THE DAY STARTS AS MOST GREAT DAYS DO: with a fine pair of shoes. In this case, stylish Ecco Street spikeless shoes designed by Fred Couples. They are, according to Ecco, the most advanced shoes in the golf world. As I glide comfortably on the Eccos to the locker at Fallen Oak, just outside Biloxi, Mississippi, to collect a set of clubs that include some of this year’s other radical advancements in golf tech, it occurs to me that no matter what shoes I wear or clubs I swing or type of tee I set my ball on, I’ll always be a duffer. The problems with my game, I believe, come from deep inside me, far beyond the reach of technology or even instruction.

It’s early spring on the Gulf Coast, and the weather is a crisp 65 degrees. On the first tee, Fallen Oak’s general manager, Dave Stinson, an affable (and, it turns outs, very patient) scratch golfer, remarks on the contents of the golf bag: a TaylorMade R11 driver, a Nike SQ Machspeed driver, a TaylorMade putter and a Bushnell Hybrid Laser/GPS rangefinder, which already has the contours and greens of the Tom Fazio–designed Fallen Oak programmed into it.

Taking the R11 from the bag, I gaze out over the rolling first hole of this breathtaking course, a gnarly par- five dogleg with a lake on the left and a stream to the right, and a shiver of dread passes through me. I need to knock a 275-yard drive, and it needs to be straight. I consider myself a typical golfer—I play 20 rounds a year and feel grateful when I shoot 10 over par. To this day, when I golf with my father, he points out that I was born with a natural swing. Standing atop the claustrophobic second tee-box at our local course in York Harbor, Maine, my dad would crow to our playing partners, “The kid was born with a natural swing.” Then he’d add, as he shook his head at his own scorecard: “I’m not sure where he got it from.”

It’s true. I was born with a swing as graceful as Fred Astaire, but it grows weaker by the year. My swing, that fluid series of well- executed movements that my father was so proud of, has grown into a nightmarish series of spasms.

Of course, the makers of golf equipment understand this aspect of the sport all too well. They have teams working overnight in brightly lit laboratories concocting devices that will somehow bandage over the deep wounds in a player’s game. There are the clubs that profess to cure everything from a weak swing to a strong swing. There are putters in myriad configurations, and there are balls that improve distance, loft, “playability.” There are also things like the Bushnell rangefinder, which I’ve placed on the dash of the golf cart, but I’ve got more pressing issues in my game right now than precise distance.

For a weekend duffer like me, the TaylorMade R11 is a beautiful Band-Aid. Released this year, it’s the latest version of the revolutionary R-series driver. Like most modern drivers, it’s so large it sometimes feels as though you’re swinging a train caboose, though in fact it’s light as a feather. It’s equipped with the same “Moveable Weight Technology,” or MWT, that was introduced in the R7. Basically, MWT is a set of small “discretionary” weights that can be placed in strategically positioned sockets on the driver to change the characteristics of the club. Put more weight in the heel, and the club rotates faster, theoretically reducing the severity of a slice.

Now, I’ve tried MWT a few times on a practice range and moved as much weight as possible to the heel to try to counteract my slice. It wasn’t that effective for me, though I reckon that has more to do with my erratic game than with any flaws in TaylorMade’s design.

The R11 advances the R-series with a white and black club head that improves visibility. As I address the ball, the white is actually a little bit distracting. Sure enough, the ball rockets straight out over the fairway and then turns right like a tiny balloon in a stiff breeze. It’s not the club’s fault.

On the second hole, I grip the titanium Nike SQ Machspeed driver, a sleek, mean-looking club that feels more natural in my hands. The head is black, which means when I address the ball I’m not thinking about the head being white. It’s equipped with something called “STR8-FIT” adjustable face-angle technology, which can, with the turn of a wrench, open or close the club face up to two degrees in either direction, to correct for a slice or a hook. There are eight different angles to choose from. I’ve opted to close mine all the way, and sure enough, on impact the ball launches straight down the fairway. Is that old natural swing of mine suddenly reappearing, or is it the wizardry of the Nike lab technicians?

By the time I reach the 18th hole at Fallen Oak, a sweeping turn to the clubhouse with a mess of picturesque bunkers running along the left side, I’m in something like a groove. That old swing is back. I’m even comfortable enough to try out the Bushnell rangefinder. Standing on the tee box, I turn it on and, sure enough, every contour of the 18th is programmed into it. Peering through the lens, I see that the bunkers on the left are exactly 183 yards. The trees on the right are 280 yards—very much in play.

I opt for the Nike and manage a decent drive that rolls to the right side of the fairway. My second shot is a vindication—it bounces just shy of the green. I take out my TaylorMade Rossa Ghost putter, which, like the R11 driver, is painted white. In this context, I find the white much more soothing—it blends slightly with the ball, and calms my hands. I drain the 10-foot putt and mark a par on the card.

Walking off the green toward the clubhouse, where I’ll console myself with a spicy bowl of homemade gumbo, I feel slightly disheartened, as though all the money in the world couldn’t help prop up my game. But then I look down at my shoes—those stylish Fred Couples spikeless Eccos—and remember that, at the very least, I started the day in a great pair of shoes.

Despite his natural swing, MIKE GUY reckons he’s lost more than 500 balls at the York Golf and Tennis Club in York Harbor, Maine.

by Adam K. Raymond

The ball is tipped / And there you are / You’re running for your life / You’re a shooting star.

HEARING THOSE WORDS blare from the TV means three things are happening: No. 1: Luther Vandross is singing “One Shining Moment,” the anthem that CBS uses to commemorate the end of the NCAA Tournament. No. 2: A group of sweaty players and an old guy in a double-breasted suit are climbing a ladder with a pair of scissors. No. 3: I’m crying.

Like millions of Americans, I’m a sucker for the over-the-top drama that is the NCAA Tournament. Every March, I put my life on hold and grab a bottomless tub of guacamole.

But the Final Four isn’t about me; it’s about the players. For the vast majority of them, this tourney is the end of their basketball careers, finished before they even start. Sure, some will go to the NBA and others will play pro ball overseas, but most will enter the workaday world of the same schmucks (like me) who once cheered them on. The tournament is that aforementioned shining moment. So with March just a couple weeks from Madness, let’s check back with five of the shiniest NCAA Tournament players to find out what happened to them after the trophy was awarded and CBS switched back to Andy Rooney’s eyebrows.

KEITH SMART

SHINING MOMENT: Hoosiers love Larry Bird, but Larry Bird didn’t make “The Shot.” Keith Smart did. With five seconds left in the 1987 NCAA championship game, the crafty Indiana University guard buried a jump shot from the left wing to give his team a one-point win and cement his status as Indiana’s most unlikely sports legend. A Louisiana native who went unnoticed out of high school, Smart spent time at a community college in Kansas before landing on Bobby Knight’s Indiana squad. Once in Bloomington, he was a little-noticed contributor. Then, with that 16-foot jumper, which gave IU its fifth national championship, Smart became the face of March Madness.

WHERE HE IS NOW: After two years in Indiana, Smart went on to the NBA, where he logged a grand total of 12 minutes in two games, scoring two points in his entire NBA career. Then Smart—like a much less desirable LeBron James—“took his talents” to Canada, the Philippines, France and Venezuela before returning to the NBA to coach. After seven years as an assistant, Smart landed his first head coach gig when the Golden State Warriors chose the 46-year- old to lead the team into a new era of relevance. Still, “The Shot” follows him everywhere. Each March, when it’s replayed by CBS and ESPN Classic, Smart says he hears less about the heroic jumper and more about the tiny shorts he’s wearing.

CHRISTIAN LAETTNER

SHINING MOMENT: Forget Color Me Badd—1991 belonged to Christian Laettner. His Duke Blue Devils defeated Kansas for the NCAA Championship that year, and Laettner was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player. Better remembered, though, is his last-second jumper in the Elite Eight the following season. Down one point to Kentucky with 2.1 seconds left in overtime, Laettner took a full-court pass from Grant Hill, dribbled once and hit a buzzer-beating jumper to send his team to the Final Four. It’s regarded as one of the greatest college basketball games of all-time—unless you live in Kentucky.

WHERE HE IS NOW: Following his dream game, Laettner joined the 1992 Olympic Dream Team and won a gold medal for keeping the bench warm for legends like Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. He was then drafted by the Minnesota Timberwolves and went on to be a solid but never spectacular player on six NBA teams. He retired in 2005 and began working full time at a community development company called Blue Devil Ventures, but he still found time in 2009 to recreate his shot for a Vitamin Water ad. They hated it in Kentucky.

BRYCE DREW

SHINING MOMENT: Every college basketball fan has a special place in his heart for Cinderellas, those plucky teams that make improbably deep runs into the tournament. In 1998, Valparaiso was the lucky lady, thanks in large part to head coach Homer Drew’s son Bryce and the three- pointer he nailed to lift his 13th-seeded Crusaders over the fourth-seeded University of Mississippi Rebels in the first round. Drew’s shot, which some Indiana natives claim is the real “The Shot,” combined the two things college basketball fans love most—buzzer- beaters and underdogs—in one of the tournament’s shiniest moments ever.

WHERE HE IS NOW: After teaching the country that Valpo is a college in Indiana and not a brand of dog food, Drew became the school’s first-ever first-round pick in the NBA draft. During his six years in the NBA, he jumped between the Rockets, Bulls and Hornets, filling the three-point- specialist role for each. In 2004 his NBA career came to an end, and, like any good coach’s son, he jumped into coaching himself. Six years later, Drew is still at Valpo, where he’s been honored as one of the 150 Most Influential Persons in the university’s history. That’s the power of a “shot.”

CARMELO ANTHONY

SHINING MOMENT: The man they call Melo was anything but as he led the Syracuse Orange to their first NCAA championship in 2003. Carmelo Anthony ripped through the bracket, scoring 33 points against Texas in the Final Four (a tournament record for a freshman) and 20 in the final game against Kansas. After third-seeded Syracuse and coach Jim Boeheim lifted the trophy, Anthony lifted his own as the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player.

WHERE HE IS NOW: Feeling no urge to repeat, Anthony left Syracuse after his freshman year to enter the NBA draft, where he was chosen third overall by the Denver Nuggets. He excelled once again as a rookie phenom, averaging 21 points per game. Since then, he’s been an NBA All Star three times, averaged at least 20 points per game each season and picked up a little hardware on the side—a bronze medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics and a gold in Beijing in 2008. After the 2006 season, he signed a five-year, $80 million contract extension with the Nuggets. But his biggest achievement occurred in 2010, when his wedding to MTV VJ LaLa Vazquez aired on VH1.

SEAN MAY

SHINING MOMENT: Few teams have come into a season as highly touted as the 2005 North Carolina Tar Heels, and center Sean May was the core of that hype. By the time the trumpets blared on 2005’s “One Shining Moment” montage, it was clear why: UNC won its fourth NCAA championship thanks to May and his 26-point, 10-rebound effort in the Tar Heels’ win over Illinois. With little left to achieve after that, May bolted for the big time.

WHERE HE IS NOW: Drafted 13th overall in the 2005 NBA Draft, May is still best remembered for his days in baby blue. His pro career has taken him to Charlotte, Sacramento and New Jersey, but with little success. After a stress fracture last summer caused the Nets to cut him, May got a call from a place no first-round draft pick ever wants to hear from: Europe. In December, he signed with a Turkish team, where he’ll play alongside Lynn Greer, who had a few shining moments of his own in 2001, when he led the 11th-seeded Temple Owls to the Elite Eight.

Kentucky native ADAM K. RAYMOND’s glory days mostly involve guacamole and sofas.

THE REVVING DIRT BIKES JERK forward like horses at the gate as the rain spits down on the Red Bull Catalina Grand Prix, a historic motorcycle race resuscitated by the energy drink maker after a 50-plus-year hiatus. The Pro Class final, the last of a chilly weekend’s worth of contests on this touristy island 22 miles off the coast of Los Angeles, is set to begin. The field includes Kendall Norman and Quinn Cody, two Baja 1,000 winners expected to battle for the checkered flag. But all eyes are on the yellow No. 199 Suzuki ridden by a lanky 27-year-old with a goofy grin, who, by his own admission, has very little chance of winning.

“Underprepared and overly enthusiastic,” jokes Travis Pastrana. “That gets you a long way.” He crinkles his face, struggling to remember his last motorcycle competition. “Was it in St. Louis?” A video crew captures Pastrana’s every move as he waits for the starting signal. Teenagers in flat- billed caps walk up with their camera phones. Even a gray-haired race official holding a yellow caution flag can’t resist sneaking a shot.

Such is the cult of Pastrana— motocross champion, multiple X Games gold medal winner, four- time Rally America winner, stunt performer, MTV star and overall good guy. A gregarious personality who barnstorms across various action sports with daredevil abandon, he has built a large fan base over the past decade. In Catalina’s port of Avalon, the buzz of his presence resonates in hotel lobbies, oyster bars and race pits alike. This season, Pastrana will most likely begin his NASCAR career at Phoenix International Raceway in the Nationwide Series, and many in the motorsports world are hoping that buzz will bring some new life—and new fans—to the oval track. For while the sport of NASCAR is still hugely popular, and there’s been killer competition in recent seasons, there’s a pervasive sense that there’s a dearth of hero drivers who are, you know, actually having fun.

