To the dismay of legions of Tiger Woods fans, Greg Norman recently made some public assertions about the game that many not so enamored of Woods have been saying privately for some time. The courses have changed, the player's attitudes have changed and most importantly, the equipment has changed.  In short, golf is not what it used to be and is in danger of its impending irrelevance. Forget Norman's bloviating about if Tiger is good for the game or not.  That's just silly.

Professional sports like baseball and football have their HGH and steroids to enhance individual performance.  Golf has its equipment. 

Those that actually play the game understand the dramatic changes technology has brought. In the not to distant past, the Persimmon wood was the most fearsome club in the bag. Most are familiar with the term "hitting it on the screws". According to The Golf Dictionary by Michael Corcoran: "In the days when woods were actually constructed of wood, they had a plastic insert in the center of the face, the purpose of which was to prevent the wood from deteriorating from constant impact. Some inserts, particularly those in persimmon woods, were held in with several small screws.... When a player would hit a solid drive that felt good, he'd say, 'I hit it on the screws.'"

Screws are a thing of the past with the new composite metal drivers and fairway clubs. Golf clubs made from metal with names straight from the Periodic Table of Elements dominate every pro shop. The result? John Daly used to be the long hitter on the tour followed by the imposing Tiger Woods.  Now they're numbers 5 and 6 respectively on the list behind the likes of Bubba Watson, the leader with a 318-yard average.  In 1980, Jack Nicklaus averaged a then impressive 269 yards off the tee: distance players now routinely attempt from the fairway on most par 5's.  That 50-yard advantage on a 430-yard par 4 allows an approach shot with a wedge instead of an 8 iron.  You can guess which is more accurate.

Golfers today are not bigger and stronger than the Golden Bear, Seve Ballesteros or Jim Dent in their prime. The point that equipment has made the game easier for the amateurs and simple for the pros is moot. The question is what can be done to preserve the nature of the game in the face of equipment that makes average players pros? Make the courses ridiculously long? Grow the rough to 12 inches?

Regarding the advent of the

I like to stay "abreast" of the latest news in the overly manufactured career of Michelle Wie.  In doing so I read many of the articles that make their way into print touting her meager accomplishments, and mounting failures. You can guess which topic has more substance.

Today I had a near stroke trying to comprehend an article on the Fox Dorks web site, in the golf section, concerning Ms Wie written by the Associated Press.  Besides the poor writing, legendary at the AP, the concluding paragraphs are so out of joint and erroneous, that it almost seems intentional deceit.  The following comes from the AP release:

..."What taints her year was competing against the men. 

 Wie rose to international acclaim as a 14-year-old player when she shot 68 in the Sony Open and missed the cut by one shot. A year later, she shot 70-71 at the John Deere Classic and narrowly made the cut. (my italics)... 

..."She tied for 26th at the Women's British Open - her only finish outside the top 5 on the LPGA - and fired her caddie without anyone from the Wie family breaking the news. And after starting her senior year at Punahou School in Honolulu, Wie took a two-week break to take on the end and finished both times, in the European Masters and the 84 Lumber Classic. (my italics)..." 

First, Wie has not made a PGA cut other than the Korean croquet championship earlier this year against men that cannot make the U.S. tour. 

And second, the last sentence has absolutely no meaning whatever.  Wie finished dead LAST in both the European Masters and the 84 Lumber. She missed the cut in both.  It was a joke, yet the AP prints an indecipherable gobble gook about both tournament results and misleads to imply  "she finished".  Does the AP employ editors? 

You can bet there are people out there right now declaring that Wie made a PGA Tour cut, based on their reading of this bozo article.  Further evidence that just cause it's in print, don't mean it ain't a pile a sh!t. 

Much is being written about the sheer stupidity and outright lunacy of Albert Haynesworth's unprovoked attack on Andre Gurode. From this writers perspective the goon should be bounced from the league post haste. At what point anywhere, in any environment in society, is it considered okay to take a foot, wrapped in cleats, and stomp on the face of a man who's lying flat on his back on the ground? For no apparent reason. Maybe it is in that parallel universe known as professional sports, but not in mine.

Worse yet, and something no one has mentioned. Where were his teammates?

