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Hits and misses Venturi doesn't take 'safe' route
Hits... I have to give Ken Venturi credit. As captain of the Presidents Cup team, I thought he'd be too chicken to actually make two wild-card picks and would simply take the players ranked 11th and 12th on points, the way Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer did. Especially since Venturi always talks about "playing it safe" on golf telecasts. Well, he didn't play it safe. He passed over David Toms and Chris Perry, two pretty good players who don't have a lot of major experience, and chose Paul Azinger
and Loren Roberts. Azinger played well in the majors this year, especially at the U.S. Open, the British Open and the PGA until the final round. Roberts, the best putter on tour, was second at the Masters. I know Perry really, really wanted to make the team and was fired up to be a part of it, and Toms may be one of the most underrated players on tour. They would've been good choices, but I don't think Venturi can go wrong with Azinger and Roberts. ... The PGA of America and CBS fell into a lucky deal. Bob May's and Tiger Woods' thrilling duel turned the PGA into the tournament of the year, capped off the best and final major, and generated preliminary ratings that were the highest in PGA Championship history. Major hit. If only May's last, near-miss putt had gone in -- we wanted more. ... Speaking of lucky, the PGA got another break with the weather in Louisville, just as it did in '96. After the Thursday night downpour, the skies slowly cleared Friday and brought unusual fall-like weather --low humidity and highs around 80. If the whole week had been typical, like Thursday afternoon's sizzling heat, the course would have baked, turned semi-playable, and we'd have been writing about how unwise it is to take the PGA to a southern location in August. ... I was talking to Perry after his round Saturday when a man brought him a gift -- a signed Allan Houston New York Knicks jersey. Perry is a big jersey collector, mostly of hockey players, but teed it up recently with Allan Houston's dad in a pro-am and negotiated for a jersey. He's thinking about displaying some of them in a friend's new restaurant in downtown Columbus, Ohio, near the new arena where the NHL-expansion Columbus Blue Jackets will play. Perry has signed jerseys from Wayne Gretzky (including a Canada Cup jersey), Mario Lemieux, Yogi Berra, Reggie Jackson, Harmon Killebrew, Pete Rose and many others. How does he get them? "You've gotta have connections," says Perry. ... Misses... More Presidents Cup: Peter Thomson's two wild-card choices were good, although they were obvious -- Robert Allenby, who won two PGA Tour events this year, and Steve Elkington, a former PGA champion who has had injury problems this year. The weird thing is, Mike Weir of Canada made the Internationals' squad. He's a North American, so wouldn't it make more sense for him to be on the American team? ... I don't know what the PGA was thinking by housing the media in a downtown Holiday Inn in Louisville. Not only was it about as far away from Valhalla as you could get (and there were plenty of good hotels nearby), it was clearly well past its prime and hotel staffers warned guests about walking around downtown after dark. If you're going to Louisville, Kentucky Derby fans, take a pass on downtown.
Sports Illustrated senior writer Gary Van Sickle is a regular contributor to the magazine's Golf Plus edition. Click here to send a question to his Golf Mailbag.
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