And if there’s one thing Pastrana knows how to do, it’s have fun. The shaggy-haired Annapolis, Maryland, native hopscotches willy-nilly from sport to sport—shifting from the grind of motocross to the high-flying antics of freestyle riding (and in the process nailing the first-ever motorcycle double backflip in competition) to the hair-raising razor’s edge of rally car racing. NASCAR is a natural next step, he says, mostly because racing cars has long been one of his obsessions.

“I’ve always driven everything,” he says while relaxing the afternoon before the Catalina race. A college hoops game is playing quietly in his hotel room overlooking Crescent Avenue, Avalon’s beachfront pedestrian walkway. “I rolled my first car when I was ten. Given the opportunity, every time I was hurt or had some down time I would drive rally car, do something with four wheels.”

And he’s been hurt a lot. He’s had four ACL reconstructions and two back surgeries; he’s broken his tibia and fibula; a metal plate holds his left shoulder together; he’s had at least 10 blood transfusions. At 15, during an FMX competition, he separated his spine from his pelvis, leaving him wheelchair-bound for nine months. Doctors said the injury was one of only three documented cases (only two of which involved patients who lived).

And still he’s undeterred, persisting as a sort of modern-day Evel Knievel. In 2007 he flipped his dirt bike into the Grand Canyon and hurled himself out of an airplane without a parachute; on New Year’s Eve 2010 he jumped his Subaru rally car a world record 269 feet onto a barge in Long Beach’s Rainbow Harbor; and, this past fall, he set the world record for the fastest ascent in a car of the treacherous Mount Washington, the highest peak in the northeast. On his MTV show Nitro Circus, produced by the same crazies who brought us Jackass, Pastrana and a merry band of action stars perform wacky stunts, including backflips on children’s Big Wheel tricycles.

If Pastrana succeeds on the notoriously tough NASCAR circuit, it will be his most impressive feat yet— though he’ll be the only driver in the history of the sport more likely to get injured outside the stock car than in it. “NASCAR is the safest sport I’ve ever done,” Pastrana says. “But having me in there is more dangerous for everyone else on the track.”

Adding to the challenge is the fact that he ignored the advice of his famous NASCAR driver friends Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon. They suggested he dip his toe in the water by starting in the less competitive ARCA or Camping World Truck Series before diving into the Nationwide, NASCAR’s number-two series behind the Sprint Cup circuit. He considered their advice but decided to go straight to Nationwide anyway.

“You learn fastest that way. The problem is, you sink fastest that way, too,” Pastrana admits. “A lot of times you don’t get a second opportunity. Everything I’ve done my whole life, I jump in with the best.” (He’s scheduled to run seven races this season, with the goal of running in the 2013 Daytona 500, according to Michael Waltrip, the former NASCAR star who is partnering in the Pastrana-Waltrip Racing team.)

A big part of Pastrana’s decision to pursue NASCAR is the fact that Pastrana-Waltrip Racing is embracing him for who he is. “They were like, ‘We want you to keep doing X Games. We want you to keep doing other stuff . But when you’re here, we’re going to give you the best crew, the best car, the best instruction,’” he says.

As a part owner, Pastrana hopes to create a whole new talent pipeline for NASCAR. “If this team does well, we can bring in other guys from action sports,” he says. “We might be able to make NASCAR cool with a younger audience. People talk about conventional sports, but for a 10-year- old, conventional sports are BMX and skateboarding.”

Many a talented racer (we’re looking at you Dario Franchitti and Scott Speed) has switched to NASCAR and failed. “Are we going to suck in the beginning?” Pastrana asks. “No doubt. I mean, as a driver I hope I get in there and win—you never line up without thinking there’s a chance. But that’s not going to happen. Luckily, they are letting us build the team our way, and winning leaves a breadcrumb trail.”

Pastrana isn’t the first action sports star to delve into NASCAR. Five- time AMA supercross champ Ricky Carmichael, for example, is currently racing in the Camping World Truck Series. But Carmichael’s fan base doesn’t come close to Pastrana’s, whose Facebook page boasts more than 1.7 million “likes.”

The only other driver in any sport who can be compared to Pastrana in terms of popularity is Danica Patrick, the IndyCar driver who’s struggling in the Nationwide series, with only a single top-20 finish.

“Honestly, if I had the year that Danica had this year, that’s not really that bad,” Pastrana says. “People are going to be watching closely, and they’re gonna be quick to judge. And people will say, ‘Pastrana’s done, he’s washed up.’ Then I’ll have to say, is this something that I can achieve?”

“He’s in way over his head,” jokes his buddy, heralded FMX rider Ronnie Renner, hanging out in the paddock before the Catalina GP. “But if anyone’s gonna find a way, it’s Travis. He’ll figure it out or crash trying.”

ROD O’CONNOR’s most death-defying stunt involved an Evel Knievel action figure.

AS I WRITE THIS, it is the thick of football season and everyone around me is yelling—about concussions. (Or, as the cover of Sports Illustrated put it, concussions!) This chronically misunderstood head injury has been of increasing interest to football players, coaches and, especially, frothy- mouthed, do-gooding journalists for the past few seasons as the growing body of research shows in clearer and clearer terms that concussions are a plague upon the Nfl(and the sport at large). It’s pretty clear now: Play football at your brain’s peril.

The shouting was cranked to 11 after one particularly brutal October weekend in which University of Arkansas quarterback Ryan Mallet, Philadelphia Eagles receiver DeSean Jackson, Baltimore Ravens tight end Todd Heap and Cleveland Browns wide receivers Joshua Cribbs and Mohamed Massaquoi all left the field with concussions. Jackson’s concussion was labeled “severe” and was a result of a dangerous—and illegal—head- first tackle/javelin impersonation by Atlanta Falcons cornerback Dunta Robinson, who also managed to give himself a concussion on the play (the rare double whammy). And that wasn’t all. Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker James Harrison, a human wrecking ball, knocked out two players in the same game, and Zach Follett of the Detroit Lions was carted off the field at Giants Stadium on a stretcher with a head injury. Worst of all, a Rutgers University defensive tackle named Eric LeGrand was paralyzed from the neck down in a game against Army. He may never walk again.

As of mid-October there had been at least 41 concussions suffered by Nflplayers this season, 14 of which were edited into a horrifying video compilation by the website Deadspin that should run on a loop as a precautionary tale in every locker room. Of course, it’s not that different from any number of sequences that have been aired, in celebratory fashion, on ESPN SportsCenter over the years, and an audience of linebackers and safeties—not to say fans—would likely greet it with chest bumps.

So the league is trying to do the only thing it can do: officiate its way around the problem. On the Monday following that bloody weekend, Ray Anderson, the NFL’s executive vice president of football operations, said that the league, which already ejected and fined players for illegal hits, would ratchet up suspensions. He issued the following blast of legalese: “There’s strong testimonial for looking readily at evaluating discipline, especially in the areas of egregious and elevated dangerous hits.” At which point smoke began to emanate from Harrison’s ears.

The helmet industry also quickly came under fire after New York Times reporter Alan Schwarz wrote a scathing indictment of the state of head protectors, which included the terrifying fact that the organization that established the safety guidelines for helmets is partly made up of and financed by representatives employed by the helmet industry. Oh, brother.

Even former safety Rodney Harrison—the same player who, on the field, was widely considered one of the dirtiest in the game—was up in arms. “Thank God I retired,” he said to a Sports Illustrated reporter.

Here’s the thing: According to a recent study on concussions in football, it’s not these horrific, high-profile hits that are most dangerous to players. It’s the recurrent, low-impact collisions that take place at practice. It turns out the brain doesn’t need to be jarred all that hard to be damaged; jostle it repeatedly and you get similar effects. And since eliminating contact at practice isn’t an option, and considering a player who takes part in minor collisions over 16 games anyway is certainly at risk of retiring a vegetable, there’s really only one solution to this mess. If we’re really serious about solving the problem, we’re going to have to take the advice of Chicago Bears safety Chris Harris, who tweeted: “If it’s too dangerous, then ban the sport n [sic] make it illegal.”

Harris was being facetious—he was angry with the league for lashing out at defenders. But he was also right. If we’re being honest with ourselves the only way to save football players is to ban football.

LET ME MAKE ONE THING CLEAR: I am not advocating the end of football. I love the sport, and, like any football fan, I’ve celebrated big hits. I have, at least once per game for my entire life, upon witnessing a brutal tackle, doubled over in mock pain, and then yelled to whoever was close, “You gotta come see this!” Violent tackles are inarguably an exciting part of the game, for fans and players. NflVP Anderson acknowledged as much, saying, essentially, that part of the enjoyment of football is that some of the violence is appealing.

When Anderson and the NFL announced its stricter policing in part because of the two Cleveland Browns he KO’d, James Harrison threatened to retire, essentially saying he doesn’t know how else to play this game. Harrison very much represents a long- standing way of thinking about hits among players, a thinking embodied best in recent years by Ray Lewis, who once said he didn’t feel he had hit a player hard enough unless it hurt Lewis too.

Harrison is hardly alone in being annoyed with the NFL’s harder line. New England Patriot Tom Brady, the man with the golden jaw, perhaps said it best: “I think we all signed up for this game knowing that it’s dangerous.”

It’s always easy to sermonize from the sidelines. Certainly, there are tackles that are intentionally dirty, but often a defender is sprinting full speed at a runner who is also sprinting full speed and trying not to be tackled. If the defender throws his body at the player— leading with his shoulder, which is the proper technique—and that player moves or ducks, it’s very easy for their helmets to collide unintentionally.

Which is not to say that nothing can be done. Equipment can be improved. Better helmet technology in the 1970s ended the risk of fractured skulls, and there’s reason to think that new designs could lessen the risk of concussions.

There’s also education. Football wears its machismo as cologne and has historically applauded the guy who gets crushed, stumbles off and then returns to game once the ground stops spinning. That is changing. In most cases, players with concussions or even concussion-like symptoms are pulled from games, thanks to trainers who are more aware of head injuries.

Usually. Early in the season, two Philadelphia Eagles—QB Kevin Kolb and linebacker Stewart Bradley— suffered concussions and reentered the game before being pulled for their injuries. That borders on negligence, because the brain is far more susceptible to a second concussion when it’s still recovering from the first.

The facts alone should be scary to players. Concussions ended the careers of Troy Aikman and Al Toon. Retired players Andre Waters and Terry Long committed suicide after long bouts of depression suspected to have resulted from concussions. Add to this a litany of chronic back, knee, hip, shoulder and neck problems, and it makes for tough postretirement years.

And yet the Nflis seriously considering expanding the regular season from 16 to 18 games. Maybe a complete ban makes sense after all.

New York–based writer JOSH DEAN wears a helmet when he plays Madden NFL.

LET ME START at the end. Me, in the middle of my first round of golf in two years, trekking between the 12th green and the 13th tee box, on the silky tropical backside of the Puakea Golf Course in Kauai. Me, waving my partner along in the cart, so I can just walk and think. Me, coming off a dumb play, a bad putt, kicking myself a little for believing that there would be any comfort in the game of golf. Me, getting frustrated with the aimless conversation of my playing partners. Me, thinking about nothing at all except my next shot.

I’d quit golf cold two years before, sure that the game offered only frustration and disappointment. Now here I am beginning my comeback: a tough round on a fierce course in Kauai, the country’s most remote and rewarding golf mecca. The sprawl of mountains, jagged and muscular, scales back my worries. The trade winds blow, a little Cessna crabs its way through the sky above me. I stand at the far-western fringe of the United States, on Hawaii’s major western island, looking at a 205- yard shot into the sun. It’s a golfer’s moment, both mundane and particular. I find myself acting like a golfer: squaring up, clearing my head, digging my spikes into the tee box. It’s been a while since I acted like a golfer.

And I won’t save it. I won’t make you work for it. I’ll just state it right here: In about 10 or 15 seconds I’m going to hit my first hole in one. Thirty-two years of golf behind me, countless thousands of swings just like it, a million wishes for this very thing, and now here it is. Right away, I pretty much know that this is the beginning of my return to that most pitiless of sports.

When you quit golf, no one cares. Your regular partners stop calling faster than you’d expect. The prized clubs disappear into the great maw of forgotten possessions in the back of your garage. Now your stories are about traffic, movies or traffic on the way to the movies. Other people tell stories about playing Pebble, about chipping in to win a best ball; they rattle on about greenies, birdies, woodies, Arnolds. To you, it all starts to sound like childhood stories about distant cousins. Your genes are in there somewhere, but does it even matter anymore?

What I remember about the last time I played golf before I quit is how my hands felt—sore and overtight—on the alligator grip of my sand wedge. It was just after my second miss in a row from the same trap, my fifth miss in three holes, the last shot I’d take in an afternoon spent digging around in the carcass of my suddenly failing game. My ball thoroughly, somewhat hyperbolically, flew the green, cleared two bunkers on the other side and rolled out of my sight.

