The greatly anticipated 2009 Masters was like going to a Broadway hit and finding out that the star, Sir Tiger Woods, was off that night, and his replacement was the cab driver who dropped you off at the theater.
You can't have a U.S. Open anymore without an extra course to store all the hospitality tents. I used to be able to drive up to the clubhouse and park like the players. Now, there are seven corporate hospitality guys who have my spot, and I'm on a bus.
A sportswriter's life means never sitting with your wife or family at the games. Still working after everyone has gone to the party... Digging beneath a coach's lies, not to forget those of athletic directors and general managers and owners of pro teams. Keeping a confidence. Risking it.
The reason I wrote about women's golf is because I've helped out some with the Kathy Whitworth Cup, a tournament they have in Fort Worth every year where they invite 60 of the best junior golfers in the country and even some foreign players.
Something mystical happens to every writer who goes to the Masters for the first time, some sort of emotional experience that results in a search party having to be sent out to recover his typewriter from a clump of azaleas.
The first thing they gave me at 'Sports Illustrated' was a first-class air card. 'And oh, by the way, there's the petty cash drawer,' they told me. 'Take a few thousand dollars for expenses.'
Sally Jenkins of the 'Washington Post' is the best sports columnist in the country. Second best is Gene Wojciechowski of ESPN.com, and third is Dan Wetzel on Yahoo!
There's usually one piece in 'Vanity Fair' every month that grabs me, but when it presents hatchet jobs without substantiation to impress its liberal friends, I laugh first, then toss.
Though it was never a goal in life, it has occurred to me that I've met six presidents of the United States. OK, I met four of them before they became president, including Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, No. 43.
Vijay Singh won a playoff in 2004 at Whistling Straits after a final-round 76, which was the highest last round by the winner of any major since 1938, when Reg Whitcombe won the British Open with a 78 in a storm that blew down the exhibition tent at Sandwich.
Among the many things that have slipped up on me while my back was turned are all of these challenging and well-manicured public courses that have sprung up across America with elegant bars and restaurants.
You must remind yourself at all times that the golf ball is nothing. It's an object. It's something to be swatted and sometimes lost and not even looked for.
Prescott Bush was himself a president of the U. S. Golf Association at one time - 1935 - before he became a U.S. senator from the state of Connecticut.
I quickly discovered that trying to go play golf while living in Manhattan was about as easy as trying to grab a taxi while standing out in front of Saks Fifth Avenue in the freezing rain on the last shopping day before Christmas.
It must be the PGA Championship if it's August and you can sit down and talk to the heat or reach inside your shirt, where it's 110 degrees, and grab handfuls of humidity.