype of a professional athlete and brought crossover sports fans to the PGA Tour. This matched Earl Woods’ belief that his son was the first golfer to be a true athlete. Tiger eagerly bought into this paradigm, and Haney comments on Tiger’s use of insider phrases from other sports in his public statements. He talks about “reps,” as in repetitions in NFL practices, “game speed,” taking it deep” and “getting good looks.”

Haney watched Woods insinuate himself into the fraternity of contact sports stars by casting his injuries as shared badges of honor. Stuff happens to us superstars, right Shaq? This is quite a stretch from his college days when his friends viewed him as such a nerd they nicknamed him Urkel after a TV geek character.

According to Haney, Tiger’s multiple swing changes and constant tinkering on the practice tee reflect his deep-seated and admirable quest to improve. He reportedly left Harmon because Butch thought that by 2002, all Woods needed was swing maintenance. Additionally, Haney observes that technical improvements kept Tiger interested in the game. The threat of a prodigy’s early burnout, plus Tiger’s self-proclaimed attention deficit disorder, has propelled him toward new coaches and new swings.

Full swing analysis aside, Haney frequently mentions Tiger’s short game. He faulted him for poor straightforward chips, which he overplayed with too much spin. “Chicks dig spin,” he told Haney.

Haney blamed three-putts for many of Woods’s woes in tournaments. Overly bold runs on birdie putts beyond 20 feet yielded stressful five-footers for par. Hank argued that even Superman can’t make every mid-range birdie putt, so just avoid the three-jack. Tiger’s former caddie Steve Williams told Haney that Woods won 85 percent of the time when he played 72 holes without a three-putt. Haney offered this final word on the now 36-year-old Tiger and his putting. “Players rarely improve their putting after their mid-30s.”

Tiger’s heroic win in the 2008 U.S. Open with two stress fractures and a torn ACL in his left leg has been well documented by others, but Haney adds many insider details. He then takes the reader through Tiger’s rebound year in 2009 and his six wins.

Trying to get Woods ready for the 2010 Masters after the player’s train wreck the previous winter tested the Woods-Haney team. Coming off his self-imposed exile and a month-long sex addiction rehabilitation, Woods seemed to indirectly blame Haney for his poor play in the tournament. Upset that Tiger replied to his dedication with moody and rude behavior, Haney resolved to quit after the Masters. He phoned Woods in May to resign, but Tiger said that he was busy with his kids. They ultimately traded texts that finished with this exchange.

“I can’t tell you how grateful I am for the opportunity, but it’s time for you to find another coach.”

“Thanks, Hank. But we’re still going to work together.

“No we’re not. It’s finished. Done. Over. I’m no longer your coach.”

“We’ll talk in the morning.”

When the split later became public, Haney did a quick burn when Team Tiger spun the separation as a mutual decision.

Haney and Diaz have crafted a nice read that moves along nicely for golf-savvy readers. The golf-speak leans toward the technical side, but the authors try to help the uninitiated through the tangled forest of swing planes, strong left hand grips and trajectories. Those who are comfortable reading about swing mechanics, however, will enjoy understanding how Tiger hits a golf ball, either well or badly.

The authors intersperse the swing analysis with stories and anecdotes about Woods and his team that add a strong personal flavor to the narrative. Some of what they describe ain’t pretty, although Haney’s admiration for the man’s golf game always shows through. However, that appreciation often fights for sentences with Haney exasperations with Tiger’s hardheadedness. Of course, we have only Haney’s view on this, and the pushback from Team Tiger will surely offer contrasting assessments.

For the prurient looking for the “good stuff” on Tiger’s marital waywardness, there’s little to be found. Haney does offer brief accounts of Tiger’s reaction to rehabilitation and attempts at reconciliation with Elin. Haney and Diaz chose to include a short index of names only, so casual browsers at the bookstore, if that tribe still exists, can’t simply turn to a titillating segment.

The biggest strength of “The Big Miss” is the breadth of its insider view of the Tiger Woods phenomenon, a scrutiny previously unavailable to the public. Considering that Woods is “allergic,” to use Haney’s term, to people trying to get too close to him, the book succeeds in this regard.

If Haney wrote about why he wrote the book, I missed it. It’s clear, however, that he doesn’t want to be blamed for Tiger’s uneven play before hiring another coach, Sean Foley, in 2010. He must believe that his frank account of dealing with a complex player in difficult circumstances will help defend his reputation. To that end, he notes that under Harmon, Woods won 34 times, almost 27 percent of his 127 official starts. With Haney’s help, Tiger won 31 times in 91 official tournaments, or 34 percent of the time.

Haney may pay a price for what Tiger views as out-of-school tales. Another prominent swing coach, Rick Smith, says the book violates golf’s version of doctor-patient relations. Harmon, however, backs Haney’s freedom to write the book.

A longtime member of the PGA, Haney owns and operates a far-flung golf instruction business with headquarters in Dallas, Texas. He has written four golf instruction books, including “Fix Your Yips Forever,” a malady that he admits to having suffered for much of the 1980s and 1990s.

By Michael K. Bohn
McClatchy-Tribune News Service

Memorable sports events gather luster as time passes for several reasons. Often a game’s significance hinges on heroic individual effort – Bobby Thomson’s walk-off home run to beat the Dodgers in 1951 is one example.

Others represent a sport’s turning point – the 1958 Giants-Colts NFL championship game that changed pro football. At least one even owes its iconic status to the weather: the 1967 Packers-Cowboys “Ice Bowl” on the “frozen tundra of Lambeau Field.”

The 1982 NCAA basketball championship game, however, has the whole package. The event had a unique venue, legendary coaches, extraordinary player talent and team play, social significance, an iconic shot, and plenty of joy among the victorious and agony for the defeated.

The game also spawned a basketball superstar and turned a mental lapse into a life lesson. Today, the game ranks in the top five on most everyone’s list of the greatest March Madness games.

The cavernous Superdome in New Orleans welcomed 61,612 fans, then the largest ever college basketball crowd, to watch Georgetown play North Carolina on March 29, 1982. Tar Heels coach Dean Smith brought a talented team to the final. He hoped to get off the schneid of three losses in his previous championship appearances – 1968, 1977 and 1981, as well as another three losses in national semifinal games. His players, especially senior point guard Jimmy Black, wanted to break that losing streak.

“Jimmy called a team meeting before the tournament,” recalled Buzz Peterson, then a freshman guard and now the coach at UNC-Wilmington. “He said, ‘We’re gonna win the title for Coach Smith so people will stop bashing him.’ ”

John Thompson had begun a reinvigoration of a moribund Georgetown basketball program in 1972, and by 1980, had taken a team to the Elite Eight.

Smith and Thompson were good friends, forging a mutual admiration society when they coached the 1976 Olympic basketball team. “They had no tricks for each other,” said Peterson. “Each knew what the other was doing.” Both coaches are in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Worthy led UNC

Junior forward James Worthy led the Carolina squad, along with sophomore center/forward Sam Perkins, sophomore Matt Doherty and Black. A skinny freshman guard named Mike Jordan was in the starting lineup. Assistant coach Bill Guthridge had worked with Jordan after practice during the 1981-82 season, making him take 82 extra shots a day to improve his shooting mechanics and percentage. Nevertheless, the youngster wasn’t bashful. Thirty years later, Doherty, the head coach at SMU until he was fired March 13, offered his assessment of Jordan then, “Gregarious … cocky … talented … confident.” Ironically, Jordan had been runner-up to Peterson as the 1981 North Carolina high school basketball player of the year, and roomed with Buzz in college.