If you’ve ever played—or never played—you can fill in the excuses. I’d swung too hard or looked up. Caught it flush instead of blasting the sand. Whatever. No one saw it but me. No one cared but me. I was playing alone on a tough course that I’d always liked, standing there, feet screwed into the sand, in the torpid hotbox of an Indiana summer’s day, and a groan rose in the crankcase of my chest. No one heard that, either. But I can tell you I despised myself just then, the way I looked, the way I sounded, the way I wallowed in the unfairness of an unremarkable moment in a difficult game. I would never be a great golfer. Not even a good one.

The ball settled somewhere that afternoon, in some frog hole by some drainage pond, maybe. But I’ll never know, because I walked off after that. I put my clubs in my trunk and did not take them out for a year. When I did, they sat in my downstairs closet for another year. I left the game. I was done.

I didn’t announce my retirement; I simply stopped. I regained my Thursday evenings and recouped Saturdays entirely. I started congratulating myself for taking on tasks I’d previously put off. Hanging shades, learning to grill lamb shank, making cobbler. For a while I played tennis, then racquetball, then basketball. After a year, no one asked me about golf anymore.

There came a night, as I pulled into the parking lot before a Zumba class, when I caught sight of the cold sunset at one end of the parking lot, cutting through a set of snow-heavy fir trees. Facing west, thinking that spring would come soon, I realized I was eyeballing the trees as if there were a green in front of them, as if the whole icy scene were a setup for a stiff gap- wedge from 95 yards.

I knew then that I wanted to play again. I knew it would happen. But I didn’t want to revisit those sites of past ignominy, frustrated, angry, hacking away in that same old Indiana sand trap, burdened by the same old expectations.

I started looking for new places to play. I began pawing the magazines again. I looked for snatches of great courses as I passed them on the highways or from the windows of planes. None of this made me a golfer again. A golf course is always a vision, even at a distance, even to a nongolfer. I needed to play. I needed to get my hands on a club. I decided that I would go west to do it.

So I signed up for a five-course tour of Kauai—from the jungle traverse of Princeville, the top-rated course in the state, to the sunny Poipu Bay hugging the cliffs of the south shore, to the still- remarkable Kauai Lagoon, I knew this excursion would challenge the best golfer in the world. I also knew that plainly this was not me.

This was the end of my retreat from the game. But I did not practice. I couldn’t see what good it would do. I vowed not to swing until I arrived at the first tee. By doing this, I guaranteed that I would not be any good, nor was there any chance that I’d be great. I set out that first day to be only one thing: a golfer. I’d figure out the rest as I went.

And so, deep in the trip, I found myself facing down a 205-yard bomb, looking between two trees toward a flag on the front end of the green. As I said, I ciphered it awhile, and I took my swing. It felt great from contact on. The ball rose in a high, controlled draw, straight into the sun. Right away, someone said, “That’s in the hole!” And I half-brayed out a guffaw, claiming that with my luck I’d never see the ball again. The old me expected the worst, but that version of me was at his end.

None of us saw the ball land. “That really was a good shot,” said another. “I think it’s in the hole. I think you did it.” I didn’t want to expect that much. I didn’t want to expect anything. So I decided to smile; I decided to tell them how happy I was already.

This month, Esquire writer-at-large TOM CHIARELLA celebrates the first anniversary of his return to golf.

FAIRWAYS TO HEAVEN

The lowdown on Kauai’s top courses.

PRINCEVILLE HANALEI: MAKAI GOLF COURSE

This Robert Trent Jones masterpiece is considered one of the top courses in the country. Bring your A-game. www.princeville.com

POIPU BAY GOLF COURSE

Tiger Woods counts this longtime home to the PGA’s Grand Slam event among his favorite courses to play. Its only competition is the resort’s amenities. www.poipubaygolf.com

KAUAI LAGOONS GOLF CLUB

When none other than Jack Nicklaus opened this course in 1989, it was called “the golden age of golf courses in Hawaii.” Stay gold, Kauai Lagoons. www.kauailagoonsgolf.com

THE CITY OF MONTEREY is nestled on one side of placid Monterey Bay, along California’s central coast. On Cannery Row, the idyllic downtown area that got its name from the sardine canning factories that once thrived there (and inspired John Steinbeck’s novel of the same name), tourists amble along the sidewalks leading from the old canneries to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, one of the finest in the world. Walking these streets, with the gentle breeze lifting the fog off the water, you’d never suspect that just a few miles away, past the rolling, straw-colored hills in the middle distance, lurks one of America’s wildest, most notorious temples of internal combustion.

Commonly known as Laguna Seca (it’s been called the Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca since the automaker bought sponsorship rights in 2005), this 2.2-mile track may not be a particularly long or fast circuit, but it is one of the most highly respected-and feared-by drivers and riders alike.

For one weekend every year, the world’s best motorcycle racers arrive for the U.S. Grand Prix, one skirmish in the battle for the MotoGP world championship. Here, the biggest name is Valentino Rossi, a 31-year-old Italian who’s won seven world championships. He broke his tibia in a crash earlier this year, and though he’s made a remarkable return to the saddle, he’s considered out of contention in this year’s race. The new top rider is Jorge Lorenzo, Rossi’s Spanish teammate with Yamaha Fiat. There are also three Americans circling the track: Nicky Hayden, known to his fans as the Kentucky Kid, who won the race at Laguna Seca in 2005 and 2006 astride a Honda; and two Texans, Ben Spies and Colin Edwards, who ride for the Yamaha factory team.

These riders are only part of the draw for the hundreds of thousands of motorcyclists and MotoGP enthusiasts who descend like pilgrims on two wheels to witness the event. (So complete is Monterey’s transition from picturesque seaside town to hive of motorcycle fanatics that the entire downtown area of Cannery Row is shut down to automobile traffic for the weekend.) If you don’t understand the huge draw (and judging by MotoGP’s TV ratings, which are somewhere around professional dart-throwing, you probably don’t), stand beside the motorcycle paddocks the morning of the race. The answer will smack you in the eardrums the first time the riders scream down Rahal Straight.

The fury of internal combustion never sounds so malevolent as it does when a modern MotoGP racebike screams past at full throttle, hitting nearly 20,000 revolutions per minute. It hits you in the chest like a rubber mallet. Then there’s the race hardware itself. Only at one of the 18 MotoGP events around the world will a motorcycle fan be able to see such complex, cutting-edge, expensive and astronomically fast machinery circling such a thrilling racetrack in person.

Today, as the sun climbs into a perfectly blue sky, morning practice ends and spectators gather in the stands for the main race. Lorenzo- presumptive champion of the 2010 season-is the center of attention at Laguna Seca. Crowds gather for hours in the California heat to catch even a fleeting glimpse of the star rider passing on his way to the paddocks in his shell- armored, kangaroo-skin racing suit.

The 23-year-old Lorenzo stops for a moment in the Yamaha Fiat VIP tent to have a quick snack. He is surprisingly slight, even in his armor. Sitting down, he quickly composes a tweet to his nearly 62,000 followers. “Coming to America is very good for MotoGP,” he says. “There is a lot of potential to pick up a large number of fans.”

With that, he makes his way to the paddock, where his gleaming red, white and blue superbike awaits, and starts going over every contour of the track in his mind. What Lorenzo doesn’t say is that Laguna Seca is short but dangerous, a nightmare for most riders. The nastiest section is called The Corkscrew. Over the 450 or so feet required to make it through The Corkscrew’s two turns, the rider drops roughly five and a half stories in elevation. For one sick split second, he is convinced he’s left earth and will potentially never return.

The race that follows is one of the season’s best. Lorenzo, who took pole position in qualifying, wins it by three seconds against Australian Casey Stoner, who rides a bright red Ducati.

The final spot on the podium goes to Rossi, who shouldn’t have been on the starting grid at all. A fan favorite no matter what country the MotoGP circus happens to be visiting, Rossi draws howls of adoration as he steps his place on the podium, on crutches. He announces in the press pool afterward that he’s going to leave his team at the end of the year and form a sort of superteam with American Hayden and Ducati.

The American riders-Hayden, Spies and Edwards-all finish in the top 10, pleasing the fans who then file slowly into parking lots, mount their own steeds and head home.

Lorenzo is happy to have won, but he’s more relieved to have made it through in one piece. “I have some painful memories of this track,” Lorenzo says. “In 2008, I crashed on cold tires in the first corner and injured my feet, which meant no dancing during the holiday!” The press around him laugh. “Then last year I crashed twice on cold tires-once on the front and once on the rear-but then went on to get pole and finish on the podium. Laguna is certainly a special place, very different to the rest of the circuits we race at, but I like riding here, especially The Corkscrew.”

He’s only being half sarcastic. Maybe if he hadn’t won he’d be less cocky.

“Really, it’s best to race here in perfect conditions, without injury. That always helps.”

Autoblog.com’s JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI went through The Corkscrew once-on foot.

TRACK STAR

The many perils of Laguna Seca

1. THE RAINEY CURVE

Former motorcycle Grand Prix champ and Monterey native Wayne Rainey christened this turn.

2. THE ANDRETTI HAIRPIN

This tricky, 190-degree double- apex hairpin is named after Formula 1 great Mario Andretti.

3. THE CORKSCREW

Considered among the toughest turns in the world, turns 8 and 8A drop down a twisting blind crest at top speed.

TIM MCCARVER IS SEARCHING for the perfect word. He’s telling a story about the first time he met Joe Buck, his partner in the Fox baseball broadcasting booth, and he’s fallen silent. He just finished recounting the day in the 1970s when, as an aging catcher in the twilight of his career, he first saw a three-foot oddity running around the clubhouse.

“I asked someone who the funny- looking kid was and they said, ‘Oh, that’s Jack Buck’s son,’” McCarver says, referring to the legendary St. Louis Cardinals announcer. “He had this head on him that looked just like a watermelon. He had a watermelon head sitting on top of a…on top of a, uh…” As McCarver searches for the right word, a grown-up Joe Buck, now 41 and one of the most successful members of the baseball broadcasting club, leans in with particular interest. His head, as it sits on his body today, is no longer abnormally large.

“He had a watermelon head sitting on top of a cucumber body,” McCarver finally blurts out before being overtaken by laughter. Buck looks at him sideways and says, “I never knew what a deformed child I was.”

Thirty-five years later, this odd couple is preparing to man the microphones at the World Series for the 13th time—Buck as the play-by-play man, responsible for recounting the action on the field, and McCarver as the color man, adding illustrations and folksy elaborations along the way.

Right now, it’s July, and the All-Star Game is minutes from starting. Buck and McCarver are engaged in the pregame ritual of hair, makeup and banter. Buck puts on his headset and checks the mic in the voice of a 1920s detective. “Hellooo, folks. Welcome to the ballpaaark.” McCarver chuckles and shakes his head. “I love it when he does that,” the old catcher says. McCarver is 28 years older than Buck and a much more commanding physical presence. One look at the two men and it’s not hard to tell who spent 21 seasons as a catcher in the major leagues and who was an English major at Indiana University. A producer counts down, the camera flicks on, and they’re underway.

For more than a decade, to baseball fans across the country, the sound of Buck and McCarver at the start of a game is the surest indication of important baseball. And for McCarver, who has a shock of red hair, this season’s Fall Classic will be his 21st as a color man.

That sort of devotion has led to moments of clairvoyance, like when McCarver called the game-winning hit of the 2001 World Series between the New York Yankees and the Arizona Diamondbacks before it happened.

“It was the bottom of the ninth inning,” McCarver says, “and Joe Torre had pulled the Yankees infield in.” Calling the game from the booth, McCarver said, “The problem with bringing the infield in against a guy like Rivera is that left-handed hitters tend to get a lot of broken-bat hits to the shallow part of the outfield.”

And that’s exactly what happened. The D-Backs won.

“That’s the best moment in the history of broadcasting,” Buck says. “I’ll never forget it.”

McCarver was 17 years old when he joined the St. Louis Cardinals in 1959. He eventually called games for the Mets, Yankees and San Francisco Giants before landing at Fox. Buck’s career also started with the Cardinals, where he called an inning on his 18th birthday, a surprise gift from his father, who walked out of the booth and told his son to start talking. “It was the worst inning of play-by-play in the history of broadcasting,” Buck says.

In some ways, McCarver has replaced the late Jack Buck as Joe’s father figure. He gives the younger Buck career and life advice. They behave more like poker buddies than coworkers, constantly needling each other and never passing up an opportunity to tell an embarrassing story. Ask them what it’s like to work apart, as they do about a dozen times a season, and they gush.

“When you’re not with the best, you miss it,” McCarver says. Buck jumps in. “It’s like driving a Lamborghini and trading it in for a Pinto,” he says. “Tim’s always in my foxhole. I’m not afraid to say I love the man.”

On the surface, Buck and McCarver’s “bromance” seems unlikely. They come from different eras, but the generation gap usually works to their advantage.

“I think of Tim like a really, really older brother.” Buck says, causing McCarver to let out a rumbling laugh before falling forward and slapping his knee. “If I reference a Foo Fighters song, Tim won’t know what I’m talking about.”

