Scorecard

It sounds like a terrific idea—for hackers. A touring pro, on the other hand, one of those artists who can fade or draw a ball at will, depending on hole and circumstance, would probably hate it.

REVERSE REVOLT

The continuing battle between men's sports and women's sports triggered by Title IX, the Federal legislation that says colleges must provide reasonable opportunities to both sexes in intercollegiate athletics, has cost the University of Maryland a basketball coach and an athletic director.

No, Lefty Driesell did not quit his hoopsters in a huff, nor did Jim Kehoe give up his job. The one who left was Dorothy McKnight, coordinator of women's athletics and women's basketball coach at Maryland for 11 years. Did she leave because of male resistance to women's rights? Not at all. The athletic committee of the school's board of regents passed a resolution that scholarships should be granted to women athletes, and the full board will vote on the measure in a few weeks. But McKnight feels that the idea of athletic scholarships for women is a mistake, and she wants no part of it.

Her reasons are simple. She says she does not want to sit on a recruit's doorstep the way the men coaches have to, and she feels things will come to that.

"I figure we'll be into the buying and selling business," she says, "and I can't do that. I don't believe this is being done only for the girls. There's going to have to be something coming back. I've had pressure already, without scholarships. Pretty soon they'd be telling me I have to win, or that I better get that guard or that pitcher. I don't need it."

McKnight says her main objection to athletic aid is that it more often helps the coach or athletic department than the man or woman it is supposed to assist. "Right now," she says, "I ask a girl, 'Can we help you?' Under this new program, I'd be asking, 'Can you help us?'

"I just don't believe what's happening. I mean, we finally have the men cutting back on financial aid, and now they want to get women into it. To me, it's asinine."

BLOCKBUSTER

Muhammad Ali, the author, was the star of the recent Frankfurt Book Fair, the world's biggest gathering of publishers. More than 4,000 representatives from all over the world were in the German city for six days, and more than a quarter of a million book titles were on show. Ali, stopping by on the way home from his triumph in Manila, checked in with Random House, publishers of The Greatest, which was written for Ali by a professional ghost named Jim Durham. Random House was peddling foreign rights to the book and doing a land-office business. Droemer, a German company, paid $200,000 to put it out in German, and this did not include the fee the magazine Der Spiegel will pay for serializing it. British, French, Swedish and Turkish publishers got into the swing of things, sending the figure toward the half-million mark, and Random House expected it to go beyond that when a deal for a Japanese version was completed.