Gone in 2.5 Pitches: The Fleeting Life of a Baseball in Modern MLB

For pitchers, it was once like a $100 bill floating from the sky and landing in the palm of their hand. They would get a ball from the catcher, look it over, and there it was: a scuff mark. They didn’t put it there, but they sure knew what to do with it. It was found money, a supercharged sinker.

“We were watching the Ryne Sandberg game the other day,” said Kansas City Royals pitcher Seth Lugo, referring to a replay of a 1984 broadcast from Wrigley Field. “Sinkers in the dirt, foul balls, the umpire gives ’em to the catcher and they’re throwing ’em back to the pitcher. It wasn’t that long ago. No wonder they all had great sinkers — all the balls were scuffed!”

If Lugo gets a ball with a mark on it, he said, he’ll try to use it as long as he can. But the baseball gods almost never bestow such a gift anymore. As soon as a ball touches dirt, it’s tossed out of play before the next pitch.

It’s got to be a rule, right? To root out the trickery that crafty pitchers once mastered?

“No, no, it’s not automatic,” said Marvin Hudson, an MLB umpire since 1998. “If it hits the dirt, catchers will throw it out quicker than I would. If they hand it back to me, I look at it, and if it’s not scuffed, I’ll wipe it off and keep it in my ball bag. But players are a lot different than they were back when I first came in, as far as what type of ball they want. It’s kind of comical, to be honest with you.”

Watch a ballgame today — really watch it — and you’ll be amazed at how often the pitchers, catchers and umpires change the ball. Just how many does it take to get through a game? It’s like trying to guess how many jelly beans are in a jar. You can’t tell on TV, because the ball isn’t always on the screen. And you can’t tell in person unless you commit to looking solely at the ball the entire time.

So that’s what I did. Twice this summer — on July 22 in Philadelphia and August 11 in the Bronx — I tracked the fate of every baseball used in the game. (...)

Both of the games were fairly ordinary: The Phillies beat the Red Sox, 4-1, and the Yankees beat the Minnesota Twins, 6-2. They were both night games, outdoors on grass, with no precipitation. Eleven pitchers combined to throw 508 pitches — 249 in Philly, 259 in New York — while using 202 different baseballs.

That comes out to 2.51 pitches per ball, right in line with MLB’s official data from the last few seasons: 2.60 in 2023, 2.52 in 2024 and 2.44 this season through August 20th.

Pitchers tend to know this without being told. Ask a pitcher to guess the lifespan of a baseball, and he’ll almost always nail the answer.

“I’d say the average life expectancy is less than three (pitches), slightly above two — and it didn’t used to be like that,” said Boston’s Liam Hendriks, 36, who started his pro career in the Gulf Coast League in 2007.

“We had a couple dozen balls for a GCL game. Any time a ball was in play and it was fielded, you’d use that ball unless you asked for a new one. And if you were a starting pitcher that wasn’t pitching that day, you had to chase down the foul balls.”

Things were similarly loose in the college game. Milwaukee Brewers manager Pat Murphy, who spent 22 years coaching Notre Dame and Arizona State through 2009, said umpires very rarely changed out the balls.

“I’d stick a road apple in there when the guy asked for balls — you did that sometimes, slip in an old BP ball just for fun,” Murphy said. “You knew the budgets were always tight. A big slice on the ball, they’d change it out. Other than that, no way.”

For decades, this is how it was in the major leagues, too. Oversight of the game’s foundational object was not a priority.

“When Don Mincher was our first baseman, if I had a guy up like Bubba Phillips, who was a notorious first-ball hitter, they’d throw the ball around the infield and Minch would come over to the mound and I’d say, ‘Give me the infield ball,’” said Hall of Famer Jim Kaat, who pitched from 1959 to 1983. “I’d give him the game ball and he’d throw it in the dugout. So the first ball I threw was the infield ball with all the grass stains on it.”

Coaches from that era would pass down the dark arts to the next generation. Mel Stottlemyre, a contemporary of Kaat’s, had pitched with Whitey Ford for the Yankees. Ford loved using scratched baseballs – he would apply it himself with a specially designed ring, or have the catcher, Elston Howard, subtly drag the ball across a metal buckle on his shin guards.

“Whitey was a master, and Mel was a master, too,” said David Cone, who pitched on staffs coached by Stottlemyre with the Mets and Yankees. “The trick he taught me was to keep the ball in your hand when you go down and grab the rosin bag, then touch the ball to the ground and you get a little dirt on it. You’d have a little sweat on the ball so the dirt would stick. He could make the ball dance and sink naturally with just a couple of pebbles of dirt.”

Cone, who pitched from 1986 to 2003, learned the perils of this about halfway through his career. One afternoon in 1995, pitching for the Toronto Blue Jays in Oakland, Cone got a ball with a scuff in the perfect spot: the middle of the leather, on the wide opening between the seams of the horseshoe.

He put the scuff on the left side and gripped it like a sinker, knowing the ball’s right side — now heavier than the left — would naturally shift away from the blemish. And it did, much more than he intended.

“It just went vroooom — shot up and hit Mark McGwire right in the helmet,” Cone said. “Sent him to the hospital and knocked him out of the All-Star Game. That’s when I said, ‘Oh s—, I’ve got to be a little more careful here.’ Scared the hell out of me. That’s when I stopped doing a lot of that.”

Cone’s awakening roughly coincided with a shift in attitude about the supply of baseballs for any given game. Until returning from the 1994-95 strike, when teams were eager to repair fan relations, MLB discouraged players from giving balls to fans. Memos posted in clubhouses warned that fans could be injured, but teams were also just stingy with the supply.

“They were counting every baseball and reusing things – and don’t take this in a bad light, but we weren’t pushed to make it a fan-friendly experience,” said Jamie Moyer, who pitched from 1986 to 2012. “Right now it’s fan-friendly. If you can give away all the balls, go ahead, give them all away!”

That’s the illusion, anyway.

Once the game starts, if a staffer down the foul lines tosses a ball into the crowd — or a player does it, as they do at the end of almost every half-inning — it’s OK. And if a player in the dugout snatches a foul ball and holds onto it, nobody’s going to take it from him.

Almost every other ball goes to the MLB authenticator, who sits by a little tabletop in the corner of (or adjacent to) the home dugout. Once each ball is logged and labeled, it is ready to be sold; prices at a recent Phillies game ranged from $39.99 for a ball pitched by the visitors (and not put in play) to $199.99 for an RBI double hit by a Phillie. (...)

Baseballs arrive at the ballpark in cases of 72 boxes, with each box holding a dozen balls. That’s 864 balls in a case. The Phillies estimate that their storage room holds somewhere between 36 and 48 such cases. If it’s four dozen, that means more than 40,000 baseballs waiting to be used.