“No idea,” McCarver says. “But I like that. Joe keeps me young.”

McCarver’s reference points lie in the ’60s and ’70s, when he was shuffling around the country as a catcher for the Cardinals and Phillies. Things were a little tougher for players back then. That’s why McCarver gets so upset if he sees a player loafing. He’s no fan of showboating, hot-dogging or strutting, either. And quitters? McCarver once called Manny Ramirez “despicable” for “refusing to play” while in Boston.

During games, Buck’s banter flows between pop stars and pop-ups. His dry humor is one of his hallmarks. “Baseball can get monotonous, and there’s a redundancy inherent to broadcasting the game,” he said. “If you watch a pop fly hit to second, do you really need me to tell you there was a pop fly hit to second?”

Not everyone is a fan of their approach. They have large anti-followings online who ridicule their every broadcast. But neither seems to care.

“Not all of that stuff is bad,” McCarver says. “It’s good to see what people think of your performance, even if they don’t like it.” But he’ll admit he’s happy that ShutUpTimMcCarver.com, a website that chronicles his “McCarverisms,” hasn’t been updated in almost five years.

The anti-Buck sites remain more active. Popular sports blogs like Deadspin and Awful Announcing have made ridiculing Buck a recurring feature. Surprisingly, Buck doesn’t sweat it, and though at times he’s defended himself online, he says he’s also paid heed to his critics.

“I’ve grown from it,” Buck says. “For example, I listened in particular to the criticism about how I try to be too funny. I thought the person had a good point, and I’ve tried to tone it down.”

In the booth at least. Sit down with him and McCarver for an hour and the jokes flow as liberally as the compliments. But again, this is how two men engaged in the throes of a bromance behave. Right, Tim?

“I don’t know what that word means,” he says. And Joe smiles knowingly.

New York–based writer ADAM K. RAYMOND’s head is large, but not abnormally so.

CALL OF THE WILD

Baseball’s three greatest broadcasting moments

1951: When New York Giant Bobby Thomson, who died in August, hit “The Shot Heard ’Round the World,” above, announcer Russ Hodges could say only one thing: “The Giants win the pennant!” So he said it over and over…and over.

1960: When Bill Mazeroski hit the first walk-off home run to end a World Series, the only person more excited than Maz was Chuck Thompson, who screamed, “Back to the wall goes Berra…it is…over the fence! Home run! The Pirates win!”

1988: Two announcers react to Kirk Gibson’s game-winning shot in the World Series: Jack Buck is incredulous (“I don’t believe what I just saw!”), and Vin Scully is poetic (“In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened”).

BEING THE HEAD COACH of a major college football team is the best job in sports—until it’s the worst. Just ask Rich Rodriguez.

Three years ago, things couldn’t have looked brighter for Rodriguez. The then- 44-year-old head football coach had just led his West Virginia University team to within one game of its first-ever national championship appearance, coasting to 10 wins on the back of the country’s most exciting offense. In his seven years of wearing the headset at WVU – his alma mater and a program of near-religious significance for the people of the Mountain State – Rodriguez (aka RichRod) had piled up the accolades: four Big East titles, three straight seasons of at least 10 wins, two Big East Coach of the Year awards and the first back-to-back Top 10 finishes in school history. He’d also turned down an overture from Alabama the previous off-season, passing on one of the best jobs in the country and convincing Mountaineer fans that this local boy might just stay true to his roots.

Cut to one frigid December night late in the 2007 season. WVU is playing its archrival, the University of Pittsburgh—an unranked team with a losing record. If they win, the Mountaineers advance to the Bowl Championship Series title game, sealing the young coach’s legacy as one of the most beloved West Virginians of all time. If he wins this game, RichRod can run for governor. Statues will be raised in his image.

You see where I’m going here. The Mountaineers did not beat Pitt. In fact, Rodriguez coached one of the worst games of his career. During his last game in the stadium that could one day have borne his name, Rodriguez was booed off the field.

What we all learned later was that RichRod already had one foot out the door—he was being wooed by the University of Michigan to succeed the outgoing coach, Lloyd Carr, in one of the biggest jobs in football.

I don’t subscribe to the conspiracy theories that still echo in the hollers of West Virginia, that Rodriguez lost the Pitt game on purpose. The logic, if I understand it correctly, is had they won the game, the Mountaineers would have played for the national title in January. No coach would quit a job with a chance to play for the greatest title in his sport. Meanwhile, Michigan, unable to woo him, would have moved on to another coaching candidate. Thus, many a West Virginian will forever believe, Rodriguez had to lose in order to take the better job. As conspiracy theories go, it’s not completely bonkers.

Shortly after the Pitt game, Rodriguez announced his resignation, effective immediately, and he left for Ann Arbor in a hurry. Then the Mountaineers, under the guidance of an interim coach, went to their runner-up bowl game and, playing like a team scorned, laid a whupping on an Oklahoma team widely held to be among the best in the country. Nevertheless, for RichRod, the future as head coach of Michigan must have seemed bright indeed.

COACHES OF THE COUNTRY’S major college programs live by one simple rule: Win. Win and you are deified—sane humans with respectable jobs will lay prostrate at your feet and name children in your honor (seriously). Win and you can coach forever, like Joe Paterno at Penn State. Win and you can even mess with people’s heads, retiring and then sort of unretiring and then fully unretiring, all in a few months’ time, as Florida’s Urban Meyer did this off-season.

Just don’t lose. Ever.

In Rodriguez’s case, it didn’t take long for plans to go pear-shaped. He unpacked his bags, signed an excellent class of recruits, installed his famed spread offense—in the process tossing out a system that had been in place for decades—and then went 3-9 for the season, ending Michigan’s 33-year streak of playing in bowls (one of the longest such streaks in college football, by the way). Fans howled with rage, but many gridiron sages counseled patience.

And the next season things did look up—briefly. The Wolverines started the season 4-0. Then they collapsed, finishing 5-7. For the second straight year, they failed to qualify for a bowl.

And that’s only part of it. The NCAA launched an investigation into allegations that the team had violated practice rules. One player transferred to hated rival Ohio State, citing “a lack of family values.” A website called Fire Rich Rodriguez emerged and began agitating for his dismissal.

This off-season Michigan released the results of its internal investigation. The school admitted to several violations and announced that seven staff members had been reprimanded, including RichRod. The school’s athletic director, David Brandon, was sanguine. “I don’t think this is a black eye,” Brandon said. “This is a bruise.”

The problem is that the bruise is on college football’s most hallowed program. Michigan is the winningest program of all time and plays in the biggest stadium in the land.

Talk about a fumble.

HERE’S THE GOOD NEWS for RichRod: College football fans have short memories. If Michigan goes 10-2 and beats Ohio State and plays on New Year’s Day—heck, if it just qualifies for a bowl and beats Ohio State—most of this will be forgotten. The truth is that it takes time to overhaul a system.

Then again, this is Michigan, where fans have never had to be patient. One more bad season and, well, Rodriguez might be leaving Ann Arbor with a maize-and-blue bootprint on his polyester coaching shorts.

New York Jets receiver Braylon Edwards, who is Michigan’s all-time leading receiver, certainly isn’t willing to give Rodriguez much more leeway. “We don’t accept failure,” he recently told a reporter. “There will be no excuses this year. He has to win games, and if he doesn’t then he’s in trouble. And that’s not me. That is just how the alumni feel. He has to win games and especially the you-know-what game.”

In press conferences last year, RichRod had begun to take on the beleaguered visage of a haunted man. “Is there a sense of urgency? Sure,” he said. “But there was a sense of urgency last year, the year before and twenty years ago at Glenville State College” (where, at age 27, Rodriguez first coached).

If RichRod ever wonders if the grass is still greener back home in Appalachia, he need only gaze over at Bob Huggins (aka Huggy Bear), the coach shamed out of Cincinnati who now oversees the basketball team at WVU. Much as the football team did under RichRod, the Mountaineer basketball team has blossomed into a perennial contender for the Big East title. This past season, Huggy Bear took the Mountaineers to the Final Four for the first time in 51 years. Afterward, he joked that if he took a tour of the state, he’d be hailed as a hero at every stop.

Coaching a major college team really is the best job around. Until it isn’t.

JOSH DEAN maintains his objectivity on this issue despite his near-pathological love of WVU athletics.

Mad Men

Other ill-fated coaching career moves

RICK PITINO

Left a championship University of Kentucky team to become a resoundingly loathed coach of the Boston Celtics.

GEORGE O’LEARY

O’Leary coached Georgia Tech before going to Notre Dame in 2001, where he was quickly sacked for faking his résumé.

STEVE SPURRIER

Departed a top University of Florida team in 2002 to coach the Washington Redskins for two dismal seasons.

THINGS AREN’T LOOKING GOOD. I’m down 4-0 in the first set of my qualifying match for the U.S. Open. The guy I’m up against, a former college tennis player, is obviously toying with me. My serves sail onto the adjacent court, my returns flutter harmlessly into the net. Ten minutes in, I look as if I’ve got a fire hose running under my shirt. But I haven’t given up. After each lost point, I take a deep breath and resolve that I’m going to get it together.

So as my opponent, Pat, a friendly 24-year-old insurance salesman who rips bullets, goes into his serve, I calmly return it, softly and slowly. He runs up to the net and returns my return, and with one uncoordinated flail, I hit the ball back. It goes over his head with a high arc and lands just out of bounds.

Deep breath. Get it together.

But then: “That was in,” he yells.

“It was in?”

“Yep,” he says with what might be a smirk. My first real point. Sure, I’d scored a few times when Pat made an error, but this was the first time I’d won a point thanks to something I’d done. I’d finally gotten it together.

In real life, I’m a desk jockey. The last time I actually went out and played tennis was a decade ago, on a sun-faded hotel tennis court in the middle of Kentucky. Even in my prime I wouldn’t have stood much of a chance of advancing at this event, the U.S. Open’s first ever national playoff, which gives anyone over 14 a chance to compete for a spot to take on the world’s best. The point of the national playoffs is to make the Open truly open, explains Jim Purington, tournament manager for the USTA’s New England office. “We want to give everyone a chance to compete, from weekend warriors to college players to former pros,” he says. If at the same time the USTA makes a few dollars and gets people buzzing about the Open months sooner than they typically would, that would be okay too. The national playoffs are like those first few weeks of American Idol when the delusional singers (that’s me) compete for a place on the real show with the future pop stars. It’s not always pretty, but at least it’s entertaining.

In order to find the players worthy of advancing to the U.S. Open, the USTA is hosting regional tournaments in 16 cities. The winners of the regionals advance to the championships in Atlanta and Stanford, California, where two players (one male, one female) will emerge with a ticket to the U.S. Open Qualifying Tournament in Flushing, Queens. I don’t expect to be one of those players; I just hope I don’t embarass myself. Purington doesn’t have high hopes for me either.

“I think the winner will be a player who’s already on the verge of getting into the Open,” he says. And as he can tell by looking at me, the only thing I’m on the verge of is male pattern baldness.

BEFORE HEADING TO WEST HAVEN, Connecticut, to play in the New England regional, I’ve decided to take a lesson to make sure I know how to serve more than just pancakes. I head to the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, New York, and meet the director of tennis, Whitney Kraft. A tall, athletic man in his fifties, Kraft is a former All-American who’s been playing tennis for decades and has the tan to prove it. As we make our way to the courts, he asks a question I was hoping to avoid: “So, do you play?”

“Not exactly,” I say. “But that’s sort of the point. I want to see what happens when someone with no experience tries to make the U.S. Open.” He’s more amused than annoyed.

As we wind through a sea of green cement I notice a couple of retirees getting in their morning workout. I pause for a second and watch them obliterate the ball on their serves, apply impressive backspin to their returns and somehow do it all with knees that require more braces than a class of seventh-graders.

“Let’s start with your forehand,” Kraft says as he hits me a ball. I bounce from one foot to the other (I may not know how to play tennis, but I do watch it on TV) and return the ball softly but accurately. Then a few more.

“Not bad,” Kraft says. “I was expecting much worse.” I take that as a compliment—I might as well, because I won’t manage to do anything for the remainder of the lesson to earn another one. My backhand is atrocious. I look like I’m trying to knock flies out of the air with my knuckles. My serve is even worse. I hit the ball too softly. Then too hard. Then I throw it up, swing, and miss entirely.

On my way out, I tell Kraft my goal is to at least score one point during my match. “Don’t worry if you don’t,” he says. “It’s called a ‘golden set,’ and it happens to the pros all the time.” That makes me feel better until I get home, Google “golden set” and find out that it’s happened in a professional match only once in the game’s history.

A week later I arrive at the Yale University Tennis Center ready to show off my skills, my brand new Head Six Star racket and my sweatbands. After sizing up the other players, I realize there’s another key piece of equipment I’m lacking: an equipment bag big enough to fit Steffi Graf inside it.