While Georgetown freshman center Patrick Ewing garnered most of the media attention, stalwarts on the Hoyas’ team included seniors Eric “Sleepy” Floyd, center Ed Spriggs and forward Eric Smith. Sophomore Fred Brown was the point guard. In a parallel to the Thompson-Smith friendship, Worthy and Floyd both hailed from Gastonia, N.C., and were good friends.

Led by Jordan, 12 of the 14 members of the 1981-82 Tar Heels team became NBA draft picks at some point. Jordan’s story is well known, but Worthy won three rings with the Lakers and is a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame. Two-time All-America Perkins played 12 years in the NBA. On the Georgetown side, Ewing is another Hall of Famer, and the NBA eventually drafted Floyd, Brown, Spriggs, Eric Smith, Gene Smith, Bill Martin and Anthony Jones.

The game started with the 7-foot Ewing blocking Carolina’s first four shots but picking up a goaltending call on each one. “The plan was to have Pat be aggressive early,” recalled Kurt Kaull, a Hoya reserve. “Coach told him, ‘Just swat the first two or three out of there to set the tone.’ ” The tactic didn’t impress Carolina.

“We thought that was ridiculous,” said Doherty. “Thompson wanted to intimidate us, but it was like free money.”

Georgetown led the low-scoring game at halftime, 32-31, with 10 of Carolina’s points coming from a total of five Ewing goaltends. After trailing most of the second half, the Tar Heels gained the lead and protected it with their Four Corners offense that killed time in the days before college shot clocks.

Ewing cut the deficit to one, 61-60, with a 12-foot jumper at the 2:37 mark. In the ensuring Four Corners delay, Eric Smith darted toward Doherty near the halfcourt line, intent on a steal. He did pick the ball, but the ref called a foul. “I never touched him,” Smith claims today. “I had it.”

Doherty went to the line to shoot a one-and-one and thought, “Don’t lose the game for Coach Smith.”

Doherty fights tears

Alas, he missed the first free throw, and fought back tears as he ran back on defense. “It still bothers me today,” Doherty said. “It was tough missing a free throw in a situation you dream about as a kid.”

Sleepy Floyd responded. Driving the lane, he faked Worthy into the air and out of the play. His 12-foot floater, one aided by three friendly bounces on the rim, put the Hoyas up 62-61 with 57 seconds left. It was the 15th lead change.

As Black brought the ball across the 10-second line, Smith and assistant coach Eddie Fogler thought the set-up seemed wrong. “We didn’t like what we saw,” Fogler said recently. Smith called for a timeout with :32 left.

“I knew John would probably stay in a zone,” Smith later recalled of Thompson. He called for Black to look first for Worthy, and then Perkins, going down the lane. If they weren’t open, check the weak side.

That’s what happened, and Black threw a skip pass to Jordan on the left wing. Jordan caught the ball and shot in almost the same motion. His 16-foot jumper hit nothing but net with 15 seconds left. “It’s easy to shoot that shot with 2 seconds on the clock,” explained Doherty. “But with 15 seconds left, you’re a stone-cold killer.”

Brown dribbled up the court knowing he had to go to either Ewing or Floyd. Worthy was on the perimeter, 25 feet from the basket and out of position. Perkins yelled at him to get back to help with Ewing and Spriggs.

As time slipped away, Brown paused near the top of the key and picked up his dribble. Floyd looked open on the right side, but Jordan deftly stepped into Brown’s passing lane. Worthy anticipated Brown’s pass to Smith and gambled on a steal. Smith rightly moved away to an open spot as Worthy overplayed the possible pass so badly that he found himself behind Brown. The Georgetown guard caught a glimpse of a body where Smith had been a moment before. With eight seconds left, Brown threw the ball – to Worthy.

“I panicked,” Worthy admitted later. “I didn’t want to screw up anything.” He eventually dribbled toward the Tar Heels’ basket, but Smith fouled him with 2 seconds on the clock. “I almost tackled him,” Smith said. Shooting two on the intentional foul, Worthy missed both, but not intentionally.

Spriggs got the rebound after Worthy’s second miss and quickly threw it to Floyd. He got off a 55-foot prayer before the buzzer that missed.

Amid the immediate chaos on the court, Thompson gave Brown a hug. “He told me not to worry about it,” Brown said years later. “He said that I had won more games than I had lost.”

Now a financial adviser in Maryland, Brown has grown weary through the years answering questions about his bad pass. He last spoke publicly about it in 2007: “I played my heart out, did the best I could and didn’t worry about it one bit.”

Where are they now?

Coaches Smith and Thompson are both retired; Jimmy Black is a financial adviser in North Carolina; Worthy, a TV basketball analyst; Perkins, an assistant coach in the NBA development league and an NBA goodwill ambassador. Eric Smith works for Verizon in Maryland. Sleepy Floyd lives in Charlotte, makes promotional appearances and supports community activities. The game-winning shot transformed Mike Jordan into Michael Jordan, and the rest is history. Jordan became an NBA superstar with six league championships, but his career as a league executive and owner has had a few ups and downs.

Like against Georgetown on that electric night, Jordan, much like North Carolina, has mostly been up. And the Hoyas won the NCAA championship in 1984 – with Fred Brown gaining a measure of redemption.

By MICHAEL K. BOHN — McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Mar 22, 2012

Time for the March Madness Highlight Quiz. What’s the greatest game in NCAA basketball tournament history, at least according to “USA Today?” The 1982 North Carolina-Georgetown title game with freshmen Patrick Ewing and Michael Jordan? Naw, only No. 4. The 1987 Indiana-Syracuse championship game? Nope, just No. 5.

The winner is . . . the 1992 East Regional between Duke and Kentucky. You remember. Christian Laettner, Bobby Hurley and Grant Hill against the Wildcats with sophomore Jamal Mashburn and four semi-anonymous, but loyal seniors. Duke fans have recalled two things about the game during the past 20 years – “the Pass” and “the Shot. Both happened in the last two seconds of overtime.

The Game. Duke arrived at the East Regional in Philadelphia’s Spectrum on the wings of basketball angels. The team had won the national championship the previous year, and a win over Kentucky would send Duke to its fifth straight Final Four appearance. During that run, Mike Krzyzewski had ascended to heavenly heights as a college coach. Duke had a 31-2 record at the start of the game.

Kentucky had scrambled its way back from a purgatory of NCAA sanctions, including two-year bans on postseason play and TV appearances. Coach Rick Pitino forged an up-tempo, pressing team around Mashburn and four players who stayed at Kentucky through the dark times – seniors Richie Farmer, Deron Feldhaus, John Pelphrey and Sean Woods. The Wildcats had a 29-6 record entering the regional final on March 28. “I really don’t think anybody expected us to get this far,” Farmer said before the game.