To be game-ready, though, the balls must be stored for two weeks, untouched, in a humidor set to 70 degrees at 57 percent relative humidity. Three hours before each game, clubhouse attendants apply a mixture of water and mud to 192 balls (16 dozen), which are then inspected by an MLB gameday compliance monitor. Fourteen dozen approved balls, or 168, must be available for each game.

The mud itself has a charming baseball backstory. It is named for Lena Blackburne, a light-hitting infielder from the 1910s, and still sifted from the same spot.

by Tyler Kepner, The Athletic |  Read more:

Image: Dan Goldfarb

For Bill Belichick’s Debut, UNC Came to Party — But Got a Buzzkill Instead

Chapel Hill, N.C. — At least the party was fun, right?

Right?

It better have been, for what came after: North Carolina, high on nine months’ worth of Bill Belichick-induced hope, being completely humiliated, 48-14, by TCU in a prime-time Labor Day opener.

Not only is that the most points UNC has ever allowed in a season opener, it’s also the most points Belichick has ever allowed as a head coach.

“Look, they just outplayed us. They out-coached us,” said a red-faced Belichick from behind a postgame podium Monday night. “I mean, they were just better than we were tonight.”

That’s a tough truth to swallow, especially considering the larger circumstances. Ever since December, when the Tar Heels pushed their chips to the center on a 73-year-old who’d never coached a game in college, the spotlight has been on this one night. On B-Day — Belichick Day, the day when the six-time Super Bowl-winning head coach would signal a new era of football in Chapel Hill.

Which is why, understandably, UNC threw the pregame party to end all pregames. Everything, on 10, everywhere. Even on the fringes of town — in parking lots, on Franklin Street — you had fans tailgating in crevices and alleys, smoking cigars while sitting in baby blue picnic chairs, the soft thud of bean bags slapping against cornhole boards around every bend. Closer to campus, fraternity ragers spilled into the streets, while gigantic banners — like one that read “What the f— is a Horned Frog?” — hung in the background. And the soundtrack to it all? Dua Lipa’s “Levitating,” the pop star’s apt lyrics reverberating throughout fraternity court: “I can take you for a ride…”

STRONG pregame vibes in Chapel Hill pic.twitter.com/fMUjdqTHWe
— Brendan Marks (@BrendanRMarks) September 1, 2025

Meanwhile, at He’s Not Here — one of UNC’s most popular bars, famous for its 32-ounce blue cups — liquid courage flowed freely hours before kickoff. “This is like the Duke game!” hollered one fan, barely able to move through the masses after the three empty cups in his grasp. Clearly, plenty of the season ticket-holders who signed up for the Belichick experience wound up here, elbow to elbow, marinating in pregame enthusiasm. Another late-arriving customer, seeing the beer line wrapping outside the bar and down a black metal staircase, had to talk himself into even attempting to buy a drink: “Lord, have mercy.”

By that point, two and a half hours before everything unraveled, the buzz had migrated to the Old Well, the iconic drinking fountain that serves as a UNC emblem. As part of Belichick’s push to elevate Tar Heels football, the coach said he wanted to bring back certain elements of the school’s football history — including the Old Well Walk, which originated under Carl Torbush in 2000. And there fans were, four-deep, walling off the space around the fountain, where buses would deliver North Carolina’s players and coaches. The only issue? Those buses arrived minutes before the designated 5:30 p.m. start time … leaving dozens of stragglers, from across a wide quad, late for the party. (...)

That crowd, more than any, provided a snapshot of modern-era UNC football. Plenty of CHAPEL BILL merch in the crowd — T-shirts, buttons, the works — but also a surprising amount of New England Patriots gear, fans of Belichick’s former team showing out for their old coach. Small clusters of students, almost apologetically proclaiming: “We’re really into football, but we just don’t know any of the players.” (And with 70 new names on Belichick’s first roster, nor should they.) Old-timers, too, in their worn Lawrence Taylor and Charlie “Choo Choo” Justice jerseys, mingling with the shiny-new Drake Maye and Omarion Hampton ones. And lastly, the curious, those who came to see the spectacle of Belichick, who could only stare with wide eyes at the sea of blue rolling across Polk Place.

As one said on the phone before the cell signal dropped out: “Mom, there are a lot of people.”

And then, hours later, there weren’t. The pregame light show, the fireworks, all that momentum swelling inside Kenan Stadium? It didn’t vanish in a flash, but rather, in gashes. (...)

What began as a celebration, as a precursor of future success, could not have turned more sour. UNC waited nine months, and spent millions of dollars, for empty stands before the fourth quarter began. For loyalists who stayed until the final whistle, so few and far between, you could quite literally count them? (Unofficially 69 in the eastern end zone, by one reporter’s count.) The countless UNC dignitaries who made the pilgrimage back to Chapel Hill — Michael Jordan, Lawrence Taylor, Mia Hamm, Julius Peppers — couldn’t leave early, for optics, but buried their heads in their phones all the same.

Anything but what was right in front of them.

The official time of death — not just for this one game, but for the larger UNC hype machine — was 11:24 p.m., a whimper of an end to a day that once held so much excitement.

by Brendan Marks, The Athletic |  Read more:

Image: Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images

[ed. See also: Six games in 5 days: What a college football road trip taught me about the state of the sport (Athletic).]

Finally! Tommy Fleetwood Slays All Demons, is a PGA Tour Winner, the FedEx Cup Champ and $10 Million Richer

Fairway Jesus. All-around good guy.

Tommy Fleetwood finally did it. He won his first PGA Tour title on Sunday, and it wasn’t just any tournament. He won the Tour Championship, which means he also won the season-long FedEx Cup title. He won $10 million. He won the season-long resilience trophy, too.

He clearly has learned some lessons. He taught some, too.

After finishing runner-up six times and third six times, after posting 30 top-five finishes, after banking more than $33 million—not a dime of which buys satisfaction—after 163 frustrating starts, including two agonizing self-inflicted near misses earlier this summer, Fleetwood slayed doubts and demons in the most definitive way possible. With nothing but sour memories to summon, he held his nerve and held onto the lead down the stretch for a three-shot victory over a small but elite field at East Lake Golf Club.

“I’ve been a PGA Tour winner for a long time, always in my mind. Nice to do it in reality,” said Fleetwood, 34, wearing alternating emotions of happiness and relief on his face. Pride, too. Justifiably so.

A final-round two-under 68 wasn’t without its moments of worry for the Englishman. Heck, as he played the par-5 home hole with a three-shot lead, Fleetwood found it hard to relax. Such is the case with scar tissue. But his 18-under 262 total beat Patrick Cantlay and Russell Henley by three shots as Fleetwood became the first player since Chad Campbell in 2003 to make the Tour Championship his first career win.

After he tapped in for par, Fleetwood looked overwhelmed. But only momentarily. Then he raised both arms and let out a roar as the American crowd chanted his name. (...)