Matches are already underway. On one court, two young players, one of whom looks remarkably like Justin Bieber, sprint from side to side blasting forehand after forehand. On another court, two men in their thirties move even faster and hit even harder, even though their knee braces are wearing knee braces. They growl to themselves when they make mistakes and avoid eye contact when they pass each other to switch sides. They jump as they serve and hit the ball so hard I can’t help but flinch. Some of these guys are ready to take on Roger Federer.

Not Caleb Wetmore, though. The 35-year-old graphic designer, who took up tennis only a few years ago, is here to have fun. “I just want to get out on the court, get a T-shirt and not hurt myself,” he says.

Dave Landoch, a 36-year-old history teacher and tennis pro from Rhode Island, sets slightly loftier goals. “I want to make it to the second round,” he says. Unfortunately, Landoch winds up taking on one of the best players in the first round (there are no seedings) and loses 6-2, 4-6, 5-7.

When I meet Pat, my opponent, I decide to come clean. I tell him I don’t play, that he’s essentially just scored a first round bye. He seems excited, even if he harbors no real expectation of going to Flushing Meadows to compete. “There’s no way I’m going to win it all. But now I get to say that I played in the U.S. Open, sort of,” he says.

We start warming up, and right away I realize I’m in trouble. Pat has a strong, fluid swing. The ball shoots off his racket, travels in a straight line and drops just before the endline. We start playing, and Pat racks up games. Then my fateful shot into the back right corner gives me my first real point. I’ve accomplished my goal of avoiding a golden set and start thinking that my mantra is working. I’ve “got it together!” At least, that’s what I think for a couple of seconds. I score a few more points here and there but can’t string enough together to actually take a game.

As Pat and I shake hands over the net, I notice that the match next to ours has already ended. It turns out I wasn’t the only person to lose 6-0, 6-0 that day. Nolan Paige, a lanky 16-year-old with a mess of blond hair who happens to be ranked second in the country in his age group, made even quicker work of his opponent than Pat did of me. In the next few days Paige will go on to win the whole tournament and earn a place in Atlanta, where he’ll compete for a spot in the U.S. Open. “That would be ridiculous and unbelievable,” Paige says of playing in Arthur Ashe Stadium. “I’d have to really be playing well.”

Which, as I can now say from experience, is harder than it sounds.

New York–based writer ADAM K. RAYMOND isn’t so much bad at tennis as he is in love with love.

OPEN SEASON

How our would-be Agassi actually fared

FINAL SCORE: 6-0, 6-0

FIRST-SERVE PERCENTAGE
16

DOUBLE FAULTS
9

ACES
0

UNFORCED ERRORS
29

TOP SERVE SPEED
62 mph

IT’S PROBABLY BEST to get this out of the way: I hate swimming. Also, I’m really bad at it, which might be why I hate it.

The ironic thing is that I actually love water. In fact, I grew up surrounded by it. In the summertime, I stayed at my grandparents’ house on the coast of Maine with a beach just paces away from my bedroom window. One of my summer jobs was renting out inflatable floats down on Long Sands. I was a harbor rat, too, buzzing around on sailboats, dinghies and fishing boats in the islands of Maine and far out to sea.

No one knows quite why I’m incapable of such a simple and seemingly universal act. It could be hereditary—none of my siblings are very good swimmers—or it could be seeing Jaws at an impressionable age. I’ve always thought it was simply because I’m a sinker. Toss me into a pool, and I sink to the bottom like a coin tossed in a fountain. The only reason I’m still alive today is that—necessity being the mother of invention—I long ago created a desperation stroke, a crude, thrashing sort of anaerobic doggy paddle, wherein I hold my breath and windmill my arms furiously, creating a splashing tornado of froth while hoping to arrive at something fixed before I run out of oxygen.

Not that I wasn’t encouraged to learn. My parents tried their darndest, marching me to years of swimming lessons (always in an uncomfortably cold saltwater pool). I just couldn’t get past the breathing part.

It didn’t take long to start associating swimming with humiliation. At age nine, I went off to summer camp, where, on the first day, everyone was required to take a swim test. Campers lined up under pine trees by the main dock and nervously waited their turn to jump into the frigid early June lakewater and swim to another dock—one that looked so far away it might have been in Canada. When my turn came, I clambered over slick roots and sharp granite, dropped into the water and deployed my spastic half-doggy. But only a few feet past where I could touch the murky bottom my hands shot into the air in panic. A counselor reached out with a long pole, which I grabbed as though it were the hand of God. Four summers later, I became the oldest camper in the Minnow class, splashing around on Cadet Beach while the other kids sailed around Lake Winnipesaukee in little Sunfish sailboats like they had gills.

Fast-forward to this spring. I’m 37 years old, at a posh Caribbean resort with my fiancée, and we’re about to go snorkeling. Caught up in the joy of being on vacation, and perhaps entranced by the promise of warm water, I jump off a dock into the bathwater sea without putting on flippers. The current pulls me away from the dock, and after trying to fake a casual Australian crawl, I realize I’m going to have to use my desperation stroke. Thirty thrashing seconds later, I’m at the dock, breathing as though I’ve just sprinted up the stairs of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. As I climb wearily up onto the wooden planks, Molly is stunned.

“Oh, my God,” she says. “Sweetie, you can’t swim!”

“Sure I can,” I say, with an edge of defensiveness. “I just did!”

“That wasn’t swimming. That was surviving.”

So with our wedding just months away, I promise my bride-to-be that she won’t have to marry a nonswimmer (also, she wants a honeymoon in Bali). To get past swimmer’s block before the big day, I enroll in a swim school near Union Square in New York City.

“I’m here for the introductory class,” I say to the receptionist on my first day.

“Great!” she says, with a wide smile. “Where’s your child?”

“No, it’s me,” I say sheepishly. “I’m the student.”

“Ooooh,” she says. “I see.”

I emerge from the locker room into the muggy pool area to find myself surrounded by kids, mostly very young teenagers. It’s the oldest class the school offers. As I step into the pool, one of them, a tough-looking 10-year-old named Colin, turns to a friend and mumbles something that sounds like, “What’s with the old guy?”

“Gather ’round,” says the instructor, a former member of the Canadian Olympic team who is built like the dad in The Incredibles. “We’re going to start with kicking, okay?” I pull on my bathing cap and Speedo brand goggles, grab the edge of the pool and start scissoring. A sloshing sound echoes around the pool room, and I turn and look at Colin, who is kicking with a precocious confidence. I haven’t seen him swim yet, but I can tell he’s better than I am. It feels like Cadet Beach all over again.

The problem with learning to swim as an adult is that I have 37 years of bad habits to overcome, and that desperation stroke is as fixed in my muscle memory as my walking stride or my baseball throw. And before I can do anything, I have to overcome that sinking feeling.

After half an hour of slapping the water with my feet, we try a couple of other nonthreatening drills, but I feel no closer to swimming normally. Molly picks me up at the pool, and as we head home I tell her something a Navy SEAL once told me a few years ago: “Dude, water is inherently hostile territory.” Tell me about it. It’s the one thing about swimming that makes sense to me, and explains perfectly why I can’t breathe and swim at the same time. It’s a simple sum: breathing water is dangerous.

At the next lesson, Colin and his buddies snigger at me again. I shoot him a look. (I may not have learned to swim at camp, but I did figure out how to handle bullies.)

“Today we’re going to focus on floating,” the instructor says.

Jackpot!

“Okay, start out in the ‘airplane position’,” he says. Following his instructions, I spread my arms like a 777, grab a deep, slow breath and, keeping my back rigid, gently float onto my face. His words, “keep your bum in the air, don’t let it sag,” ring in my head. For a moment, I founder and consider thrashing to the surface, but a beat goes by and suddenly I’m floating happy as those babies you see on TV bobbing around gleefully in pools with their mothers. I’m not a sinker after all. It’s a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

After class, the director of the school takes me aside and gently suggests I might be better off with private instruction instead of sharing the pool with a bunch of kids. I tell her that I understand completely, but I can’t help wondering if someone complained about a middle-aged man crashing the pool party. Colin’s mom, no doubt.

For my first private lesson, we’re going to focus on something called “shoulder roll,” which is evidently another important fundamental. For the first time in my life, I’m excited about swimming. I may never be able to do a butterfly or the Michael Phelpsian dolphin kick, but I’m pretty sure I can find my way off Cadet Beach.  

Executive editor MIKE GUY is still deciding if he’ll honeymoon in Bali or somewhere drier, like central Africa.

LANDLUBBERS

Can’t swim? You aren’t alone. Around half the rest of the world can’t either, including these notable nonswimmers:

CARMEN ELECTRA

Former Baywatch lifeguard

FREDERICK THE GREAT

King of Prussia

THE SUNDANCE KID

Outlaw

I’D IMAGINED PLENTY of scenarios over the years in which I might find myself on page one of The New York Times. As a kid, it seemed likely that I’d go pro in any number of sports, if not also join the CIA and overthrow dictators in the summer. As an adult, and a journalist, I’d have settled for a byline.

But I certainly never imagined it like this.

I was walking down the street in Cologne, Germany, one steamy morning in June 2006, when my cell phone rang. It was a friend, calling from the U.S. “Were you at the U.S.-Czech game yesterday?” he asked, meaning the opening match of the 2006 World Cup for the national teams of the United States and the Czech Republic.

Yes, I said.

“Were you wearing an American flag?” he asked.

Yes, I answered, sheepishly this time. Uh-oh.

“I’m pretty sure you’re on the cover of The New York Times.”

Indeed I was. I found the photo a few minutes later in an internet café full of sweaty backpackers. There, on the home page of the Times website, was what seemed to be an unnecessarily gigantic photo of a clutch of American soccer fans looking utterly demoralized in the seconds after the Czech Republic scored a goal to go up 3-0 and dash America’s World Cup dream barely an hour after it had begun. And in that clutch, nearly in the center (not the focus of the photo—that would be a young girl with her face painted, standing up, mouth agape), prominently pictured, was me, in a U.S. jersey, wearing the stars and stripes as a cape.

I called my girlfriend to confirm that this photo wasn’t just on the website, that it had also appeared in full color, above the fold, on A1 of one of the world’s most famous newspapers. I believe her exact words were: “Oh my god.” And then: “Are you seriously wearing the American flag as a cape? What a dork.”

She had a point. But such is the magic of the World Cup that it elicits in rational humans (or, at least, usually rational humans) a passion they wouldn’t normally express in public. I am a devoted fan of many sports teams. I have gnawed sofa cushions and punched walls over the New York Mets and hugged strangers and sung “Take Me Home, Country Roads” in the streets after West Virginia University football games. But nothing brings out such irrational fervor as the World Cup—and my team isn’t even that good. It hardly matters. No sporting occasion comes close to this once-every-four-years bacchanal of athletic fanaticism and patriotic fervor. Equal parts sport and celebration, it unites nations and puts wars on hold.

Volumes have been written about the geopolitical significance of the cup, of the metaphors observed when countries face off on the pitch (that’s soccer for “field”). Countries around the world quite literally stop in their tracks as nearly every citizen of the 32 nations participating—plus a huge percentage of those that aren’t—stops to watch the game and share in a kind of global adoration for the world’s most popular sport (with the huge exception of the U.S., where it gets about as much respect as jai alai).

Over the 10 days I spent in Germany, I rarely passed a home, restaurant or bar that didn’t have its TV tuned to soccer. Bakeries, cafés and clothing boutiques had flat-screens wedged into their shop windows, and owners, employees and patrons could be found gathered in the streets out front as commerce ground to a halt.

Watching the 2006 tournament in Europe might have been my most intense World Cup experience, but it was hardly my first. When the Cup came to the U.S. in 1994, I was an intern working for a suburban paper in Washington, D.C. One afternoon, I went out to RFK Stadium and saw a Saudi player nicknamed the Desert Pelé score the Cup’s most fantastic goal in a stadium full of orange-clad Holland fans, who left happy when the Netherlands won anyway. I watched the U.S. shock the world and beat Colombia from an Irish pub on Capitol Hill and ducked out of a family reunion in North Carolina to see Brazil top Italy in penalty kicks.

The 1998 edition was in France and was a debacle for the U.S. But I was up with the sun every morning, watching as our national team barely showed up, losing three times in three games, including a humiliating loss to Iran.

In 2002, Korea and Japan cohosted, meaning that I had to rise at 4 a.m. to watch games before stumbling off to work. That was just fine, as the U.S. had its most impressive showing yet, advancing to the quarterfinals. I caught the first half of the team’s final match on the radio on a bus in the Italian countryside during a business trip; I sprinted into a village bar for most of the second half, in time to see the U.S. outplay, and nearly beat, Germany, the eventual runner-up. I don’t speak Italian and had no idea what the announcers were saying during the postgame recap, but the back-pats from the Italians around me told me that everyone was impressed with America’s showing. Now that was something.

But it was on the streets of Cologne that I really fell in love. It hardly mattered who was playing. We chugged beers with Swedes in a tent city outside the Sweden-England match, chanted alongside hundreds of Angolans in an open-air bar lit only by a large screen showing that country’s match with Portugal (its former colonizer, by the way) and climbed lightposts alongside lager-sodden locals in the early hours of the morning after Germany scored in the last minute to beat its neighbor and longtime rival Poland.