On the other hand, Duke was confident and the favorite of the bookies and broadcasters. “We thought we were going to beat them pretty good,” senior Duke swingman Brian Davis later recalled.

The Preliminaries. Both teams treated the crowd to an exciting and an up-tempo game through the first half and much of the second. “The pace was exhausting,” Hurley said recently. “Kentucky made us do what no other team had that year – play the game at their speed.”

But when Duke had surged to a 12-point lead with 11:08 left in the game, Pitino called timeout and ratcheted up the full-court, man-to-man pressure. “We have them right where we want them,” Pitino said to his players with no hint of his tongue in cheek. “Now we make our comeback.” It worked for a bit. A more aggressive Kentucky quickly reeled off eight straight points to get within four.

Duke kept scoring, however, and by the time Mashburn hit a short jumper from the baseline at the 9:43 mark, the Blue Devils still led 70-65. As Mashburn’s shot fell through, Feldhaus gave Laettner a late and gratuitous shove, sending the 6-foot-11-inch, 250-pound center onto the floor under the basket. Apparently thinking that the nearby Kentucky freshman Aminu Timberlake was the pusher, Laettner waited through three Duke possessions for a chance for a payback. Under the Wildcats’ basket, Laettner leaned into Timberlake while making a layup, sending the freshman to the floor. As the ref called a foul on Timberlake, Laettner thumped the prone Timberlake in the stomach with his right foot.

Laettner drew a contact technical foul, but the referees didn’t eject him. Here’s how the CBS announcing team saw the action. “I don’t know if he did it on purpose or not,” said commentator Len Elmore.

“Oh, yeah, he did,” concluded play-by-play man Verne Lundquist.

Laettner, whose team nickname was “A—,” admitted years later that he did it on purpose but not to hurt the player. Timberlake said in late 1992 that he viewed the stomp as a “chippy move, one that said, ‘I’m Christian Laettner and you’re not.’” Kentucky guard Dale Brown is still mad 20 years later, “He should have been thrown out.”

Mashburn, Pelphrey, Feldhaus and Brown resolutely kept Kentucky in the game as time grew short. With 33.6 seconds left and the score tied at 93, Duke played for the last shot. Not wanting to chance a turnover, Hurley kept the ball and dribbled away some time. With six seconds remaining, Hurley drove toward the lane. He hoisted an off-balance jumper at the right elbow over Woods that bounced off the back iron. “I had a good shot,” Hurley said, “I just didn’t execute.”

The first few possessions in the five-minute overtime period were tense and error-prone, and Duke trailed by two at the 2:17 mark. Laettner responded with two free throws to tie the score at 98 with 1:53 left on the clock. By that point, Laettner had enjoyed a perfect shooting game – eight for eight from the field and eight for eight from the foul line. Mashburn was leading the Wildcats then with 25 points.

After Woods missed a shot on the ensuing Kentucky possession, Laettner put Duke up two with an 8-foot running jumper off the glass. An admiring Pitino said, “That sucker’s never going to miss.”

Mashburn responded with a layup and a foul from Antonio Lang. With his free throw, Mashburn put Kentucky ahead 101-100 with 19.6 seconds left. But at the other end, Mashburn fouled out against Laettner, who made both free throws. Duke 102-101. Only 14.1 seconds remaining.

Once Woods dribbled past halfcourt, Pitino called timeout with 7.8 seconds on the game clock. Woods said in a recent interview that the plan was for him to drive the lane and kick it out if he didn’t have a shot. On the other bench, Krzyzewski marveled at Hurley’s presence of mind in a tense moment. “Bobby was saying, ‘If they score, remember to call a timeout.’ I didn’t say it, he said it.”

Woods took to the air at the foul line and lofted a 13-foot one-hand push over Laettner. The straight-on bank shot went in. Hurley and others later called it a playground shot, but still credited Woods with a clutch play. Brown saw it differently, 20 years later. “Sean made that shot every day in practice. He’d hit that leaner over Jamal all the time.” Brown now admits he thought the game was over at that point.

The Time Out. With 2.1 seconds left, most of the Blue Devils on the court called timeout after Woods’ basket. As his players gathered around him, Krzyzewski confidently predicted, “We’re gonna win.” He called for a play that Duke had attempted against Wake Forest the previous month. On the inbound, Grant Hill would throw a 75-foot pass to Laettner, who would be stationed at the Wildcats’ foul line. If Kentucky swarmed Laettner, he would attempt to tip the ball to Thomas Hill or Hurley. But if the defense allowed, he would catch, turn and shoot. The play hadn’t worked at Wake – Hill’s pass drew Laettner out of bounds – but Coach K had no other options. Besides, Laettner’s last second shot in 1990 beat Connecticut to send the Blue Devils to the Final Four. Surely destiny can ring twice.

“Grant, can you make the pass?” Krzyzewski asked Hill.

“Yeah, Coach, I can do it.”

“Can you catch it?” coach asked Laettner, who nodded yes.

Pitino decided not to guard Grant Hill on the inbound pass. He later cited his limited options on guarding Laettner, the presumed shooter. His two biggest veterans, Mashburn and center Gimel Martinez, had fouled out. He didn’t even consider using his two 6-9 freshmen: Timberlake and Andre Riddick. If he put either Pelphrey or Feldhaus on Hill, the other would have to guard Laettner by himself. He opted to let Hill roam the baseline uncontested and double-team Laettner.

Pitino cautioned against fouling Laettner. “The refs had been calling a lot of touchy-touch fouls,” Brown recalled, “and we didn’t want Laettner going to the line.”

A TV camera panned the stands and found Laettner’s mother, who was wearing a neck brace, rocking forward and back in her seat in abject terror.

The Pass. With Laettner at the foul line, his teammates spread out, keeping the Kentucky defenders, who were in man-to-man, away from Laettner. Only Lang, guarded by Woods, was within 10 feet of the Duke center. But Pelphrey and Feldhaus, hadn’t sandwiched Laettner as instructed. Brown was startled to see both of them behind Laettner. “Pelphrey was supposed to be in front of Christian,” he said.

When the ref flipped the ball to Hill on the baseline, Grant took one step to his right and cocked his right arm. He lofted a high, arching throw 75 feet down the court toward Laettner. The other Duke players began to move closer to the lane, hedging on a tipped ball. Lang ran to the right side of the lane under the basket. Of the long pass, Hill said later, “It seemed like it took forever to get there.”

The Shot. With Pelphrey and Feldhaus behind him, Laettner jumped and easily caught the ball. Pelphrey inexplicably fell away, but Feldhaus stood firm at the foul line with his arms raised. Lang boxed out Woods under the basket.

Laettner first took one dribble, bringing instant gasps from his teammates. “I was surprised,” said Hurley, thinking of the wasted time. After one bounce, Laettner head-faked to his right and then wheeled to his left, going up as he turned. By the time he squared up and was ready to release the ball, Feldhaus had dropped his arms and with his feet glued to the floor, became a spectator. Laettner faded away from the basket as he shot, 17 feet from the glass.