Twice now this year golf has witnessed a redemptive moment in Georgia. In April at Augusta National Golf Club, it was Rory McIlroy capturing the Masters and the career Grand Slam and etching his name into history. Fleetwood didn’t have to wait as many years as McIlroy, but he had to endure disappointment over many more tournaments. Yes, he had won eight times abroad, but he still felt like he wasn’t a complete player until he put down a marker in the U.S.

“It's a step in everybody's career that they want to make,” he agreed. “You don't need anything, but I wanted it. I wanted to do it. I go back to it, this one win, it sort of completes the story of the near misses, and it has a crescendo to what has been building towards the back end of the season. But when I go home, I'm just going to start practicing again. I'm going to start working again, and I'm going to look towards the next tournament.”

Tied with Cantlay after 54 holes just two weeks after he had surrendered the final-round lead in the first leg of the playoffs, the FedEx St. Jude Championship, Fleetwood didn’t submit an impeccable round of golf, but for once he managed to erase errors with timely swings and key putts. And he also got help from his main challengers on a day of sunshine and surprising stumbles.

Once on each nine Fleetwood secured back-to-back birdies soon after a bogey. The ones at the 12th and 13th with matching six-footers came after a two-shot swing at the 10th enabled Cantlay to briefly climb within one stroke of Fleetwood. But having lost his swing for a few holes, Fleetwood righted a ship that had previously ran aground.

“I think I did an amazing job today of … I had to reset myself. It wasn't easy today; it wasn't plain sailing,” said Fleetwood, who is expected to rise from 10th to sixth in the world. “I lost my swing in the middle of the round. I was really erratic, and I had to find my swing, really under … I don't think trying to win a tournament is as much pressure as trying to keep your playing rights, things like that. It's a different type of pressure. I'm not going to say it's bigger or less, it's just a different type of pressure. It's a joy to be in contention and try and win golf tournaments.

“At the same time, you have to deal with those little demons that are in the back of your mind, and doubt creeps in. You remember what you got wrong, don't want to get it wrong again, and you have to force yourself to think of the positives. I think just as experience builds, at some point you're going to get it right, and I did today.” (...)

It wasn’t just the eight years of consistency on tour that have contributed to the narrative that Fleetwood was due for a breakthrough. Consider his last eight rounds; he resided among the top six on the leaderboard after each. And then he extended that streak throughout the week at East Lake, a first in the FedEx Cup Playoffs thanks to shooting in the 60s each day.

Resilience is a bit more achievable when you’re on form. Nevertheless, you have to talk your mind into letting your body hit the shots. You have to show heart, too. That was Fleetwood’s real triumph this week.

“I think it shows how great of an attitude he has towards the game, how resilient he is,” McIlroy said.

“I enjoyed it while it lasted in a sick way,” Fleetwood said with a smile, referring to the recurring questions about his inability to close out a victory in America. “I hope that I can give … that we can talk about plenty more things in the future, really. I will look back at all of this, and again, I feel like I keep repeating myself. I'll be proud of the strength that I had to show to keep coming back and showing that it can be done if you're resilient enough and you keep putting yourself in those positions.

“I'll look back at it and I'll be able to tell people that I am really, really pleased that I get to talk to kids or aspiring golfers or aspiring sports people, whatever they're trying to do, and I can genuinely talk about showing resilience or keep coming back after tough losses and keep working and all of those things and the skills that you have to use in order to put yourself there again and then finally get it done. I'm really, really pleased that I get to do that, and that I'm proof that it can happen.”

by Dave Shedloski, Golf Digest |  Read more:

Image: via

[ed. Happy to see Tommy finally win a big one (like everyone else in golf world). What's most impressive is that after all those near misses he never got down on himself or doubted his abilities, just took everything in stride and continued pressing on. A good win for a good guy (here's an example of his character; here too). See also: The critical moment that led Tommy Fleetwood to his first PGA Tour victory (GD).]

She Might Be the World’s Best Receiver: Isabella Geraci, U.S. Flag Football Star

The last time they held this tournament, Isabella Geraci wasn’t a thing yet.

It was just three years ago. She was playing a different sport entirely, her upcoming ascendancy unfathomable.

“I don’t know how to explain it,” teammate Madison Fulford said. “She’s kind of a vibe.”

Through five seasons of Division I college basketball, Geraci’s teams listed her at 5-foot-9, although the game made her feel smaller. Then, almost by accident, she began playing flag football to reclaim her identity. In a flash, Geraci not only made the U.S. national team, putting her on the cusp of becoming an Olympian, but she is also considered one of the greatest wide receivers in the world.

The USA Football media guide correctly lists her at 5-foot-7. On the field, she is starting to look larger than life.

“When she stands next to you,” said Callie Brownson, “there’s a standing-next-to-giants kind of feel about her.”

Brownson is USA Football’s senior director of high performance and national team operations. She previously spent five years with the Cleveland Browns as their chief of staff and assistant wide receivers coach.

Brownson is among those who declare Geraci, 24, the globe’s best receiver (no qualifiers).

“I think about it a lot: How did I get here?” Geraci said last week near her suburban Cleveland home before departing for Chengdu, China, and the World Games, an international event for non-Olympic sports. “What did I do? I really don’t even know. It’s a pinch-me moment all the time, where I can’t believe I’m in this position.”

Geraci is an avatar for flag football’s profound growth. Girls and women are gravitating toward the burgeoning opportunities. The International Olympic Committee approved flag football for the 2028 Los Angeles Games, with the NFL heavily involved in promotions and letting its players participate. The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) added women’s flag football as a scholarship sport, while 17 states (and quickly growing) have sanctioned girls’ flag football as a varsity sport.

Talent development has been exponential, as evidenced by Team USA’s roster turnover. Only two members of the roster that lost in a stunning blowout to Mexico in the 2022 World Games final are back this year: quarterback Vanita Krouch and defensive back Deliah Autry-Jones.

“We don’t know what we are going to expect because the game has been growing that fast,” Mexico quarterback Diana Flores said of defending the team’s gold medal. “That’s the most exciting part of this for me.”(...)

“There’s really nothing like it,” Geraci said about her passion for flag football. “I feel like it’s my true calling.”

There is no hemming or hawing from Brownson when asked what sets Geraci apart. Before taking the USA Football job in January, Brownson marveled at what she saw on video: size, the suction fingers, the ability to beat defenders with pure route running, leaping power, that-ball-is-mine defiance.

“It’s like a vacuum, the way that her hands work, when the ball approaches, her grip,” Brownson said. “She can win just off her routes, and that’s essential in the five-on-five game, especially on short routes, where you have to win now.

“But a big strength of her game is what she does downfield. She’s able to create separation, but when a 50-50 ball goes up in the air, it’s Izzy’s. It’s really special to watch what she can do in contested situations.”

To ask a football expert about comparables can be folly, potentially dangerous. Scouts and coaches are hesitant to load expectations on a player, no matter how accurate the resemblance may be.

Especially when discussing a rookie.

