Lots more to love about golf's wide-bodies
By HUBERT MIZELL
Published July 18, 2004
If you care about golf, eyes are likely focused this championship Sunday on Troon, Scotland, where the British Open is in blustery contest, mostly among guys who are roughly as thin as a $100 bill.
This isn't about that.
Golf heroes of this column are not there. In a world where so-called "flatbellies" are the rule, starring pool-cue-shaped blokes like Charles Howell III and Jesper Parnevik, a wider look is now flourishing.
Let's hear it for expansive Craig Stadler and son Kevin, a chip off the old fire hydrant, as well as Meg Mallon, at 41, the recent dominator of the U.S. Women's Open and Canadian Open.
I'm one of them. Eating low-carb. Shopping at big-and-tall stores. Svelte is my unreachable star. It's good to see wide-bodies, built like regular people, whipping Tiger Woods, Annika Sorenstam and golfing aces whose tummies are taut not pot.
Maybe it's envy screaming out.
Mallon is 5 feet 6, but LPGA stats don't include weights. Just say "ample."
In her 18th year on the tour, the affable Buckeye - is she the second-best Ohio State golfer ever, behind Jack Nicklaus? - has won 16 times including two U.S. Opens and earned more than $7-million, making Meg the second most famous athlete from Natick, Mass., behind Doug Flutie, the miniquarterback who won a Heisman Trophy.
Take that, thinnies.
Then there are the Stadlers, each of them built like a mailbox. Square, squatty and capable of going postal. I cannot recall a truly top-line global golfer who parented a truly top-line global golfer since maybe Old Tom Morris and Young Tom, icons of British Opens more than a century ago.
Kevin and Craig have a chance. Daddy Stads won 13 times on the PGA Tour including the 1982 Masters when Kevin was a 2-year-old cherub. Papa has earned $11-million at age 51, winning thrice more on the Champions Tour.
Kevin is 24 and off to a wondrous waddle on the Nationwide Tour, which is akin to Triple-A baseball. Two wins in his first four starts. Stads Squared duplicated the 1999 family feat of David and Bob Duval, the elder holding a Champions trophy the same Sunday his son finished No. 1 on his tour.
Both Stadlers went to the University of Southern California. Both wear goatees. Have short legs and belts with hangovers. Old Walrus lost poundage a couple of years ago but it hurt his swing. He somewhat replumped. Round is renown in that household. Craig & Son are excelling in the same tournament this week, the B.C. Open.
Stads is noted for a quick temper. We'll see if Kevin is a fiery match when things go sour. With $167,715 in paychecks for his first couple of months. Maybe they won't match Old Tom and Young, but chances are ballooning.
PERFORMANCE OF THE SUMMER: We've got Olympics ahead in Greece. Baseball is having a basher of a season. Tour de France pedaling on. Wimbledon done, U.S. Open upcoming. But, to me, the most sizzling performer of a hot summer plays elsewhere. He is Ken Jennings.
Baseball, golf and Olympics are among my favorite games. But so is Jeopardy, where the grinning, cocksure Jennings is Barry Bonds, Michael Phelps, Lance Armstrong and Annika Sorenstam all wrapped in one beyond-Mensa package.
Jeopardy is so hard. Watching and trying, on a superb night I might get one correct answer in three. There have been many whopper eggheads at Alex Trebec's command. Titans of trivia. Paragons of pop culture. But never anybody like Jennings.
There used to be a Jeopardy rule limiting even unbeaten wizards to five shows. Now it's keep-going-until-you're-whacked scenario. He has amassed $1,100,460, a 33-show wonderworks far more impressive than the quickie $2.18-million, a quiz-show record, won by Kevin Olmstead on Millionaire.
Jennings is 30, a software designer from Salt Lake City, a Brigham Young University alum who gives the term "geek" a championship face. You wonder, could he outsmart Bill Gates? Ken handles the Jeopardy buzzer button as deftly as Yo Yo Ma maneuvers a cello.
He is Mormon, has a wife named Mindy, an 18-month-old , Dylan, and a dog, Banjo. Trabec may be a Smart Alex, but even he is clearly astonished by Jennings, a brain with no seeming weaknesses who surely must know the population of Sikkim, the names of all of Henry VIII's wives and Liz Taylor's husbands, the shirt size of Eminem, the square root of infinity, as well as astrological sign of Saddam Hussein.
If Jeopardy were an Olympic sport, the gold medal would be his.
- Hubert Mizell can be contacted at mmizell02@earthlink.net