Woods, now on Lang’s hip, turned to watch. “It looked good as soon as it left his hand,” he said years later. Referee Tom Clark positioned himself to see both the release and the game clock. With air between Laettner’s right hand and the ball, it showed 0.2 seconds. Swish. Duke wins.

“I didn’t even see it go in the hoop,” Laettner said after the game. “All I saw was the net move.”

The Upshot. The delirious Dukies fell into the requisite pile on the floor. A TV camera found Thomas Hill, hands on top of his head, repeatedly crying “Oh my God.” The Wildcats aimlessly milled about, except for Sean Woods, who was face down on the court and pounding his fists on the floor. Later, Woods saw Laettner approach.

“Nice game,” Christian said.

“Nice shot,” replied Sean.

Duke went on to win its second straight national championship, while coach Pitino took Kentucky to the Final Four the following year, but lost in the semifinal game.

Laettner now serves as an assistant coach of the Fort Wayne Mad Ants in the NBA Developmental League. His North Carolina-based business activities are the subject of multiple lawsuits. Hurley had been an assistant coach to his brother Danny at Wagner College in New York, but Danny on Tuesday accepted the head-coaching job at Rhode Island. Grant Hill is in his 16th season in the NBA, playing for the Phoenix Suns.

Kentucky’s Woods is the head basketball coach at Mississippi Valley State University, which lost in this year’s NCAA Tournament. Mashburn is a successful businessman after 11 years in the NBA. Pelphrey is an assistant coach at Florida and Feldhaus owns a golf course in Kentucky. Farmer just finished an eight-year run as Kentucky’s commissioner of agriculture. Dale Brown is the head coach at Clark Atlanta University.

In “King of Clubs,” author Jim Ducibella tells the story of golf’s most outlandish wager. A Chicago stockbroker named J. Smith “Smitty” Ferebee bet a friend $20,000 that he could play 600 holes of golf in eight cities, from Los Angeles to New York, during four consecutive days in September 1938.

Wagering has been a part of golf since the 1300s when the game washed up on Scotland’s eastern shore from its early Dutch and Belgian origins. From the beginning, men and women have played their matches for a stake – food, drink or coin – a friendly custom that throws bunker sand on puritanical American attempts to completely separate sports from gambling.

Betting in golf has such a long history that players often resort to eccentric wagers to spice up the routine. Walter Hagen, America’s first touring professional, played a $50 match in 1923 with a friend that started in the pro shop, extended across town and ended in the toilet of their hotel room. Chipping off the ceramic tile floor into the can was the toughest shot of the match. Venerable sportswriter Dan Jenkins enjoyed a similar game with his buddies in Fort Worth in the 1950s. They often played one 1,000-yard hole, starting at the far end of the course and ending with a chipped-out depression in the clubhouse sidewalk that served as the cup.

Ferebee’s friend and former business partner in Chicago, Fred Tuerk, had the other side of the marathon wager. However, other friends and golf partners, as well as interested bookies, soon added their own side bets. By the time Ferebee was ready to tee it up on the first hole of the first golf course on the first day, at least $100,000 had been bet on the outcome ($1.6 million in 2012 dollars).

The proposition attracted the news media’s attention from coast to coast. The story captivated the public, just as other reports interested folks about dance marathons, six-day bicycle races and pie-eating contests. Even the Gray Lady, the “New York Times,” joined the ballyhoo, calling the marathon the “most fantastic golf story ever told or dreamed.”

Ducibella, a veteran sportswriter and member of the media wing of the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame, weaves a character-rich narrative of Ferebee’s golf marathon. Foremost in the supporting cast is Reuben Trane, owner of a growing Wisconsin plumbing and mechanical company. Trane rented an American Airlines DC-3 passenger aircraft, intent on exploiting the publicity spotlight at every stop for his revolutionary air conditioning business.

The plane carried Ferebee, Tuerk, a caddy, doctor, Trane and his PR director and several others, including a stowaway kid and a stray dog. Starting in Los Angeles, Ferebee planned stops during the four days in Phoenix, Kansas City, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Chicago, Philadelphia and New York. Ferebee planned to play four 18-hole rounds in the morning in Los Angeles, fly to Phoenix and hopefully play another 144 holes, plus a couple extra, in the afternoon and evening. He expected to sleep on the plane for the overnight hop to Kansas City, where he would start the cycle of play and fly again. He needed to average 150 a day to make the 600 total.

The terms of Smitty Ferebee’s bet required him to walk or run every hole and he had to personally tee his own ball and retrieve it from the cup. If he posted a score of 100 for any round, he lost the bet. Ferebee nevertheless felt confident, although he usually shot in the 80s at his home course near Chicago, Olympia Fields Country Club.

It’s clear after the first few pages that Ducibella knows how to tell an enjoyable sports story. He carefully develops the main characters in the narrative, especially Ferebee, who was a handsome, athletic and ambitious showman. Through meticulous research undertaken from coast to coast, the author surrounds the characters and action in the narrative with the description and detail that make a good story even more readable. Moreover, Ducibella gives the reader the social and economic context in which the golf marathon takes place – the lingering depression, public fascination with fads and hoopla and the growing aviation industry that enabled Ferebee’s search for a twenty-grand payoff.

Ducibella makes the reader understand that the hero in this journey had to battle his way across the country. Ferebee’s quest was no walk in the park, and the author adds to the narrative tension at every turn by detailing the obstacles the golfer encountered – blisters, a turned ankle, bad weather, minimal sleep, darkness and the pressure of breaking a 100 every time. You have to read the story to the end to see who wins the bet, and Ducibella keeps you turning the pages.

The author hunted down the only living participant from the marathon, caddie Art Caschetta, as well as families of Ferebee, Tuerk, Trane, the aircraft’s pilot and Ferebee’s physician. Braced with his interview tapes, family albums and contemporary news media reports, Ducibella carefully recreated the grand affair.

By the end of the book, readers can be expected to ask, “What happened to these people?” Ducibella scratches that itch by following the major characters to the end of their lives. That touch keeps the story from the ignominy of just another faded newspaper clipping.

The author came to the story as many other writers get ideas – happenstance. Shortly before the 2000 publication of his first book, “Par Excellence,” someone sent him a copy of a Ferebee news article. It gathered dust in his office until early 2006, when it caught his eye. A quick Google search yielded a report of the donation of the late Ferebee’s papers to the Virginia Military Institute, which the golfer had attended for two years. That was enough for Ducibella to tee up the story.

Ducibella wrote for the “Washington Star” before joining the “Virginian-Pilot” in Norfolk, Va., sports staff in 1981. There, he covered local and college football and basketball, and served as the paper’s beat writer for the Washington Redskins for more than 20 years. He is a seven-time recipient of the Virginia Sportswriter of the Year award. Ducibella is now a web writer at the College of William & Mary and lives in Williamsburg, Va.