“Sometimes, when she’s stretching the field and makes an unbelievable play,” Brownson said, “you see shades of Julio Jones, Calvin Johnson, who are the quarterback’s dream: ‘Hey, I’m in trouble, and I’m just going to put this up.’ Izzy’s down there somewhere.”

Brownson, though, stressed she doesn’t want to pigeonhole her because Geraci is equally extraordinary at short and intermediate routes, too.

OK then.

by Tim Graham, The Athletic |  Read more:

Image: Carlin Stiehl/via Getty Images

Ben Hogan and Arnold Palmer at The Masters, 1966
via:

[ed. Old school cool.]

Are Pro Golfers Getting Angrier?

A recent major champion stands on the third tee at Riviera Country Club. It’s the second round of one of golf’s marquee events, and he hits a poor drive, the kind of shot at the wrong moment that just sets you off. He can’t stand it. He smashes his driver into the nearby cart path, so hard the driver head explodes. Shrapnel flies into the crowd. One large chunk shoots just by a spectator and continues into a nearby fairway. Chaos.

The spectator and her husband shout at the player. So do other gallery members. He mumbles an apology.

The PGA Tour finds out. It sends a letter of inquiry to the player. He doesn’t respond for at least two weeks, is hit with a hefty fine and must pen a letter of apology to the spectators he nearly hit. It’s an embarrassing public moment for both the player and the tour.

Amidst the last few months of viral golf explosions, unconvincing apologies and a dramatic banishment from one of golf’s most iconic venues, you might be assuming this is a story from the summer of 2025. You might be wondering if it was Wyndham Clark, or Rory McIlroy, or perhaps Tyrrell Hatton.

Nope. This was 1992. And it was the 1989 Open Championship winner Mark Calcavecchia.

The great Bobby Jones, the winner of the Grand Slam and creator of Augusta National, a man who tore up his scorecard at the 1921 Open Championship and walked off in anger during the third round, once said, “I would forgive almost any behavior in a man when he has a golf club in his hand.”

That’s the topic at hand this summer, because suddenly golf-adjacent temper tantrums are jumping the shark from funny little anecdotes to viral, controversial talking points. It’s the summer McIlroy, two months after the crowning achievement of his career, threw clubs and smashed a tee marker at the U.S. Open. A week later, five-time major winner Brooks Koepka was caught doing the same.

Wyndham Clark, two years removed from a U.S. Open win that thrust him into stardom, has done the most damage, quite literally. His driver’s biggest impact at the PGA Championship was the hole it left in a T-Mobile sign, which just happens to be one of his sponsors, and who tried to save him by turning it into an activation. He was not so lucky at the U.S. Open, where he destroyed a locker and was asked by Oakmont Country Club to not return until, among other things, he undergoes anger management therapy. (...)

This is the summer that golf outrage became a thing. But if you ask anybody around golf the past half century, they’ll tell you the only difference between now and then is that everybody is making a big deal of it.

“This story has been going on since the time of professional sports,” says Billy Andrade, age 61 and a four-time PGA Tour winner. “This isn’t anything new.”

Why is it so much bigger now? Cameras. Social media. Outrage culture. Pick one. The fact it used to be a luxury to get an entire tournament round on TV, but nowadays between Golf Channel, ESPN+, Peacock, NBC and CBS, you can theoretically watch every minute of a round from the first group to the last. It’s all right there for us to see, and in turn it’s all right there for somebody to record and post a clip online to get clicks and attention.

But is any of this actually any worse than before?

Tommy Bolt, a 1958 U.S. Open winner, is more famous for his on-course antics than the golf itself. They called him “Terrible Tommy,” constantly throwing clubs into the water or cursing up a storm. Tour officials created new rules because of his behavior. One time, he cursed so much that officials informed him of a $100 fine for each expletive. As the old story goes, Bolt pulled out his wallet, grabbed $500, and turned to each official to say, “F— you, f— you, f— you, f— you and f— you” while handing each of them a $100 bill.

“It thrills crowds to see a guy suffer. That’s why I threw clubs so often,” Bolt once told Golf Digest. “They love to see golf get the better of someone, and I was only too happy to oblige them. At first I threw clubs because I was angry. After a while it became showmanship, plain and simple.”

Brandel Chamblee recalls playing with a golfer who once hooked his drive into the water. Chamblee and the rest of the group started walking, only to turn around when they heard a slight hissing noise. The man had unzipped his pants and begun urinating on his driver.

“If any of these were nowadays, now everybody is a journalist, and these all would have gone viral and people would have thought tour pros were a bunch of babies,” Chamblee said.

Steve Pate and Thomas Pieters have both broken clubs around the back of their neck. Woody Austin banged his putter against his head over and over until it bent. John Huston played the final two holes of a U.S. Open qualifier with a hastily-made tourniquet, after the shaft of a tossed club ricocheted back and stabbed him in the arm.

Two-time U.S. Open winner Curtis Strange was so mad during a 1982 tournament at Doral that as he walked behind his caddie Gene Kelley, he impulsively kicked the bottom of the bag Kelley was carrying. Both went flying to the ground. Kelley needed surgery to fuse two vertebrae and later sued Strange; They settled out of court.

Jose Maria Olazabal punched a wall at the 1989 U.S. Open, breaking his hand and forcing himself to withdraw.

Oh, and smashing tee markers?

“The place you want to do it is the Hawaiian Open with actual real pineapples,” Andrade said.

So many golfers lay claim to smashing those pineapples at Waialae Country Club in Honolulu at the event now called the Sony Open. Corey Pavin. Brad Faxon. Craig Stadler. Calcavecchia. Imagine the sight of Stadler, known as The Walrus with his big, droopy, mustache, thinking it was plastic as he smashed the pineapple and instead covered himself in pineapple pulp. Calcavecchia remembers hitting one and spraying the poor marshal nearby.

Most of these stories, if they didn’t end up involving lawsuits or fines, were simply told after the fact, locker room and barroom tales passed around between golfers. Most golf writers around in those days simply didn’t write about them, not because they were covering for golfers or scared to. It just wasn’t news. It’s something that happens on golf courses all the time.

Chamblee has become something of golf’s moral voice over his decades as a Golf Channel analyst, a smart, insightful former pro who enjoys pontificating on larger issues in the game. So, yes, he was on the broadcasts as criticism mounted this summer over McIlroy, Clark and the rest. He says he didn’t want to criticize any of those actions too heavily, because he knew he had done the same things, if not worse. The difference was he wasn’t the kind of star who always had cameras on him, so most went unnoticed.

Chamblee does concede it is happening more often. And it definitely happens more often with the biggest stars. He has a multi-point theory for why that is.

• One: More documentation. The mere fact there are so many people with phones, so many people watching at home and rushing to clip anything they can to get it online to go viral. Simply, there are more eyeballs.