Flying home, I promised myself that I’d never miss another Cup.

AND I MEANT IT. I fully expected to be in South Africa for the World Cup this month until something slightly more important popped up: my first child.

At least the boy had the decency to schedule his arrival for late April, a good month before the U.S.’s first game—a titanic opener versus England—meaning that I’ve got 40 or 50 days to adapt to sleeplessness and accumulate enough diaper changing points to sneak out to pubs for mid-afternoon matches.

The World Cup bounces on to Brazil in 2014, and this time I mean it: I’ll be there, maybe even with a new conscript in Sam’s Army, as the U.S. team supporters are known. My son will be four, which is plenty old enough to travel, plenty old enough to love the game, and plenty old enough to chant Ole! Ole! Ole! Ole! in tune.

I mean, seriously, no one’s going to laugh at a four-year-old in a cape.

Brooklyn-based writer JOSH DEAN is currently shopping for a flag large enough to wear as a sarong.

JUST THE TICKET

Soccer may not be huge in the U.S., but Americans are buying more tickets to this World Cup than people from any country except the host.

TICKET SALES, BY NATION:

1. South Africa
2. United States
3. United Kingdom
4. Australia
5. Mexico
6. Germany

There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt. — SIDDHARTHA GAUTAMA ("THE BUDDHA"), 563-483 BCE

THE BUDDHA WOULD HAVE made a good golf instructor.

Rather than show his students the proper grip or stance, he would point them toward the Right Path. He’d teach chakras instead of chipping, mantras instead of mid-irons, the Four Noble Truths instead of a Five-Step Swing. The game would be just that: a game. It would be…serene. In other words, the way it’s supposed to be.

And the spiritual home of golf wouldn’t be gray, dour Scotland, but rather sunny, happy Thailand, where these days golf courses are multiplying like bamboo.

A few years ago, someone had the bright idea of luring visitors to Thailand with lush fairways where they could combine the ultimate game of self-flagellation with a culture of peace and inner harmony. The ploy seems to have worked. Today, playing golf in Thailand can be a Zen-like experience, leading even the most ill-tempered, hard-swinging hacker to adopt a new attitude of tranquility, one that the Buddha would surely approve of.

There are now more than 250 courses in Thailand, catering to local businessmen as well as golfers from the rest of the world. For the visitor, there are maybe 50 good courses, a dozen of those worth a special trip to play. (Most of the rest are run by the country’s armed forces.) Although the nation’s geography ranges from jungle and mountains in the north to sand and sea in the south, certain givens apply to all the top clubs: great conditions, top amenities, delightful caddies, delicious food and unfailingly cold beer. Also, affordable prices: A week of golf in Thailand costs roughly the same as a week in Orlando or Scottsdale, including airfare.

The whole secret of existence is to have no fear.

Golf can be painful. It’s demanding, demeaning and demoralizing— mentally and physically. I’ve learned this on courses around the world. But as I arrive in Thailand—admittedly, a long trip from New York just to golf—I view this as a chance to open my consciousness to peace and greater enlightenment. Or at least a smoother swing.

My journey begins an hour from Bangkok at the Thai Country Club, a short track lined with trees and water. It’s a good warm-up, although it can make one hot with anger. Pro golfers have been known to pass through here and blow their cool on the devastating par-four 10th hole. It’s rare that I can compare myself to a pro, but at Thai CC, I’m humbled by the 10th, searching fruitlessly for good vibrations and finding only muscle spasms. I wouldn’t have minded three-putting if I’d been able to hit a green in that many strokes first.

The next day, I play two courses at the Siam Country Club in the hills outside town. The classically styled Old Course was the first privately owned links in the country, and it hosted an LPGA Tour event a few years ago. Thankfully, it’s a big ballpark with lots of room, so I feel able to swing more freely, less worried about a shot slicing into Cambodia. But it’s a roller coaster: On one shot, I’d think I’d found the key; on the next, I’d find a pond, a tree, a new depth of frustration.

The wilder, more modern Plantation Course features more sand than the Jersey Shore. On the par-five fifth hole, I manage to avoid all 27 bunkers and reach the green in three magical shots. I start to feel that false sense of security golfers get when they think they’ve “got it.” My muscles loosen (it could be the heat or the humidity, both approaching triple digits), and my normally leaden putting stroke gains a silky smoothness. And a birdie.

The following morning, I tee off at dawn at the year-and-a-half-old award-winning Banyan Golf Club in the hills outside Hua Hin. Lush, rolling, mentally challenging and nonstop fun, it’s my favorite course in Thailand. For a few holes, good vibes help my game transcend. The course suits my eyes, and my strokes seem to conform perfectly to each of its contours.

Later I treat myself to a massage. Thai massage techniques, incorporating tenets also found in acupuncture and yoga, work every limb and joint. But be warned: The standard rubdown can prove too forceful for the uninitiated, and inner peace can quickly turn into outer pain.

Still, Mark Siegel—an American who moved to Thailand 20 years ago and now runs tour operator olfAsian— gets a feet, hands, neck and head massage nearly every day. For about six dollars an hour, the therapist works away his stress while he taps away on his laptop, the perfect melding of business and pleasure.

He is able who thinks he is able.

The caddies in Thailand are mostly young women who can make a better living carrying clubs than working in an office or factory. Wearing long sleeves, wide-brimmed hats and gloves as protection from the scorching sun, these cheerful ambassadors also fill in as both Sherpa and nurse. They’re great at judging yardage and reading greens, and they will run back to the snack shack in oppressive humidity to bring you a cold drink. Feel an ache coming on? They’ll massage your back or shoulders.

At Thai Country Club, my group is surprised by a sudden downpour. The caddies quickly cover our clubs, don cellophane rainsuits and scan the skies for lightning. My caddie, Siep, ushers me into the cart and snaps open an umbrella, which she proceeds to hold over me. It’s a nice gesture, but I feel a bit ridiculous. I repeatedly beg her to come in from the rain, but she refuses.

To conquer oneself is a greater victory than to conquer thousands in a battle.

The longer I’m in Thailand, the more the good golf karma takes hold, and the more my game shows flashes of adequacy. After a few days of flailing, I begin to feel fluid. I slow down, realizing that I have to cool off inside to beat the heat outside. I start to really notice the bountiful plant and animal life, and turn my mind from keeping score to soaking in the experience. After all, it’s about the journey, not the destination.

And then I have it—my Zen golf moment. Fans of Caddyshack will understand when I say that I actually stopped thinking long enough to “be the ball.” It is my final round in Thailand, a tee shot on one of the last holes. My swing suddenly develops tempo and makes a perfect turn. The ball rockets off the face, traces the shape of the fairway and bounces well past the other drives from my foursome. For one swing, I have reached a higher plane of golf wisdom. I will see that shot in my head for months to come.

One hole later, I shank it straight into the water. As the Buddha says, Life is suffering.

The former editor of Golf Magazine, JAMES A. FRANK has a registered handicap of 14 and a seriously tweaked muladhara chakra.

NAMAS-TEE

How to find the Right Path to the right fairway.

GOLFASIAN • WWW.GOLFASIAN.COM • The most comprehensive outfitter in Thailand, GolfAsian will set up tee times at places like Banyan Golf Club, above, reserve hotel rooms and even arrange non-golf-related excursions. Offers the personal touch.

TOURISM AUTHORITY OF THAILAND • WWW.TOURISMTHAILAND.ORG • From this website, you can book everything from rental cars to elephant rides, as well as connect with resorts, instructors and even a Buddhist monastery or two.

GOLF IN A KINGDOM • WWW.GOLFINAKINGDOM.COM • In case you’re still not sure where to begin, this website forms a sort of consortium of clubs, with descriptions of the best of the country’s 250 courses.

BASEBALL TENDS TO grab people early in life, before its absurdities have a chance to reveal themselves. To a young fan, the game is about hitting a ball with a big stick, throwing that ball as far as possible and diving in the grass to catch it.

But as we get pulled deeper into the vortex of fandom, toward the all-consuming fantasy leagues and $115 tickets, the simplicity fades. We learn the intricacies of the game, such as how a cut fastball is different from a slider and why old-timers refer to lazy pop flies as cans o’ corn. We learn strategy, such as the proper time to double steal and where to position the left-fielder when Albert Pujols comes to the plate (in the bleachers). This is only scratching the surface; the mysteries of salary arbitration and oversize polyurethane foam fingers take many more years and a relationship-threatening level of obsession to grasp. But there is one important lesson that most fans never learn, something the people running teams picked up (or at least should have) while they were clubhouse interns: Everything they think they know about baseball is wrong. In the service of ending this mass miseducation, let us dispel six of baseball’s most widely held myths.

MYTH: THE BEST PITCHERS WIN THE MOST GAMES.

REALITY: This myth has the benefit of making perfect sense. Baseball is about winning games, so a pitcher’s wins column should be the ultimate judge of greatness, right? Not exactly. The rules for notching a win make less sense than Yogi Berra does. All a pitcher has to do is leave the game with his team in the lead and he is eligible for the win. That means a pitcher who throws a baseball the way a baby flings peas can give up 10 runs and still come out the winner, as long as his team has scored 11 by the time he’s dragged off the mound. That’s what happened to former Met Steve Trachsel for the entire 2006 season. The soft-tossing righty had 15 wins that year despite giving up almost five runs a game, which is usually bad enough to earn a bus ticket to Buffalo. Instead, he was rewarded with a new contract that paid him $3 million for another year’s work.

At the other extreme, a dominant pitcher can toss a two-hitter and still get stuck with the loss if his team puts up a goose egg. The win is clearly a team statistic that unfairly rewards or punishes the pitcher. Not that Trachsel minds.

MYTH: THE ONLY THING WORSE THAN THE STRIKEOUT IS THE PLAGUE.

REALITY: Strikeout haters tend to write off players who frequently swing and miss. Bad move! Some of the game’s best sluggers (Adam Dunn, Ryan Howard) are also its most strikeout prone (and, coincidentally, its biggest). Studies show that a high strikeout rate is correlated with an ability to hit for power and get on base. That isn’t to say strikeouts make a player better, but they certainly don’t make him worse.

Still, there’s no quicker way for a young player to make enemies than with strikeouts. Coaches hate them, fans hate them, peanut vendors hate them. The strikeout is widely considered the worst way for a batter to fail and the easiest way to disappoint a small town (remember Casey?). But the strikeout is really no different from any other out. Some will argue that a groundout is better because it could move a runner to the next base or result in an error. But the potential benefit of a grounder is canceled out by the increased chance of the only thing that elicits louder groans than a strikeout: a double play. Strikeouts also require pitchers to throw at least three pitches, and the more pitches thrown by the starting pitcher, the sooner his manager will have to rely on middle relievers, those schlubs masquerading as major leaguers.

MYTH: THE BEST SLUGGERS HAVE THE MOST RUNS BATTED IN (RBIS).

REALITY: Uh-uh. Skepticism of the RBI dates back to the moment the stat was introduced by a Buffalo, New York, newspaper in 1879. In recent years, more baseball insiders have begun to see the uselessness of the RBI, but the majority still loves its “ribeye steaks” (really, people call them that).

Truth is, measuring a hitter by his RBIs is like measuring your health by the size of your spare tire. Sure, it will give you a decent idea of where you stand, but there are far more advanced metrics. The problem with RBIs is that they are almost completely dependent on a batter’s place in the lineup and the players who hit before him. Just look at Blue Jays outfielder Joe Carter’s 1997 season. He recorded 102 RBIs despite hitting like a JV shortstop. Compare that to Barry Bonds’ 2003 season on an abysmal Giants team, which saw him record only 90 RBIs even though he hit 45 home runs and won the National League MVP. Sure, it’s hard to feel sympathetic for someone mired in such a dark cloud of steroid allegations, but 90 RBIs with the numbers Bonds put up is punishment no one deserves.

MYTH: SOMETIMES BUNTING IS A GOOD MOVE.

REALITY: Along with the knuckleball and Bob Uecker, the bunt is one of the most misunderstood phenomena in baseball. Typically, when a batter bunts, his goal is to move the runner to the next base while conceding the out at first. It’s a trade-off. A sacrifice. An out for a base. The idea is that if a runner advances a base it will increase the team’s chance of scoring. The idea is wrong. Statistical analysis shows that the out lost is more valuable than the base gained. Even the Washington Nationals are more likely to score when the batter goes for the hit, and those guys sometimes forget to use bats altogeher.

But what if a player is more teddy bear than Teddy Ballgame? He would probably help the team more by bunting than aimlessly flailing away, right? Well, maybe. But instead of having these inept batters lay down a bunt, perhaps someone should lock them inside a batting cage until they’re able to do what tens of thousands of high school kids across the country can do—hit a baseball.

MYTH: MANAGERS LOOK FANTASTIC IN BASEBALL UNIFORMS.

REALITY: Some managers look like swollen jelly beans in baseball uniforms. But don’t blame them. They have no choice. Major League Baseball strictly enforces the managers-must-wear-uniforms rule, going as far as sending officials into the dugout to make sure they’re in compliance.