English National Opera

The Politics of Terrorism, Michael K. Bohn.  February 25, 2012

By the time Palestinian gunmen had hijacked Achille Lauro in 1985, Americans had seen enough images of terrorism in the news media that most had succumbed to stereotyping a late twentieth century terrorist—angry male, Arab Muslim, upraised AK-47.  Whenever film and television people created dramas on the subject, they reinforced the image in simplified morality plays.  Politicians, whether naïve or exploitive, demonized terrorists through inflammatory rhetoric.  Imprecise reporters and television anchors finished off the portrait.  After the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington in 2001, this caricature fed a visceral exercise in bigotry and prejudice.  Consider a comment from a U.S. congressman shortly after September 11, 2001:  “If I see someone come in and he’s got a diaper on his head and a fan belt around that diaper on his head, that guy needs to be pulled over and checked.”

John Adam’s The Death of Klinghoffer attempted in its 1991 debut to bust the stereotype and produce a more sophisticated portrayal of the Palestinian hijackers.  In an extraordinary shift from many social and entertainment norms, the opera featured choruses and arias that focused on the other side of a violent act.  The performers in the hijackers’ roles sang of their feelings, their dreams, and their yearning for a free Palestine.  In America, at least, few were interested in any work of art that treated terrorists as anything other than despicable murderers.

Terrorist stereotyping had reached a point after 9/11 that American politicians began to exploit the public’s fear.  President George W. Bush’s advisors sensed the political advantage of being on the “right” side of terrorism.  Perhaps someone remembered how President Ronald Reagan had gotten a popularity boost after the U.S. Navy had captured the Achille Lauro hijackers.  Reagan saw his approval ratings rise after claiming, “You can run, but you can’t hide.”

Bush and others played on the public’s alarm by deceptively ascribing to al-Qaeda motives that were seemingly apolitical and unassailable—the destruction of America’s way of life, democracy, and western civilization.  Drawing on the existing stereotype, he talked of a battle between good and evil, and us against them.  “Bring ‘em on!” he said.

Bush’s advisors then proceeded to stir these emotions to the president’s political advantage in national elections.  His administration began painting any opponent as “soft on terrorism.”  Democratic Senator Harry Reid later described his view of the strategy.  “During the 2002 and 2004 elections, Republicans tried to sow fear in the American public by claiming that they were the only ones who could keep America safe.”

Yet as Bush sought to diminish al-Qaeda’s objectives to a bumper sticker, Osama bin Laden had continued to speak of his real goals.  Rather than the destruction of American culture and institutions, bin Laden consistently claimed that his violent tactics were reactions to American policies—mainly support to Israel and apostate, corrupt Mideast Muslim regimes, U.S. military presence in the Arabian Peninsula, and the exploitation of energy resources in Muslim lands.  In other words, he pursued an international political campaign using terror as a tactic.

So Bush and like-minded politicians were driving down one lane of a two-way street named The Politics of Terrorism, seeking political gain from violent acts.  Headed the other way was al-Qaeda and those inspired by it, seeking political goals through terrorism.  It is deadly, accident-strewn avenue.

v v v

      On October 7, 1985, four young Palestinian men hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro and its 748 passengers.  While the ship steamed in the eastern Mediterranean, the men demanded Israel release Palestinian prisoners.  When rebuffed, the hijackers murdered one of the passengers, a Jewish-American invalid named Leon Klinghoffer.  Through the intercession, either real or staged, of Yasser Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the four men soon surrendered to Egyptian authorities.

Fearing political backlash from the United States and Israel, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak secretly sent the hijackers and their land-based commander, Mohammed Zaidan (aka Abbu Abbas), to PLO headquarters in Tunisia via an Egyptian commercial airliner.  Through timely intelligence and exquisite nighttime flight operations, the U. S. Navy intercepted the Egyptian plane and forced it to land in Italy.  The Italian government, split by domestic politics on terrorist policies and expecting political heat from Israel, the United States, and the PLO, allowed Abbas to flee to Yugoslavia.  An Italian court later convicted and lightly punished the four hijackers, but called them “soldiers fighting for their ideals,” not terrorists.  The judges also cited their deprived childhoods, spent in Palestinian refugee camps surrounded by violence, as a mitigating circumstance.  The American and Israeli government strenuously objected to the short prison sentences, as did American Jewish organizations.

The whole tragic event was shrouded in political maneuvering, both internationally and domestically.  Abbas, fearing a diminution of his influence within the various factions of the PLO, staged the incident to undermine Arafat’s peace initiatives.  The principal countries involved—Israel, Italy, Egypt, and the United States—all pursued politically acceptable solutions to problems presented by the hijacking and Klinghoffer’s death.  It’s clear the two-way street carrying the politics of terrorism was open for traffic in the mid-1980s, and the pattern remained in place for violence in the 1990s and 2000s.

v v v

      Shortly after the 2001 attacks in the United States, President Bush sold the American public on the idea of invading Iraq by flogging the ultimately unfounded threats of weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein’s ties to al-Qaeda.  He lumped Iraq into the “global war on terror” and talked of stopping the terrorists from afar.  Many nonpartisan experts point to the resulting American-led war in Iraq as a prime al-Qaeda recruiting tool.  Bin laden and his lieutenants publically agreed, and the Iraq and Afghan wars played right into their strategy.

Islamist extremists’ opposition to the Iraq war hit home in Madrid on March 11, 2004.  A series of bombs on city trains precipitated a change in the Spanish government three days later, as well as that country’s withdrawal from the American coalition in Iraq.  Jose Maria Aznar caused other problems for his conservative government by attempting to gain political traction by falsely blaming the incident on Basque separatists.

Similarly, the 7/7 bombings in London in July 2005 generated political backlash for Prime Minister Tony Blair.  He categorically denied that the attack, executed by four al-Qaeda-inspired Britons, was in response to the UK participation in the Iraq war.  “It is a form of terrorism aimed at our way of life, he said, “not any particular government or policy.”  As evidence of the attack’s intended purpose surfaced, Blair’s denial sparked a wave of public distrust for government statements and warnings.  The domestic debate on the politicization of terrorism and fear-mongering, initiated in part by the non-discovery of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2003, paved the way for partisan bickering about terrorism.

The 2001 escalation in the magnitude of suicide terrorism, coupled with oversimplified political speechifying, led to the speculation that the West was facing a “new” terrorism paradigm.  That prompted the University of Chicago’s Project on Suicide Terrorism to examine all suicide attacks worldwide during the period 1980-2003.  The analysis of 315 incidents yielded results that challenged politically correct positions: There is little connection between suicide missions and religion; the vast majority were intended to further strategic or political goals; the attacks were part of a wider military campaign.  The data revealed nothing about religious crusades against the societal values and cultural touchstones that politicians use to rally public support.  (The study did not examine non-suicide incidents.)

The politics of terrorism appears to be part of a broader social development in the years following 9/11 and 7/7—the debate over multiculturalism in Europe.  Politicians have nimbly responded with harder lines on diversity matters, sometimes framing the issue directly in the context of terrorism.  British Prime Minister David Cameron pointed to the 7/7 bombers and said, “Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years.”  Germany’s Angela Merkel acknowledged that her country’s attempt at multiculturalism had “utterly failed.”  Nicolas Sarkozy seconded her feeling in France and banned burkas.  The horrific Norwegian massacre last July put a bloody exclamation point on the increasing aversion within Europe’s far right to Muslims and domestic political parties that support multiculturalism.