• Two: Easier equipment replacement. Golfers used to sometimes go their entire careers with the same driver. There was a mystique to finding the perfect shaft that worked for you. You’d think twice about breaking any club, because it might take you years to ever have your equipment that dialed. Nowadays, golfers can walk over to the equipment truck and order up a new driver like it’s a food truck burrito stand.

• Three: Money. In both ways. A $100,000 fine for Calcavecchia was deflating. That was a fifth of his total earnings most years. Now, these stars are worth tens of millions, if not more. No fine can even put a dent in their life. But it works both ways. They are also playing for so much money that the tensions can escalate.

• Four: Tiger Woods.

by Brody Miller, The Athletic |  Read more:

Image: Kelsea Petersen/The Athletic; Andy Lyons, Simon Bruty/Getty

[ed. Sorry, this is bs. No excuses.]

Ichiro Suzuki Inducted into National Baseball Hall of Fame

 

[ed. Couldn't happen to a classier guy. Never heard him speak a word of English before except through an interpreter. Funny, too.]

British Open 2025: Inside the Giant Scoreboard on the 18th Hole. Operated by ... Teenagers

PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland — A head girl named Gracie wears a headset—over here, "head girl" means something like "class president"—and the information travels the airwaves from Score Control, a hub near the media center. Not long after the new scores crackle in her ear, Gracie and her fellow students from Coleraine Grammar School and Dominican College spring into action, picking up plastic tiles with letters and numbers and sometimes full names from nearby shelves, and placing them backwards—to their eyes—in the giant structure in front of them. Diffuse light comes through that giant yellow wall, but aside from a few cracks, they can't see much on the other side.

But everyone can see them … or last the result of their work. They're the nerve center of a 50-year-old tradition here at the Open Championship that continued this week for the 153rd edition of golf’s oldest major. These are the iconic yellow scoreboards perched above the grandstands on the 18th green, and Gracie's teen-aged gang are inside them, surrounded by wooden planks and scaffolding and a stairway spanning the three floors of the board. (One thing here—you better learn to duck if you don't want a bump or three on the top of your skull.) It's their job to make sure the fans outside, and the TV cameras, and everyone walking the course in the nearby vicinity, are up to date on the drama of the championship.

The twin yellow giants have become a charming icon of this tournament since they were first implemented in the early '70s, and because they're so instantly recognizable they transport you to a specific place, not unlike the white-and-green manual boards used at Augusta National for the Masters. It's true that the boards themselves, and all the students and advisors within them, could be replaced by something digital, and apparently there was recent discussion along those lines, but the R&A fortunately recognized that there's something irreplaceable and delightful about the analog structures on the final hole.

At the scoreboard, the jobs involve four-hour shifts, with around eight students manning each of the two active floors inside. The top six players in the tournament occupy wide vertical slots that are changed in and out on the top floor, and the bottom floor, where Gracie called the shots, featured players seven through 12, along with the next six players who would be coming to the 18th hole—their names, helpfully, were on full placards, rather than constructed letter by letter like the leaders. Even early on Saturday morning, when the stands were mostly empty and the players were hours from making it to the last, the scoreboards advertised the day's best ongoing rounds.

Remarkably, the students only receive a few hours of training. That happens on Tuesday, when teachers from the Cranleigh School in England, who have been doing this for 30 years, give hands-on instruction to the students, schooling them in the finer points of quick, accurate reporting.

It's one of those jobs that's easy to screw up—put a letter in backward and you risk becoming a meme. There's a friendly rivalry between the two scoreboards to see who can operate with greater speed, but they also look out for each other, peering across with binoculars to make sure there are no errors. Along with the direct headset line to Score Control, handheld radios provide another avenue of communication, and despite the quick onboarding process, it had the feel on Friday of a well-oiled machine.

by Shane Ryan, Golf Digest |  Read more:
Images: Oisin Keniry/R&A; Christian Petersen

[ed. Looks like Scheffler running away with another win this year. Snore. Update: yep.]

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[ed. I can't recommend Bill Finnegan's surfing biography Barbarian Days highly enough, which among many other things, describes the awe (and fear) of discovering Nazaré for the first time.]

The Point of Life?

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[ed. See also: British Open 2025: Scottie Scheffler's sermon is the answer Rory McIlroy has been searching for (Golf Digest). Exactly right, and the media should get the message.]

There is Nothing Stranger Than a Golfer's Brain

Just ask us.

If I'm not careful, superstitions will own me on the golf course. I'll become a paranoid, twitchy mess with 3,000 rituals to perform on every shot, and nobody will ever want to play with me. And to my credit, I mostly stay out of their clutches. I have some basic comfort-level rules I abide by—two extra balls in the left pocket, divot tool and mark in the right—but even my pre-shot routine is very basic, consisting of just a single practice swing followed by the real deal. To the naked eye, I think I seem like a normal golfer. More or less.

But inside the brain? Hoo boy. There is so much happening, and a lot of it is blatantly nuts. More than nuts, you could call it self-deluding, egomaniacal and maybe even narcissistic, because it goes beyond superstition and into the realm of self-narrated fantasy.

For example: You, the observer, might believe that my success or failure on a given shot is a matter or technique and execution, but in my mind I am being blessed or cursed by higher universal forces. If I'm having a good round, I imagine there's a secret gallery living and dying with every shot, and I'l sometimes conduct imaginary interviews about the round as it's happening. (In this respect, I am almost exactly like a 10-year-old kid shooting baskets in his driveway, imagining he's in the NBA Finals ... except I'm a 41-year-old dude with kids of my own, which is perhaps mildly more pathetic.) As we'll get to in the reader email section below, I assign character traits to individual balls based on past performance, and reward or punish them accordingly. You want to slice on me, old Callaway triple track? Guess who's staying in the pocket on the next tee. Save your tears—you brought this on yourself.

I could go on—it's one lunatic thing after another. The thing is, though, so much of it comes to the forefront of my mind unbidden. It's the constant brain noise that golf invites, and I think I do a pretty good job of letting it flow through me without indulging it to any damaging degree. As I said, if I gave in to the darker impulses, I'd probably be one of those neurotics you find on the range who own 300 sets of clubs, or I'd force myself to recite a 3-minute mantra before each swing. Luckily, I've largely fought off those demons. And I am very grateful that nobody has figured out a way to project the thoughts running through my head to a larger audience, because even in my restrained form, I'd probably be committed.

Here's the thing, though ... that's kind of the appeal. Right? Golf has a way of absorbing 100% of your mental energy in a way that can be freeing. If your mind is consumed with technique, and score, and routine, or even the broader narrative of your round, you're not thinking about the world burning or wondering why your kid suddenly seems really into watching videos of sharks eating seals or fantasizing about telling off your terrible boss/wife. (For the record, I love my bosses and my wife, albeit in different ways.) In the escapism that golf provides, it's very much like a drug, which is why a lot of recovering addicts find golf so useful—you can spend four-plus hours free of your cravings. I used to play with a recovering heroin addict who would literally play 54 holes every weekend day for that exact reason.