I can't imagine the type of bench clearing brawl that would ensue if that happened in a baseball game. How many ambulances, or better yet hearses, would they need to call if it happened in a hockey game? Would anyone reading this let it happen to a friend at a local bar without getting in at least one good shot at the assailant? But here we have the Dallas Cowboys: Sissies in tight pants.

I am stunned that not a single Cowboy took offense to one of theirs being stomped on by an opposing player. Not one Cowboy player could muster the gonads to even wag a finger in the face of the buffoon. If there's video of a confrontation of any sort, I haven't seen it.

I don't condone fighting in any sport. But I do expect my teammates to at least watch my back. If I were Andre Gurode, I would think twice about returning to a team that didn't give a hoot about me when I was at my most vulnerable.

If you've ever been stuck in traffic behind a diesel bus, choking on it's noxious exhaust, you know how refreshing it is to finally pass the polluting behemoth and gasp that first breath of fresh air. In today's sports world, awash in the nauseating fumes of so many stars du jour, Byron Nelson was that breath of fresh air.

In 1944, he won 13 of the 23 tournaments he played. The following year he won a record 18 times in 31 starts (31 victories in just 54 starts), including 11 in a row - also a record. Nelson finished second seven times in 1945, was never out of the top 10 and at one point played 19 consecutive rounds under 70. His stroke average of 68.33 for the season is still the record - based on rounds played.

This week the world lost more than a mere man, a great golfer and mentor to so many for so long.  Society as a whole lost an example of what it means do be a decent man. Long removed from the spectacle of his records and the adulation on the golf course, Byron Nelson lived his life and comported himself with a civility and dignity that is quickly evaporating from our midst.  The heat of the spotlight and the ego of the fleeting star have reduced sports to a 24-hour ESPN cycle of "me". 

"I don't know very much," Byron Nelson said in a 1997 interview with The Associated Press. "I know a little bit about golf. I know how to make a stew. And I know how to be a decent man." Sadly, the generosity of that generation, the generation of our fathers and mothers, is ending.

It's clich

What have the Washington Redskins learned in week one? With any luck they learned that for an offensive coordinator to come to town with a 700-page playbook requires as much folly as it does ingenuity. Football's great thinkers are doing entirely too much of it; namely thinking.

Like lawyers, football coaches have found job security in creating confusion that those outside the profession can't decipher. They have gone from good old X's and O's to some sort of Zen reality where they attempt to marshal the forces of good and evil on third and six. As usual, owners are hesitant to demand simplicity for fear of being made fun of by those privy to the inside joke.  After all, who is going to question the guy who needs a rickshaw to drag around his countless offensive schemes? 

For the knowledgeable football fan there are three basic plays: run, pass and kick. For Al Saunders, new Assistant Head Coach for Offense of the Washington Redskins, devising a way to generate 700 pages of variations of those basic elements is absurdity on a mythic scale. Exactly what are these offensive geniuses thinking? Who do they think is trying to remember all this stuff? Stephen Hawking? Let's be real here. Any playbook with 700 pages must have an awful lot of pictures in it. 

All preseason the Washington faithful were told they were seeing only 2 percent of the aggregate wisdom contained in the Sacred Documents. The other 98 percent they were assured would bring world peace, close the hole in the ozone layer and result in prolific scoring not seen since the glory days of the Fun Bunch and the Smurfs. If Monday night's play calling against the Minnesota Vikings is any indication, I'll be having tea with Osama before Mark Brunell completes a touchdown pass. 

With 700 pages of trickery, why did the Redskins call the wide receiver screen to Santana Moss three times? Did the magic playbook call for one time catching the ball with his left hand, the next with his right and the third an intentional drop to confuse the defenders? When you have first and ten at the 12-yard line and four world-class wide receivers, for the love of Mike, at least try one pass into the end zone before relapsing to the futile rush up the middle and customary field goal. 

Tom Cruise, roller coasters and the awe inspiring 700 pages might bamboozle owner Dan Snyder, but not the Redskins fans. Washington needs to get back to thinking about hard-nosed football instead of patting themselves on the back for creating a chimera playbook no one can grasp and isn't any more clever than the old "student body right" on third and three.