In the United States, itself a nation of immigrants, can still produce a surge of bigotry as fast as the news media and Internet can publicize an incident.  The reaction to the proposed mosque near the World Trade Center memorial is an example, along with a Florida church burning a Koran.  Even though the illegal immigration of Latinos hits American politics the hardest, there’s always room for pushback against anyone who doesn’t share the values of what the far right calls “true Americans.”

These recent developments hark back to the opera’s debut in 1991.  Composer John Adams responded to critics when he said to the media, “The Death of Klinghoffer is not only about a brief, violent incident from the recent news.  It is about religious and social intolerance, about a struggle over land that is as old a story as the first pages of written history.”

As the director of the White House Situation Room during Reagan’s second administration, I spent my days and nights with my staff monitoring terrorist incidents around the world.  We wrote twice-daily memos to the president about plane hijackings, airport bombings, and hostage taking that happened at an infuriating frequency.  The Achille Lauro hijacking was near the top of that list.

Those experiences, plus writing a book about the Achille Lauro hijacking, taught me that terrorism is not just about crime and punishment.  Terrorism is about violence, power politics, prejudice, hatred, land, religion, greed, money, and a host of venal factors that all influence human society.  The sooner politicians talk frankly to citizens about terrorists’ motivations and shed the fear-inducing jingoisms, the better societies can adapt to future threats.

Postscript

Leon Klinghoffer was not the only homicide associated with the Achille Lauro hijacking.  Two days after the ship’s seizure, Alex Odeh, a Palestinian-American, defended on television PLO leader Yasser Arafat’s apparent attempt to defuse the incident.  Odeh died the next day when a bomb exploded at his Santa Ana, California, office.  Odeh, a Catholic, was a poet, college instructor, and head of the local American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

Lengthy investigations into Odeh’s death never formally determined who killed Odeh.  The whole affair was obscured by the political currents that govern America’s relationship with Israel and the powerful influence that the Jewish lobby has on American domestic and international politics.  My investigation, which included interviews with law enforcement officials, led to my conclusion that Irv Rubin, head of the extremist Jewish Defense League, was responsible for Odeh’s death.  Law enforcement authorities had identified the JDL as the perpetrator of fifteen terrorist attacks in the U.S. between 1981 and 1985.

In a strange twist, Rubin died 2002.  In jail awaiting trial for an alleged conspiracy to bomb a Los Angeles mosque, Rubin reportedly slit his throat and jumped off the third level of a cellblock.

Michael K. Bohn

Malignant mesothelioma is a tumor found in the lining of the lungs, heart or stomach.  Exposure to asbestos causes mesothelioma.  It lies dormant and asymptomatic within people for as long as 50 years before it erupts.  Once diagnosed—3,000 cases annually—the disease is always fatal.

In 2010, the National Cancer Institute invested $7 million in mesothelioma research, compared to $632 million for breast cancer, $270 million for colorectal and $44 million for kidney cancers.  The world abounds with “orphan” diseases; mesothelioma is certainly one of them.

Alexandria resident Kathy Wiedemer is trying to halt the inexorable tide of mesothelioma suffering.  She is the executive director of the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation, which has its headquarters at 1317 King Street in Old Town.

“The foundation is the primary national nonprofit organization aimed at helping patients and funding research,” explained Ms. Wiedemer in a recent interview.  “Prior to 2004, there was no approved treatment for mesothelioma, but we have helped develop two drugs that briefly extend survival time beyond the usual eight to 12 months.  We are urgently seeking more therapies.”

Surgery can aid about 15 percent of patients, but even those victims will die within three years.

The foundation, created only 11 years ago, uses a board of experts to screen and select proposals for peer-reviewed research on the disease and possible treatments.  Since 2000, it has awarded nearly $8 million in grants to support innovative and promising studies around the world.

Further, the foundation offers one-on-one medical consultations to patients and their families, coordinates support groups and sponsors an annual mesothelioma symposium.  The third major foundation initiative is advocacy for mesothelioma within the federal government.  Because of the long history of asbestos use on naval ships, the foundation convinced the U.S. Department of Defense to help underwrite research.

After joining the foundation two years ago, Ms. Wiedemer organized the move of the foundation from Santa Barbara, Calif. to Alexandria.  “Our board of directors wanted us to be closer to the National Institutes of Health and federal sources of research funding,” she said.

Ms Wiedemer is veteran development director and chief executive officer in the nonprofit healthcare field.  She has been a senior manager at two hospital foundations in Florida, the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University, the National Parkinson Foundation and American Society of Clinical Oncology Cancer Foundation.  She first lived in Alexandria in 1998.

“My two sons attended Georgetown University, and when my husband and I visited them we fell in love with Old Town,” she said.  She and her husband Peter, a sales executive, own a home on Oronoco Street.

The foundation sponsors the annual International Symposium on Malignant Mesothelioma, with this year’s meeting scheduled for July 12-13, 2012 in Washington, DC.  The symposium is a three-day conference for the entire mesothelioma community, including patients, their families, caregivers and advocates.

For more information on mesothelioma and the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation, visit www.curemeso.org.  Please bear in mind that simply Googling “mesothelioma” in search of medical information and resources will also yield dozens of websites associated with lawyers offering advice to victims.

“We really need volunteers to help with event planning and coordination, letter-writing campaigns and fundraising,” Ms. Wiedemer said.  “There is a ‘Volunteer’ tab on our website’s home page.”

Ah, the Super Bowl. The perfect name for America’s greatest sports spectacular. It just wouldn’t work if they called it the “championship.” Can’t sell Budweiser and Ford trucks with that. Plus, a big game like this needs some fancy numbers, like kings and Olympic games.

Oddly enough, the Super Bowl used to have a fairly ho-hum name when it started in 1967 – “The AFL-NFL World Championship.” The NFL came to its senses by the third world title game in 1969. Even more odd, however, is that the origin of the Super Bowl name starts with a couple kids playing with a new toy in Dallas, Texas.

On June 8, 1966, representatives of the NFL and the rival American Football League revealed previously secret plans to merge the two leagues, thus ending a costly and bitter competition for players and TV money. Their joint press release, stealing a geographical spread from baseball, also declared that the two leagues would stage a “world championship game” at the end of the 1966 regular season.

NFL and AFL officials met regularly through the summer and fall of 1966 to iron out myriad merger details. One of the matters was the championship game – where and when would it be played, for example. Also, the men initially didn’t have a name for the title game. The Pro Football Hall of Fame has provided the recollections of Lamar Hunt, the owner of the AFL’s Kansas City Chiefs, on the naming discussions:

“One day at a committee meeting, I asked, ‘Should there be a week off for the championship game?’ And somebody else said, ‘The AFL championship game, or the NFL championship, or what?’”

Hunt responded, “Well I mean the final game, the last game, the ‘Super Bowl,’ you know what I mean.” Hunt admitted the words just popped out of his mouth, perhaps from his subconscious thoughts. (Unsaid, but the word “bowl” came naturally from the postseason rituals of college football.)

Hunt later said that he drew the name from toy balls that his wife Norma had given their two oldest children, Lamar Jr. and Sharron, at the Hunt family home in Dallas. They were Super Balls, made by Wham-O, the manufacturer of the Frisbee, Hula-Hoop and such.