As such, it's a salutary madness. I have a secret opinion that almost every human on earth is about 50% weirder than you'd think, and I can't think of a better way to safely indulge that insanity than golf. One of my friends, for instance, mutters to himself after mistakes in extended monologues that are just barely audible to the rest of us. He looks like a headcase, but he is in fact a very successful human being and plenty of fun to be around. Clearly, he needs this outlet.

by Shane Ryan, Golf Digest |  Read more:

Image: Karl Hendon
[ed. I say golf is a negative game (for most of us). What other sport involves so much focus on not screwing up? See also: Nobody cares about your golf game.]

What is Downforce?

Each minute exterior detail on top-tier consumer performance cars like a McLaren 620R and professional race cars like an IndyCar or Formula 1 car is designed to make mechanical physics work to the driver’s advantage. Every millimeter of bodywork makes a difference in how the vehicle drives and performs, and the car’s relationship to the air it’s cutting through is paramount. A crucial part of this relationship is downforce, which can be harnessed and applied by aerodynamic parts throughout the car’s shape. The science of downforce can get fairly deep, but we’re here to give an overview of what it means and a breakdown of why it’s important to driving execution.

To define downforce with just a couple of words, it is vertical load created by a vehicle’s aerodynamic parts as it’s in motion. To boil it down even further, a car’s exterior components split, route, and direct airflow in a way that pushes the vehicle down and increases traction and stability. Front splitters, canards (also known as dive planes), rear spoilers, front spoilers, those massive adjustable air foils that Chaparral affixed to their badass Can Am race cars back in the day, and other aerodynamic bits all create downforce. Downforce keeps cars planted on the road at speed and ensures the tires are pressed firmly onto the road for maximum grip.

What’s cool about downforce is it can be used at both high and low speeds relative to the capabilities of the vehicle. Downforce is often associated with high-speed driving, especially cornering, such as an IndyCar that needs every teeny bit of grip it can muster as it courses through the Long Beach Grand Prix circuit. The Dallara-designed chassis is a prime example because of its heavy use of aerowork.

However, downforce plays into low-speed performance, too—this is why you’ll often see heavily modified autocross cars with massive wings. Despite autocross courses often featuring low-speed sections in their tight courses, cars with wings that have a lot of surface area can still use that air to help stay planted and shave thousandths of a second off of their run times.

by Peter Nelson, The Drive |  Read more:

Image: Peter Nelson

Hard (Really Hard) Golf: US Open 2025

[ed. Congratulations to J.J. Spaun on his U.S. Open win. A truly heroic effort under extremely challenging course conditions. Here's another heroic effort: Phil the Thrill, executing a perfect over the shoulder hook lob on the LIV tour. Insane.]

U.S. Open 2025: Feel the Pain

And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.
—USGA Internal Document (Top Secret)

OAKMONT, Pa. — On Tuesday, walking back to the clubhouse from the far reaches of Oakmont Country Club, I saw a group of maybe a dozen men spread across the right rough on the first hole, using leaf blowers on the grass.

"Look at that," I said, "they don't want a single leaf showing."

"It's not that," said my co-worker, reminding me that there are virtually no trees anymore inside the property. "They're doing it to puff up the rough, so it catches the ball and makes everything harder."

This was the best news I'd heard all week. I can't say if it's true or not, and I refuse to look it up and risk crushing the fantasy, so let's pretend it's ironclad. Let's pretend that Oakmont is ignoring the many dozens of whiny videos moaning about the thickness of the rough and purposefully employing an army of dads to make it harder. This kind of thing? It would stir the heart. It would be the trumpets of battle, hearkening destruction for the enemy: the professional golfer.

For one week a year, we are allowed as golf fans to become untethered from the tender mercies, and root for carnage and hell. For one week, we are free to indulge our inner NASCAR fan and root for a crash. For one week, we can, judo-like, reverse the sadism that golf has delivered into our lives and project it onto the elites. No longer will the pampered sons of athletic privilege shoot 35 under on some pristine plot of soulless turf. Now, they must pay with their sweat and tears, and, ideally, blood, while we whistle and jeer from the sidelines.

That week is the U.S. Open.

Somewhere along the way, though, the U.S. Open lost its way. Four of the last five years, the winning score has been six under (the other time, it was 10 under). In the last 11 years, only one player has hoisted the championship trophy without breaking par for 72 holes. Long gone are the days when grown men would moan that they had "lost the course," or rake putts in a fit pique. There is a softness about this championship now and—at the risk of sounding melodramatic—it breaks the heart of America.

Oakmont, mighty Oakmont, presents a chance for what scholars of war call revanchism—the re-conquering of lost lands. This is a place known for its rigor, right back to the days of its founder, Henry Fownes. This self-made steel baron was something of a minor lunatic, and he constructed the course in response to the softness he saw around him. Great triumph should only be achieved through merciless struggle, he believed, and thus did his lunatic things like forming actual furrows into the bunker with 100-pound rakes. His son, W.C. Fownes, who was largely responsible for launching Oakmont onto the national stage, was a much better golfer than his father and possibly an even bigger lunatic. Here's a quote from the younger Fownes, in response to those who moaned about the difficulty of his course, that is somehow not fictional:

"Let the clumsy, the spineless, the alibi artist stand aside! A shot poorly played should be a shot irrevocably lost!"

Where, today, are men such as these? Where have all the cowboys gone?

Point is, a certain level of sadism is baked into the bloodline of Oakmont, and there is no better place for the U.S. Open to rediscover its spirit. Where better to find that old, indomitable steel than the steel city itself?

It will not be easy. The clumsy, the spineless and the alibi artists will clamor for mercy, and they'll use every craven tool at their disposal. Complaints from players, agents and certain elements of the quisling media will heap pressure on the men and women of courage who run the show, and they will seek a terrible outcome: Slow the greens, trim the rough, and encourage the dreaded birdie.

What's wrong, they'll ask, with six under par?

At the U.S. Open, everything! Everything is wrong with it!

In fact, those us who root for the pros to endure a bitter, disheartening experience these four days are in it just for the schadenfreude—although it is mostly that. We're also looking out for them. Anyone can win a wedge-and-putt contest, but only a grim warrior, a mud-speckled soldier of the earth itself, and emerge from the meat grinder of a truly destructive U.S. Open. By encouraging butchery, we give each of them the chance to win a glory unmatched. Pain is a gift!

by Shane Ryan, Golf Digest |  Read more:

Images: Patrick Smith; Andy Lyons
[ed. Let the carnage begin. See also: U.S. Open 2025: It's not all doom and gloom at Oakmont, depending on who you ask (GD).]