It wasn’t always like this. Back in the 1920s and 1930s gentlemen such as Connie Mack wore suits in the dugout. But by the late ’40s all managers had traded in slacks and fedoras for stretchy pants and baseball caps, and—70 years later—the style persists. A few incorrigable sorts, most notably Boston’s Terry Francona, have pushed the boundaries by wearing windbreakers rather than a uniform top. This qualifies as rebellion.

Coaches in other sports have gone further. In 2005 former 49ers head coach Mike Nolan petitioned the NFL to bend the rules so he could wear a suit, rather than the Reebok-branded garb required. His request was granted.

Baseball needs a Mike Nolan—a trailblazing manager who demands the right to look like an adult. This would make the game see that forcing 60-year-old men who earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to wear pajamas to work is both cruel and unusual.

MYTH: CRACKER JACKS ARE BETTER THAN PEANUTS.

REALITY: Never trust a snack that doesn’t come in a shell.

Like a baseball manager, senior editor ADAM K. RAYMOND wears stretchy pants to work.

ON STRIKE

Even the greats swing and miss.

Those still convinced that strikeouts are a scourge may not have met a gentleman named Reggie Jackson. He sure struck out a lot, but he also found time to do some positive things at the plate.

2,597
STRIKEOUTS (MOST ALL TIME)

563
HOME RUNS

5
WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONSHIPS

2
WORLD SERIES MVP’S

WITH MARCH MADNESS fast approaching, I must make a painful, soul-bearing confession. It’s long overdue, more overdue even than Mark McGwire’s steroids mea culpa, so I may as well just get it out there:

I cannot shoot a basketball.

Let me amend that. Technically, I can shoot a basketball. I have “played” the sport—or at least something resembling it—since I was young. I even ably warmed the bench for the high school junior varsity. To this day, I occasionally play pickup games with other flabby office drones. Running up and down the court, there are moments when I actually delude myself that I know what I’m doing.

And then I shoot the ball, and it horrifies people. Remember that episode of Seinfeld in which Elaine danced at a party, and everyone recoiled in fear? That’s what my basketball shot is like. It disturbs humanity. When I grab the ball and heave it toward the hoop, players on both sides look it me aghast with a mixture of fright and pity.

I know I’m not alone in this affliction. One of the most popular grievances with the current college and pro game is the deterioration of shooting. Fans complain that players don’t have the touch that they once did, that the game exists too much above the rim, that shooting fundamentals aren’t prioritized like suffocating defenses. This is not merely the groaning of nostalgic cranks. For every pure jump-shot artist, like Boston’s Ray Allen or Golden State’s Stephen Curry, there is a legion of brick tossers barely competent from more than 12 feet out. It’s one of the things that invariably makes me nuts during the NCAA tournament. Yes, it’s a thrilling sports event. But there are always long stretches of blundering offensive play when I wonder if the battered rim should file for workmen’s comp.

Of course, I’m one to talk. My own basketball shot is ugly and artless, devoid of grace or technique. Summon an image of a classic jump-shooter—Larry Bird, say, or Reggie Miller. Then imagine the total, ham-handed opposite. I grip the ball with 10 fingers tightly, cock it violently behind my head like a backhoe, and then hurl it like I’m throwing a burning log out of a car window.

The ugliness would be tolerated if my shot were accurate. But it is not. It’s not even close. My spinless knuckleball usually clangs off the rim violently. Even the backboard laughs. Not long ago, I was staying at a hotel with a spiffy basement court, and I thought it would be fun to try free throws. I went three for 25, which means I should be fired from playing pickup ball—or signed by the New Jersey Nets.

My terrorshot is a source of great shame for me. It makes me embarrassed to play a sport that I love. Sometimes I try to play without shooting, and for a while it goes well—I stick to rebounds and passing, and my teammates think I’m a generous guy. But I can never totally escape my hideous shot. Every so often I find myself with an open look at the basket, and I have no choice but to launch it, praying only that it stays in the gym and that I do not maim anyone for life.

So I’ve decided to get my shot fixed. It’s a weird, difficult thing to try to relearn in your late 30s. Most people are taught how to shoot a basketball when they’re very young, around the time they learn how to ride a bike, how to swim and how to play No-Limit Texas Hold ’Em (or was that just me?).

But you’re never too old to learn, I say. At my age people think nothing of taking a golf lesson from a swing coach or getting one of those private sessions with a Pilates instructor. If I can learn French wine and how to julienne vegetables like a proper bourgeois sophisticate, why can’t I reteach myself how to shoot a basketball?

So I get in touch with Jim Murray, a hoops maestro at New York’s Chelsea Piers gym, and we meet on a cold Monday afternoon. Jim, who played Division III hoops and whose father is still a basketball coach, begins by telling me we aren’t going to need a ball for a while.

We’re going to work on form without a ball. This is like arriving at a steak house and being told you will have 20 minutes of knife-and-fork practice.

But Jim is a lot bigger than me, so I go along. The main thing people ignore about shooting, Jim says, is their legs.

I must bend my legs, and use them as a launchpad, he says. Jim then takes my right arm (I’m a righty) and bends the elbow into a sharp L. He puts an imaginary ball on my fingertips and bends my wrist.

“Knees, elbows, wrists,” Jim says. “Repeat that: Knees, elbows, wrists.”

I do this three-bend drill for about three minutes on an empty court, looking like a reject from community ballet. The kids playing next door are thoroughly confused as to what I’m doing. Then Jim allows me to hold a real basketball. He shows me how to use my left hand as a guide—not an accomplice, the way I used to do with my knuckleball shot. He has me lie down on a bench with the ball and practice spinning it off my fingertips in the air, getting that pretty backspin. Finally he brings me to the court and lets me start practicing on a real hoop. From two feet away.

“Larry Bird used to come out and shoot two- to three hundred of these before every game,” he says.

I surely look silly, but it’s working. The ball leaves my fingers with an elegant rotation, and more often than not it goes in. Jim asks me to step back another two feet and shoot some more. More swishes. I notice I’m getting those “shooter’s rolls,” too—those misfires where the spin is gentle enough that the ball rolls off the lip of the rim and into the hoop. It’s the beginnings of a touch.

Jim admits he doesn’t usually get clients like me. Mostly he teaches school-age kids. Adults don’t usually have the hours for daytime lessons, and when they get out of work, it’s easier to find a league or a pickup game. Over time, bad habits worsten. It’s rare that the freaks like me seek help.

But now I’m really starting to stroke it. I’m back at the foul line, and by Jim’s count I’m hitting somewhere between 60 and 70 percent of my shots—not quite Ray Allen, but a lot better than Shaquille O’Neal, whose lifetime free-throw percentage hovers around 50. Less than one hour of practice, and I’m already better at free throws than a guy who’s made more than $250 million playing ball.

“You’ll be teaching the lessons next year,” Jim says. Yes, I’m sure he says that to everybody.

On my way out of the gym, I’m hot and sweaty, so I buy a sports drink. As I gulp it down, I think about the art of shooting and how it’s never too late to master it, how even some pros could use a tutorial like this. I am renewed with enthusiasm for the NBA season, March Madness and basketball in general. Then I toss the empty bottle toward a trash can and miss by a mile.

Contributing writer JASON GAY switched to playing squash in high school, and he wasn’t any good at that, either.

BIG SHOTS

Basketball has evolved dramatically since the game was invented in 1891, thanks, in large part, to three legends and their signature shots.

“GRANNY SHOT” HOMER STONEBRAKER 1919

“SKY HOOK” KAREEM ABDUL- JABBAR 1969

“SPACE JAM” MICHAEL JORDAN 1984

EVERY SPORT IN THE WORLD has its Big Game. But in the United States, there really is only one: the Super Bowl. From the torrent of media hype to the parade of grizzled football veterans to the comically high television ratings—almost 100 million viewers in the U.S. alone— the Super Bowl makes everything else (NBA finals and World Series game sevens, U.S. Open Finals, the Masters) look like a festival of obscure European art films. You have to go global—the Olympics or World Cup—if you want to compete on magnitude, but of course, neither of those events will ever feature the comedic stylings of Bill Belichick.

I love the Super Bowl. Love the hype, love the game, love the overbaked halftime show, and love the social acceptance of eating 39 chicken wings in a single sitting. But I have a beef: Why is the most important sporting event of the calendar always played in a dispassionate, indifferent city? It’s the planet’s most watched game, played in front of the planet’s most ambivalent live audience.

It’s an insult to serious fans everywhere. You spend the entire season smearing on face paint, standing shirtless and grilling ribs in the parking lot with like-minded lunatics. You waste nights building a detailed papier-mâché replica of Cris Collinsworth (or is that just us?). You hang in for the highs and lows, the injuries, the coaching crises. Then if your team makes the playoff s, it plays a handful of postseason games in someone’s home stadium, in fair weather and foul. And then, if lightning strikes, it makes the Super Bowl, only to run onto the field and entertain…a bunch of bored guys in khakis.

It’s like following a couple of dry martinis with a nice tall glass of soy milk. In the NFL’s peerless playoff system, which keeps us enthralled through January and early February, this is the one weak link.

I’m not a (total) fool: I know the upside of holding the Super Bowl on unaligned turf. It’s the Super Bowl!

It’s the sport’s marquee event. Like a bride planning her wedding, the Nfl selects locations where it will have consistency, control and veto power over the band. Ever since Green Bay won the first Super Bowl in Los Angeles, it’s been held in warm places. On the rare occasion that it takes place somewhere cold, like Indianapolis in 2012, it’s a cold place with a domed stadium and a lot of hotel rooms. The Nfl does not want Howie Long sleeping in his rental car.

And unlike some hand-wringing purists, I don’t mind that the Super Bowl has a corporate side. Fine with me. If fans want to rave about how well-run, rich and polished the league is, they’ve got to accept that corporations have a lot to do with that. Television network money and deep-pocketed sponsors are the foundation of the league. Sponsors need to be taken care of. Eli Manning does not pay for himself.

Still, the Super Bowl must get livelier before it loses touch with its hardcore fans, the ones who support it the other 364 days of the year. And the most obvious way to accomplish this is also the simplest: Hold the Super Bowl at the home field of the team with the best record. Either that, or alternate it each year between the two conferences, the AFC and the NFC. (Just don’t employ that cockamamie idea that baseball had for its All-Star game, and turn the Pro Bowl into some kind of home-field decider.)

I can just hear the complaints. “Hey, do you really want to go to Green Bay, Wisconsin, in February?” My answer? Why, yes—yes I do want a Super Bowl on the Frozen Tundra in the second-coldest month of the year. Think of the hours of rumination over how teams would handle the weather. Think of the obsessive worry over Nor’easters and Alberta clippers. Think of the ingenious methods fans would come up with to smuggle in scotch. Think of Super Bowl snow.

Besides, I’ve never understood why it’s okay to hold an AFC or NFC championship in freezing-cold howling winds and snow just two weeks before the Super Bowl, but not the Super Bowl itself. It’s as if the Nfl spends 51 weeks of the year advertising how tough it is, only to start whining like a beach volleyball player when it comes to the main event.

Still, the exciting possibility of ugly weather isn’t the main reason to move the Super Bowl (after all, warm weather and dome teams could host too). It’s the energy. Think of what an entertaining zoo a football-mad city like Green Bay—or Pittsburgh, or Baltimore, or Foxborough, Massachusetts, where the New England Patriots play—would be if it hosted the biggest game on the planet. It certainly wouldn’t be any duller than…okay, I’m not going to say it, but just remember that not all warm-climate cities are as swinging as Miami. Sure, they might wind up a few hotel rooms short in Foxborough or Green Bay, but two words, sports fans: buddy up.

Meanwhile, just think of the scene inside the stadium. It would be a madhouse. The crazies would overwhelm the corporate suits. Nobody would be leaving in the fourth quarter to catch an early shuttle to the hotel. There’d be no inexplicable lulls of silence midway through the second quarter. And they wouldn’t have to do that embarrassing thing they do now: importing fake fans to race onto the field and cheer for the halftime act. Do you think Pittsburgh needs to be told to cheer for Bruce Springsteen or Tom Petty?

To be honest, I didn’t care about this issue for a long time, because for a long stretch from the mid-’80s to the mid’90s, the Super Bowl was basically a blowout. You could have put 80,000 Motorhead fans in there and by halftime it would have sounded like a middle-round match at Wimbledon.

Lately, however, the Super Bowl has been extremely competitive. Several times in the past decade I’ve heard commentators speculate that the given year’s Super Bowl might be the “best ever.” Last year’s throwdown in Tampa between Pittsburgh and Arizona, which had the potential to be a dog, turned out to be one of the most exciting games I’ve ever witnessed. Still, you couldn’t help but wonder how much better it would have been on home turf.

Finally, to those who ask, “Isn’t it unfair to give the home-field advantage to one team in the biggest game of them all?” I respond, Yes! It’s unfair. Since when did football start being about what’s fair? Is it fair that the Colts got Peyton Manning and the Cleveland Browns have to hold open quarterback tryouts? Is it fair that the Washington Redskins have become the Washington Generals? Is it fair that a casino took all my brother’s money after I promised him the Patriots would “never, ever lose” to the New York Giants?