“They were highly compressed rubber balls, which, when bounced on concrete, would literally bounce over a house,” Hunt said. “My son and daughter loved them and were always talking about them.”

The other committee members began to refer informally to the final game as the “Super Bowl.” However, the official name of the game would be the AFL-NFL World Championship. According to writer Michael MacCambridge, Hunt said that no one pushed to make “Super Bowl” the official name. “Far from it,” Hunt said, “we all agreed it was far too corny to be the name of the new title game.” Regardless, the term seeped into the news media and reporters began using it.

Pete Rozelle, the NFL commissioner who would run the combined league, didn’t like the “Super Bowl” name. He thought super was a slang word and inappropriate. Don Weiss, a long-time NFL operations chief, described Rozelle’s reactions in MacCambridge’s book, “America’s Game.” “He was a stickler on words and grammar, and ‘super’ was not his idea of a good word. He thought super was a word like ‘neat’ or ‘gee-whiz.’ It had no sophistication.”

Rozelle reportedly organized a naming contest among sportswriters, but suggestions such as “Ultimate Bowl” and “Premiere Bowl” didn’t light any fires.

The official program and tickets for the first championship game on Jan. 15, 1967, used the league-mandated name – AFL-NFL World Championship. The Green Bay Packers beat the Kansas City Chiefs, 35-10 in the Los Angeles Coliseum. Best in the world! Take that Europe and Asia.

By the third championship in 1969, the fans and news media were calling the game the “Super Bowl.” The program featured “SUPER BOWL” in huge letters in patriotic colors across the top, but the fine print at the bottom still included the words AFL-NFL World Championship. Rozelle, in his Jan. 10 news conference two days before the game, ruefully acknowledged that the name had stuck.

The Wham-O company draws attention to the Super Ball’s connection to the “Super Bowl” in the product packaging. “We are proud that one of our products inspired the name of such a prestigious event,” said Martin Marechal, the firm’s director of marketing.

Similarly, the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, displays a Super Ball in its Super Bowl gallery to remind visitors of the toy’s role in naming the game.

Now, about those annoying Roman numerals. The first four games got by without any numbers. Reporters and fans didn’t need designators for the games; they could just say “last year’s game,” or Broadway Joe Namath’s game. That got harder to do by 1971, and that year’s game was the first to use the Latin counting system – Super Bowl V.

Using the year of the game could be confusing because it happens early in the year following that of the regular season. Was the 1971 Super Bowl between the 1970 champs of the renamed AFC and NFC? Or the title game of the 1971 season? Hence the need for a designator not based on a calendar year.

Yet Super Bowl 3 or Super Bowl 5 seemed pedestrian in view of the growing enormity of the game. Roman numerals, on the other hand, carry more pizzazz and heft. Arthur Daley of the “New York Times” saw the distinction in 1971. “Kindly note the Roman numerals. The league historians are taking no chances that this should slip into the prosaic for want of impressive nomenclature.”

Weiss confirmed Daley’s thought in his 2003 book, “The Making of the Super Bowl.” “While we’ve been chastised to no end for appearing to be pretentious, our sole intent was to avoid confusion.”

Chris McCarthy of the NFL headquarters staff recently confirmed the nature of the Roman numeral usage. “They are unique to the NFL and provide even more status and importance to the Super Bowl. Numerals I through IV were added later for the first four Super Bowls.” Of course, the added benefit is how the Roman angle helps set the gladiator spectacle tone of the whole show.

Still, 99 percent of football fans, borrowing a measurement in the news, can’t tell Super Bowl XLVI from Shinola. Similarly, writers can’t easily use the labels without more information – “Super Bowl XLVI (46), played on February 5, 2012 between the 2011 regular season AFC champions New England Patriots and . . . .”

So that’s the short story of how the NFL super-sized its championship game.

Michael K. Bohn McClatchy-Tribune News Service

As the 2012 PGA Tour season tees off this month, golf fans wonder which Tiger Woods will show up this year. Will he be the erratic player who has struggled recently with aches of the body and soul? Or, as his many followers hope, will he again be the transformational athlete who ignited an explosion of money and media attention on the tour 15 years ago?

Sadly, though, no matter how Woods plays this year, the rapid growth he stimulated in the professional golf industry has slowed. In fact, the “Tiger Bubble,” has gone the way of other semi-irrational economic flurries of the 21st century. Moreover, and to the surprise of some, the Bubble lost steam several years ago.

The Bubble didn’t pop on Nov. 27, 2009 when Woods wrecked his Cadillac SUV. It didn’t collapse in reaction to revelations about his personal life the following month, or because of his uneven play and injuries in 2010 and 2011. The Bubble had already descended to more sustainable heights in early 2005.

The Tiger Bubble, a term Jonathan Mahler coined in the New York Times Magazine in 2010, got its first sizable puff of energy on Aug. 25, 1996. That’s when the 20-year-old golfer won his third straight U.S. Amateur Championship. NBC TV broadcast Woods’ final match and the network’s ratings and viewership numbers swamped those of CBS, which simultaneously carried the professional World Series of Golf featuring Greg Norman and Phil Mickelson.

After Woods turned pro and won his first PGA Tour tournament in October 1996, the Bubble lifted off. Winning the 1997 Masters by 12 strokes sent the Bubble into orbit. Its rapid ascent set a trajectory for much larger bubbles to follow — think dot-com and housing.

The Tiger phenomenon immediately drew vast amounts of money and attention to the tour. The total annual prize money on the PGA Tour tripled in the Bubble’s eight-year period of rapid expansion. In inflation-adjusted 2004 dollars, the number surged from $79.4 million (all figures U.S.) in 1996 to $239.6 million in 2004. That Bubble lifted all tour players to bigger paydays. Only nine of them won at least $1 million in official winnings in 1996, but 77 earned that hefty sum in 2004.

Yet since 2005, PGA Tour prize money growth has slowed, and lately, totals have even dipped. Pgatour.com lists a planned total purse of $278.5 million for its 2012 tournaments, down 3 per cent from 2004 in terms of 2011 dollars. Yet for the pre-wreck and pre-divorce period 2005-2009, Tiger annually averaged 6.2 wins and $9.5 million in prize money. Woods kept dominating, but what happened to the Bubble?

The PGA Tour of the mid-1990s was a healthy but relatively ho-hum affair. Arnold Palmer and Lee Trevino had taken their entertaining charisma to the Senior Tour, just as Jack Nicklaus had transferred his enormous talent. The regular tour putt-putted along with less colourful players.

“The Senior Tour was more popular in 1996,” recalled Jerry Potter, a retired USA Today golf writer. “The Senior Tour, now called the Champions Tour, was growing with all of the recognizable and TV-friendly players. The regular tour was stagnant.”

The period was a lull between stars on the PGA Tour. It has always benefited from cycles of individual brilliance that translated into media attention and prize money. Walter Hagen and Gene Sarazen led the way early, followed by Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan and Sam Snead. Palmer made pro golf a TV sport, and along with the two other members of the 1960s Big Three — Nicklaus and Gary Player — changed the game. Lee Trevino proved that a wisecracking Mexican-American could be a star.