Booze Bans, Homework and The End of the World Clause: The NFL’s Oddest Contracts

Green Bay’s Sean Rhyan just lost out on $2m because over two missed snaps. But he is far from the only football player to deal with contract quirks

As contract clauses go, this one is pretty painful: Packers guard Sean Rhyan missed out on $2m after falling two snaps shy of picking up a bonus. The NFL has a built-in bonus pool designed to reward late draftees who see the field early in their careers. One of those performance benchmarks is a player’s volume of snaps. If they cross the 35% mark, they receive a chunky bonus. But Rhyan fell two snaps shy of that mark last season, missing the chance to see his base salary more than double.

The performance escalator is one of the quirks of the league’s Collective Bargaining Agreement. With the CBA, rookie pay scale and hard salary cap, the NFL is typically a less chaotic contractual league than others in North America. There are none of the odd riders in players’ contracts – the unlimited sushi, 30-year contracts, or Springsteen guarantees – that litter other sports. Careers are short. Leverage is fleeting. The language is standardized. However, Rhyan’s situation is far from a one-off.

The homework clause

Few positions in sports are as mentally taxing as quarterback. They have to ID and break down tricky coverages and deliver throws on target and in rhythm. It requires thousands of physical and mental reps.

Peyton Manning could squeeze in upwards of 40 hours of extra tape study a week, leading to an arms race among young quarterbacks keen to show they were keeping up with the best. When he was drafted No 1 overall by the Rams, Jared Goff was so overwhelmed by the demands of the position that he built a film-watching bunker in his home.

“I watch tape all day Monday, all day Tuesday, Wednesday we practice, Thursday we practice, Friday we practice, then I come home and watch film, then Saturday before the game, I watch film, and then Sunday morning, I watch film,” Tom Brady said in 2022. “It’s almost soothing. I can go four or five hours without getting up from the chair.”

But not everyone is so … dedicated. Or at least their team doesn’t trust that they have Brady’s inner drive. In 2022, the Cardinals signed Kyler Murray to a five-year, $230m extension, making him the second-highest-paid player in the league. As part of the contract, the Cardinals included an “independent study” clause that mandated Murray watch four hours of film a week, independent of the team. Arizona planned to include a tracker in their team-issued tablet to ensure Murray’s focus was on the game tape, rather than movies or video games. The addendum allowed the Cardinals to terminate Murray’s contract if he didn’t complete his homework.

Why would you hand $230m to a player you weren’t sure was doing the bare minimum for the position? Good question! After the news leaked, the Cardinals decided to remove the clause. But the stain still lives on; Murray continues to be hit with allegations that he isn’t as focused or engaged as the position’s elite, despite ripping off the best season of his career in 2024.

The Dez Rules

Jerry Jones operates in a league of his own. In his 36 years as the Cowboys’ owner, no one has given more leeway to rogue personalities. But no one has enforced such strict rules, either.

Some of the most intense treatment was reserved for Dez Bryant. After his 2011 arrest for assault, the Cowboys had their budding star receiver sign a “security agreement” to try to rein in his off-the-field activity. The team did not officially change Bryant’s contract, but he signed a three-year, four-page agreement with longtime Cowboys fixer David Wells. The “Dez Rules” set out a series of guidelines:

Bryant would be followed by a three-person security detail whenever he was away from the Cowboys’ training base.

• He would be driven to and from practice by Cowboys personnel.
• He would attend two mandated counselling sessions a week.
• He was banned from drinking alcohol.
• He was barred from attending strip clubs, given a midnight curfew, and only allowed to attend clubs where veteran Cowboys security staffers moonlighted as door staff.

The rules even extended to putting security cameras inside Bryant’s home, so that Wells could track who was coming and going. And Bryant had to cover the security bill himself, with the $17,000 a month cost deducted from his salary. As Bryant earned more trust, the rules were scaled back. But, as invasive as the rules were, they worked. Bryant put together the best three-year stretch of his career on the field while staying out of trouble off it.

The Bryant episode was not Jones’s first use of team-mandated security details – or the most invasive. “No, this is [not] the strictest at all,” Jones said in 2012. Adam “Pacman” Jones and Tank Johnson signed similar agreements with the team. But Pacman’s was voided after he was suspended by the league for getting into a fight with his own bodyguard.

by Oliver Connolly, The Guardian |  Read more:

Image: Wesley Hitt/Getty Images

NASCAR Faces Future Viewership Crisis

NASCAR broadcasting icon Mike Joy has sent a warning to NASCAR about the future of the sport. Speaking on Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour podcast, Joy admits that the sport has failed in its attempt to attract young fans. This is an issue that threatens the very future of NASCAR, according to the experienced pundit.

After being part of NASCAR broadcasting for almost five decades, Joy has seen it all. He's seen sport blow up as it did in the 1990s, and now is watching its popularity fall once again to a worrying degree.

Talking on the podcast, he said the following about a growing age gap between its drivers and fans.

"We have 18 and 20-year-olds coming into the Cup Series and making a mark," Joy said. "The fan base is getting older. We're not attracting the younger fanbase that we need to move this sport forward into the next decade, [and] into the next couple of decades."

In 2017, the average age of a NASCAR fan in the United States was 58 years old. This was a nine year increase from when the same analysis was done in 2006, and this trend has likely continued.

"You couldn't go into a supermarket without knowing about NASCAR," he admitted. "It was everywhere. When the sponsors stopped activating toward the general public and toward the race fans, the sport just took a giant dump in the relative to everyday life department.

"We lost a lot of that young fanbase that we really need to covet if we're going to grow this sport again."

Joy added that the movie Talladega Nights was a peak of the sport's ebbing and flowing popularity.

"That was when we hit our peak for fan engagement and crowds at the racetrack. I remember going into a Food City in Bristol, Tennessee, and you couldn't push your cart down any aisle without knocking over a cardboard cutout of some driver hawking something. You couldn't go in a supermarket without knowing about NASCAR. It was everywhere." (...)

NASCAR has been trying to reach a new audience for many years, but the sport's executives have offered a more optimistic view with CMO Jill Gregory saying in 2020 that 40% of the sport's viewership were women.

"One of our points of differentiation has always been the passion and loyalty of our fans. Almost 70% of them consciously support NASCAR sponsors," she said. "We also have an increasingly diverse set of fans, with the biggest growth coming from a younger audience.

"About 40% of our fanbase is women, and we’ve got the highest amount of female TV viewers per event of any U.S. sport other than the NFL. Our percentage of multicultural fans is growing, too, and that’s an effort we’ve been very deliberate about."

by Alex Harrington, Motorsport.com |  Read more:

Image: Sean Gardner/Getty Images
[ed. R.I.P. Everything in 'sports world' is in crisis these days (except the NFL). I'm not surprised NASCAR would be a first major casualty. Admit it, it's just boring (except for the crashes and drunk people). Plus, with streaming platforms splicing and dicing subscriptions, nobody can see anything on one channel anymore. See also: Here’s why sports media can’t talk about sports anymore (awfulannouncing.com).]