Along came Tiger. At the right time.

Lean, fit and powerful, Woods matched the American stereotype of a professional athlete. In a period when mostly golfers watched TV golf, and the players were indistinguishable from the viewers, Tiger broke the mould. His power game appealed to non-golf fans and his fist pumps and yells echoed the familiar gusto in the NFL and NBA. The beer-and-chips crowd could identify with Tiger when he spit and shouted F-bombs.

Beyond the broadening of the fan base, Woods’ strength and club-head speed, coupled with precise iron shots and a splendid short game, wrought changes in the sport.

“Before Tiger, the PGA Tour was a waltz,” Potter said recently. “Tiger wasn’t into waltzing. His show was a breakdance.”

And there was that thousand-watt smile, and teary embraces with his doting father that seemed drawn from a movie script. Bingo.

To its great good fortune, the PGA Tour had scheduled negotiations for a new TV contract following the 1997 Masters. The extraordinary TV rating that CBS achieved on the final round of Tiger’s breakout win gave tour commissioner Tim Finchem huge leverage with the networks. The $575 million deal for 1997-2002, almost doubling the previous $300 million contract, fuelled the first half of the Bubble.

Television networks eagerly signed up not only because of Woods’ appeal but also for the lucrative golf demographics. Golf viewers, especially well-heeled “baby boomers,” usually have money to spend on brands beyond Bud Light and Chevy trucks. So the Tiger Bubble became a perfect storm of TV money, eager advertisers and sponsors, and a star who could win about every third or fourth time he teed it up.

The TV money sent tour purses rocketing skyward. Other sources contribute to prize money, but the long pole in the money tent comes from rights sales to the networks.

Woods kept delivering the goods to the TV advertisers. His 2001 Masters victory gave him the “Tiger Slam,” simultaneously holding the trophies for all four of pro golf’s major championships — the final three in 2000 plus the Masters. The attendant froth shaped another enormous TV deal — $850 million for the period 2003-2006. Up, up and away went the Bubble.

Through shrewd planning by Deane Beman, Finchem’s predecessor, the PGA Tour business model was able to absorb the torrent of TV cash. Beman had made the tour a tax-exempt charitable organization, as well as insisting that all tournament organizers do the same. This allows net proceeds, after expenses such as prize money, to flow to charities instead of tax collectors. Further, the charity angle provides moral high ground for the tour when it fights antitrust actions and criticism aimed at overpaid millionaires enjoying a walk in the park every week.

The Bubble also has allowed the tour to charge tournament title sponsors seven-figure fees. Part of that sum has gone to the purse, but some monies have been set aside for guaranteed TV advertising buys for the tournament week. This lessened the broadcaster’s risk and helped underwrite the major expense of televising a golf tournament. This model remains in place, and the 2011 title sponsor fees for most tournaments reached the $7 million-$8 million range, according to Adam Schupak in his 2011 book, Deane Beman: Golf’s Driving Force.

By 2005, grumbling among the TV people about losing money on tour broadcasts began to seep out. GolfWorld magazine’s John Hawkins reported in March 2005 that TV ratings had flattened in 2004. “A TV executive confirms that for the first time,” Hawkins wrote, “the networks will lose money televising pro golf over the course of the four-year contract.”

Declining ratings depressed both advertising rates and the net TV revenue stream to the tour. Since purses generally move up and down with TV money flow, the squeeze is reflected in the abrupt slowdown in the growth of annual purse totals.

  Sources: 1986-2010  data, PGA Tour.  2011, GolfWorld.  Inflation adjustment by BLS/CPI.

The number of tournaments each year figures in purse totals as well. From 2000 to 2002, the tour held 49 official events. The number dipped to 47-48 during 2003-2009, and then dropped to 46 in 2010, and 45 in both 2011 and 2012.

To fight the effects of the softening Bubble, the tour created the FedEx Cup Playoffs. Finchem announced the scheme in November 2005, with a planned start in 2007. Another shrewd move, the playoffs also cut an overly long season and reduced the formidable challenge of keeping TV viewers tuned in during football season.

The reported decline in post-Bubble TV profits narrowed the bidders for the 2007-2012 TV package. Only NBC, CBS and one cable network, The Golf Channel, remained in the hunt.

The tour announced its new deal in January 2006, but refused to reveal the amount of money involved. Sources said the contracts involved only minimal increases in rights fees. Hawkins, who again had good insight into the process, reported an important change. Sources also say the tour will cut its subsidy of purses from 62 per cent to the low- to mid-50 per cent range. This meant that sponsors would have to pony up more to sustain the high purses or cut charitable donations.

All of this formed the backdrop for Tiger’s first prolonged absence after winning the 2008 U.S. Open on a broken leg and bum knee. He rebounded with a great season in 2009. But his spotty play in 2010 and 2011, resulting from injuries, swing changes and scandal shock, added to the negative economic forces of the Great Recession that began in earnest in 2008. The combined effects resulted in the recent downward trend in purse totals.

Soft bubbles and tepid purse growth notwithstanding, Tiger remains a powerful force in pro golf. His drawing power continues, even during his time of personal woes and injuries. TV ratings since 2008 have, on a basic level, confirmed the long-standing fact that more people watch PGA Tour events in which he plays than not.

For example, Tiger won the 2008 Buick Invitational, but did not play in 2009, when final-day TV ratings fell 52 per cent. Conversely, he missed The Memorial in 2008, won it in 2009 and the ratings jumped 100 per cent.

But ratings figures also expose a more subtle trend, one that fits with the weakened Tiger Bubble. Viewers’ interest in Tiger wanes when he isn’t in contention. A tie for 44th ain’t movin’ the needle.

This chart shows examples of final-round TV ratings associated with Tiger’s finish.

In 2010, sportswriter and commentator Michael Wilbon summed up viewers’ preferences. “They want to see Tiger up there, dominant, at least in contention. When he’s not, people don’t care.”

On Sept. 1, 2011, commissioner Finchem announced a new nine-year TV rights package with NBC and CBS starting in 2013. The tour is six years into a 15-year deal with The Golf Channel, so all three are committed through 2021.

Neither Finchem nor executives from NBC and CBS disclosed the contract values that day. Finchem only admitted, “Our rights are increasing.” However, he and the TV folks talked repeatedly at the press conference about “underpinning.” For example, Finchem spoke of the “significant underpinning support that the tour guarantees and delivers to the broadcast networks.”

The pinning under the networks is the cash that title sponsors provide for tournament operations, prize money and guaranteed advertising commitments. As Hawkins reported in 2006, the tour reduced by 8-10 per cent its pass-through of TV money to tournament purses during the 2006-2012 TV deal. If more money goes to guaranteed ads in the new contract, less will be available for purses and charitable contributions.

Tiger’s future on the PGA Tour remains a sports bar topic, and CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus acknowledged Woods’ uncertain future. “In our business plan, we did not assume any golfer was going to be as dominant as Tiger had been in the past.”

Woods’ fans are heartened, however, by his good showing in the President’s Cup, and his win in his own charity tournament in the Silly Season, the Chevron World Challenge on Dec. 4. Perhaps he’s ready to pump some air into the tired old Bubble.