Harry M. Mamizuka Invitational

For generations of swimmers in Hawai‘i, Harry M. Mamizuka was more than a coach — he was a mentor, a disciplinarian, and a second father to many. His lessons extended far beyond the pool, shaping young athletes into responsible adults with the values of hard work, perseverance, and integrity.

On April 26-27, the 43rd Annual Harry M. Mamizuka Invitational will once again celebrate his enduring impact, bringing together hundreds of swimmers from across the islands to compete at the K. Mark Takai Veterans Memorial Aquatics Center in Waipahu.

This meet is not just a competition — it is a community event, a tribute, and a reminder of what youth sports should be about. It continues the work that Mamizuka dedicated his life to: giving young swimmers, regardless of background, the opportunity to challenge themselves, push their limits, and grow as individuals.

A Coach Who Built More Than Champions

Born and raised in Hawai‘i, Harry Mamizuka understood the struggles many local kids faced — especially those from working-class families. He knew that swimming, like life, required discipline, consistency, and self-belief.

Mamizuka coached at Pālama Settlement, McKinley High School, and Mānoa Aquatics, where he founded the club to make swim training accessible to youth from all walks of life.

He was known for his no-nonsense coaching style, setting high expectations for his swimmers, but always balancing it with deep care and unwavering support.

Even after a life-changing accident in 1989 left him paralyzed, Mamizuka remained dedicated to the sport, coaching from his wheelchair on the pool deck. His resilience and commitment became a lesson in itself: setbacks do not define us — our response to them does.

Through the years, many of his swimmers have gone on to receive college scholarships, become coaches, teachers, and leaders in their communities — all carrying forward the values instilled by Mamizuka.

Why This Event Matters

Hawai‘i has a rich history of producing elite swimmers, from Olympians to collegiate champions. But events like the Mamizuka Invitational are about more than just competition. They serve as:

• A Platform for Young Athletes. Many swimmers use this meet as a stepping stone to qualify for regional and national competitions.

• A Community Gathering. Families, coaches, and former athletes come together to celebrate Hawai‘i’s swimming tradition.

• A Tribute to a Local Hero. The event keeps Mamizuka’s legacy alive, inspiring new generations to uphold his values of discipline and perseverance.

middle, second row

This year’s invitational will feature a full lineup of age-group races, where young competitors — some as young as 9 years old — will swim alongside seasoned high school athletes hoping to post personal bests and qualify for bigger meets.

Beyond the races, the event serves as a reminder of the impact a single individual can have on a community. Mamizuka’s influence continues not just through the competition that bears his name, but in the countless swimmers he coached, many of whom now return as parents, coaches, and mentors themselves.

Keeping Harry Mamizuka’s Spirit Alive

The Mamizuka Invitational is more than a swim meet. It is a testament to one man’s belief that sports can transform lives. It is a celebration of young athletes, a gathering of families and mentors, and a reminder that in sports — and in life — hard work, resilience, and community support make all the difference.

As we approach April 26-27, let’s take a moment to reflect on what events like these truly mean — not just for the swimmers, but for Hawai‘i as a whole. When we support youth athletics, we are investing in the future of our islands, helping to shape the next generation of leaders, athletes, and community builders. (...)

Let’s make this year’s meet not just about competition, but about continuing a legacy that has uplifted generations of Hawai‘i’s youth.

by Kanekoa Crabbe, DeRoy Lavatai, Honolulu Civil Beat | Read more:
Images: Gov. Neil Abercrombie/2013. Hawaii Swimming Hall of Fame
[ed. Love this. Mami (as he was known to everyone back then) was my assistant football and head swimming coach for 3 years in high school. As much as he was known for his swimming acumen, he was probably best known for his creative swearing and dirty joke telling. I mean the guy had no peers. Plus, the most outrageous stories you could imagine (actually, never imagine), mostly about his sexual exploits. I wanted to go to McKinley high school in Honolulu because all my friends were going there, the best public school in Hawaii, and that's where I'd practiced when I was playing Pop Warner football. But, because I lived out of district, the only way I could do that was to apply for a district exception, and the only excuse my folks and I could come up with was to claim that I wanted to swim (the high school I was supposed to go to didn't have a pool at the time). And it worked! Anyway, after my first football season wrapped up Mami found me and told me to get my ass up to the pool. I told him...no, no, that was just an excuse... I'm really not a swimmer. But no excuses. Get up there! So for the next three years I swam on the varsity swim team under his abuse guidance. Those practices were so brutal, worse than football, sometimes two a day, the first at 6 am before school started (in a freezing, heavily chlorinated pool outside), the second for two hours after school. He was such a funny and unpredictable guy, but had a malevolent temper that could explode at any time. You did not want to be on his bad side (or find out he'd had a bad day at work). Nevertheless, we all loved him, and vice versa. Deeply missed.]

[ed. Masters Sunday!]
Image: uncredited via

[Wow. What a Rory-coaster. One for the ages. Congratulations Rory!]

Bernhard Langer Gifted One-of-a-Kind Mercedes For Final Augusta National Start

Langer's 2025 outfit (right) was inspired by the all-red look he wore in the final round of his 1985 Masters victory (left) 

Perhaps the only feat more impressive than finagling a ticket to Augusta National is making it out of the Masters merchandise tent alive and with everything you want. Forbes reported a few years back that Augusta National makes around $69 million a year off merch alone, $10 million a day throughout the tournament. And yet, as hard as you look and no matter how much money you can offer, there’s one piece of Masters memorabilia that you’ll never be able to buy. Only Bernhard Langer has this, and we’re betting that he’s not giving it up anytime soon.

Yup, that’s a one-of-a-kind Mercedes-Benz S-Class, complete with a green paint job, Masters logos and Langer’s signature. If anyone deserves it (other than me), it’s the two-time Masters champ playing in his final start at Augusta National. The 67-year-old has been a Mercedes ambassador for 40 years now, hence the personalized car that normally runs between $120-190K.

Mercedes labeled it a “one-off handcrafted vehicle,” and the customization, like the 2,800 meticulously embroidered stitches, was all done in-house at the company’s prestigious MANUFAKTUR facility in Sindelfingen, Germany.

“Bernhard is a true golf icon, who has been an integral member of the Mercedes-Benz family for nearly 40 years,” said Bettina Fetzer, Vice President of Mercedes-Benz Digital & Communications. “As we celebrate his extraordinary career, we honor our deep bond with a personalized S-Class crafted especially for him. We’re excited for many more great moments with him on the road ahead."

by Greg Gottfried, Golf Digest | Read more:
Images:Stefan von Stengel, Philipp Ruprecht

[ed. Sweet! A class act all the way. See also (first round): Masters 2025: In seeking to make history, 67-year-old Bernhard Langer put on a scoring masterclass (GD).]

Poppy Sinks a Long One

[ed. Masters Week. McIlroy's got a good chance if his putting holds up, Poppy's been giving lessons.]