Let football play its signature game at home. After all, I too will be home. Watching on the couch in the living room, where it’s nice and warm.

JASON GAY played the half-time show with Seals & Croft at Super Bowl XII.

SEE SPOT RUN

For many of the Superbowl’s nearly 100 million viewers, it’s as much about the advertisements as the game itself. But those 30-second spots ain’t cheap.

“1984” BY APPLE

COST PER SECOND, 1984: $15,000

VS

“FETCH” BY BUDWEISER

COST PER SECOND, 2009: $100,000

FOUR YEARS AGO, the National Hockey League more or less dropped off the face of national television, cast into a sports broadcasting wilderness where even the world’s-strongest-man contest feared to go—which is to say, a place without ESPN or even ESPN2. Besides depriving hockey fans of the nightly stylings of ESPN hockey analyst Barry Melrose, whose egregious mullet was revered enough to spark a series of Bud Light ads, the NHL’s failure to negotiate a full-time broadcast contract with the network cost it a lot of money and a lot of air time. NBC, in the meantime, has been broadcasting games, but just a handful and paying zero for the privilege. Consequently, the NHL is a distant sixth (if you count NASCAR and golf) to the other major sports on the TV landscape—deep within a black hole from which it may never return.

It turns out this may not be such a bad thing. Spurned by national television, the NHL, with a surprisingly stable base of fans rabid enough to seek out games no matter what it takes—whether through pirated digital streams or legit NHL website offerings—has built a significant online presence, and one that may give it advantages as the major sports continue to shed their television-based past and present, and move toward an all-broadband future.

It’s not that the NHL is a small or insignificant league. Attendance for hockey games, in fact, is about the same as it is for NBA games, and hockey’s fans are famously loyal. As an old saw in Boston goes, “There may be only 17,000 Bruins fans, but they come to every single game.”

Of course, there are more than 17,000 Bruins fans, but you get the point. With competition from more dominant sports like baseball, NASCAR, football and basketball (and the college versions of the latter two), there just isn’t room for an extra sport on the major airwaves— though most markets with pro hockey teams have a local cable channel willing to air games.

Such adversity has forced pro hockey teams and the league down some unfamiliar paths. Take Los Angeles, a city whose financially strapped newspapers stopped sending beat writers to L.A. Kings road games around the same time the NHL lost its ESPN contract. This fall, the team solved the problem by hiring Los Angeles Daily News writer Rich Hammond to be its full-time blogger. He now does just about the same thing he did at the LADN but gets his checks from the team instead of a publisher. The result: Though whatever wall may have existed between writer and subject has basically been dismantled, Kings fans now get coverage by the same writer they’ve been reading for almost a decade.

The Washington Capitals have long been at the forefront of the NHL’s digital experiment, having been among the first teams to offer bloggers permanent seats at games. This actually isn’t too surprising, given that the team is owned by Ted Leonsis, who spent the better (and certainly most profitable) part of his career in various positions at AOL during the internet giant’s salad days.

As Leonsis candidly told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s program Hockey Night in Canada, the wood stove around which the Canadian hockey world gathers, “Hockey’s not going to make it big on television. We’ve tried for twenty years. We have to be the most new-media savvy league and go where the puck is going to be. I don’t think it’s anything to fear. I think it’s a business and social imperative that we have to embrace.”

The Islanders, also suffering in a world of reduced print space, have gone a step further. Next to the free seats offered to salaried mainstream media in the press box, the team installed a “Blog Box,” where independent bloggers have covered the games with the same level of access as their traditional-media brethren since 2007. As many as 175 bloggers applied for spots in the box last year, and the team chose 13. Now, instead of the usual coterie of frustrated novelists and ink-stained eggheads, the people covering the Islanders include such everymen as an air conditioning service tech and an electrician. On opening day, at least one of the bloggers showed up for work in regular fan attire: an Islanders jersey.

Like other leagues, the NHL has embraced every kind of social networking site, from MySpace to Facebook, and keeps a full-time social media staffer at its New York headquarters. This August, the Tampa Bay Lightning made history in fewer than 140 characters by becoming the first professional team in any major sport to announce a trade by means of a tweet.

The NHL streams games, too, and for $20 a month, or $159 a year, a fan can purchase games and have them fed to a computer via the league’s GameCenter Live. Some games, however, are blacked out locally because of deals with cable companies. This may have dissuaded some from dumping their local cable service, but the league is obviously still mindful of alienating whatever television presence remains (local teams can often still be seen on local cable channels). The NHL’s senior vice president of digital media, Perry Cooper, notes that about half the fan base roots for teams outside their home market, which is a boon to the internet operation. The NHL doesn’t release GameCenter subscriber numbers, but Cooper says it’s seen about a 70 percent growth in subscribers year over year.

The NHL also makes the games available on other sites immediately after they’ve aired in home markets.

Go to Hulu, the high-quality video hub started last year by Fox and NBC, and you’ll find full-length recent NHL games archived in a free feed. The NHL has struck similar deals with Yahoo! and iTunes, and in the process it created a sort of ad hoc DVR for its fans.

There are other, less legitimate formats as well. Some frustrated (or just cheap) NHL fans have been pirating streams from cable and throwing them up on the web. NHL officials say that they “go after” such evildoers, but there haven’t been any high-profile prosecutions—which could indicate a sophisticated view of how brand marketing works. Like Grateful Dead bootlegs, pirated NHL streams bolster other sources of income for the league—namely, tickets and merchandise—while building an audience for a league that will be well positioned to play on whatever new, more level, playing field emerges over the next few seasons.

Can the NHL ever imagine itself as a totally digital sport? “Right now, people need those sixty-inch HD games, and cable can give those to them,” says Cooper, somewhat diplomatically. “Only time will tell what happens next.”

BRYANT URSTADT also plays hockey without major broadcast coverage—in a men’s league in Queens, New York.

BIG-TIME COLLEGE football makes me feel conflicted. Not that I don’t love the sport, which is a thousand times more crazy and passionate than the NFL, what with the face-painted freshmen, the chest-painted sophomores and the butt-painted sixth-year seniors. But it’s just become so intense. You’ve got ESPN off ering round-the-clock coverage, coaches earning millions of dollars, spurious (and perhaps not-so-spurious) allegations of players cashing in, and college towns demanding scalps if a team dares to lose two games, heaven forbid three.

But what really jars me is my own college football team: the University of Wisconsin Badgers. We’re good now. Not crush-you-like-a-walnut, Tiger Woods good, but not bad at all. The Badgers were 12-1 a few years ago, and they finished No. 5 in the USA Today coaches poll. They go to a bowl pretty much every season, including the last five. They’ve become a reliable power in the Big Ten Conference and have managed to do it without scandal, which is something to be proud of, especially these days.

Call me a killjoy, but I’m not on the shiny new Badgers bandwagon. I don’t recognize that team. When I went to Wisconsin a couple of-cough-decades ago, the football team won nine games. in four years. They went 1-10, 2-9, 1-10, and in my final year, they stumbled onto a bona fide winning streak, going 5-6. It was the diametric opposite of the program that the Badgers have become. We couldn’t pass or run. We couldn’t defend. We didn’t schedule cupcake opponents in the early season to puff up our schedule. We were the cupcake opponent-and nearly every Saturday, we got smooshed.

But here’s the thing: It was a blast. My friends and I didn’t mind at all that the Badgers were Big Ten doormats, that our games were over before they started, that the only bowls we’d ever see were in the restrooms. Outside of the poor guys who actually played on the team, no one at our school took football too seriously. It was part of our identity: It was cool not to care. Those colleges where they lived and died with the scoreboard every Saturday, camped outside at night to get tickets, rioted over the slightest referee injustices? They were nuts.

It wasn’t like we didn’t go to games. The Badgers may not have sold out Wisconsin’s Camp Randall Stadium, but it didn’t look like a Kansas City Royals day game, either. Not that we were always there to see the team. Wisconsin has a tradition called “the Fifth Quarter,” in which the school’s tremendous marching band takes the field after the game for a raucous, tuba-swinging concert. The Fifth Quarter has its origins in another Badgers fallow period, the late ’70s. The idea was that if the team couldn’t pack the stadium, the band would help draw people in. “It was all about the Fifth Quarter,” my old college friend Dicky remembers.

There was something truly lovable about this, in a Bill Murray-Meatballs sort of way-not caring about the score, cheering for the band as much as for the team. The stakes were low. A loss didn’t send our student body into a deep funk and cast a pall over campus on Saturday night-we’d forget defeats by the time we hit the parking lot. Our cheerleaders didn’t sob at the end of games-they made evening plans. We didn’t mind that the Badgers were terrible. In fact, we maybe loved them more.

“The biggest part of the fun was how bad they actually were,” Dicky recalls. “Anyone can say their team lost to Michigan by two touchdowns. But how many fans can say they showed up at the end of the first half and saw the team down forty-two to nothing? That takes some work.”

(For a moment, I thought Dicky might be embellishing or a little foggy from all the Old Style we used to drink, but then I looked it up-the Badgers lost to Michigan, 62-14. That wasn’t even the most brutal whipping we saw, however: The next year, they lost to Miami, 51-3. According to legend, on the first play, a Miami defender hurled a Badger to the turf and said, “Welcome to the jungle, baby. You’re going to die.”)

Now, I’m not naïve. I know most people think it’s fun to support a great college football team. I know the sport is a big revenue earner, and the millions raked in by a bowl contender can transform a university. I know that sometimes the schools even spend that revenue on books and academics, as opposed to fancy new locker rooms and practice facilities.

I also appreciate the sense of pride that a high-quality football program gives its alumni, how it raises a university’s national stature and feeds endowments. As much as we’d love to titillate the fat cats with the strength of a philosophy department, nothing gets the alumni atwitter like a top-10 team.

But when I watch my team now, with its frenzied fans hooked on the action, I can’t relate. Everyone dresses in Badger red-I don’t believe I ever thought about what I wore to a game-and screams from kickoff to the final whistle. They’ve added luxury boxes and a statue of Barry Alvarez, the coach who transformed the team from pit stop to powerhouse. In case you’re wondering, Barry’s still alive.

But the worst part is “Jump Around.” This started not long after I graduated, apparently. During every home game, just before the fourth quarter begins, the PA system plays House of Pain’s “Jump Around” really loud, and all of the students pogo in their seats like a giant kettle of popcorn. Cute, quirky display of school spirit, right? Except “Jump Around” is nothing less than the worst hip-hop song in the history of mankind.

We’ve become like every other football-loony university, living and dying with every play, jabbering about bowl berths and conference championships and whether or not we crack the top 20. Wisconsin now prides itself on having the craziest football fans ever. Of course, nearly every school thinks it has the craziest football fans ever. That’s what college is for-thinking you’re the center of the universe.

Make no mistake, I’m a proud alum. Wisconsin’s a phenomenal university, with fabulous departments and teachers and one of the most beautiful campuses in America. I still have the friends I made there, two decades later. But college sports have become less about college these days and more like an industry, beholden to success and money and television ratings. Lovable losers aren’t so lovable anymore.

I still root for the Badgers, even
though they mostly win and House of
Pain overshadows the Fifth Quarter.
However, I wouldn’t mind if they started
losing again. Say, by 50 points. Maybe
then, I could get a ticket.

Contributing writer JASON GAY was disinvited from his Wisconsin touch football team for not being good enough.

MAJOR CRUSHES

Three of the gnarliest routs in the history of professional sports

1940 – FOOTBALL // In the championship game, the Chicago Bears mauled the Washington Redskins 73-0.

1998 – HOCKEY // In the Asia-Oceania International Junior Hockey Championships, South Korea iced Thailand, 92-0.

2007 – BASEBALL // Texas Rangers blasted the Baltimore Orioles, 30-3.

MARCUS GRÖNHOLM doesn’t look nervous, but he probably should be. The gravel road beyond his steering wheel disappears into the clouds, so he can’t see the next hairpin turn or the sheer 2,000-foot drop just beyond. And though he’s a veteran racer, a two-time World Rally Champion and one of the best wheelmen in the world, he’s a rookie at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. Yesterday’s practice run up through 156 precarious corners was his first time on the course and nearly his last: As he was speeding into a turn, the hood of his turbocharged, 800-horsepower Ford Fiesta came unlatched and flipped up onto the windshield, obscuring everything except the milky Colorado fog in the side window.

So today, less than 24 hours before the race, Grönholm pilots a Ford Flex SUV slowly up Pikes Peak’s steep, snarled curves for a final “walk-through” of the course. He motors past wind-raked high-country grasses and boulder fields. Meanwhile, in the passenger seat, codriver Timo Alanne recites the features of each of the road’s twists, switchbacks and straightaways, like a tutor drilling a student for a physics final.

Any student would be anxious about this test, where the penalty for braking a split second too late is a long swan dive into a sea of rocks. Last year’s race was delayed by 14 serious accidents, and one participant was flown by helicopter to a nearby hospital. For his part, the lanky Finn is his usual stoic self today, if a bit cheerful in a somewhat macabre sort of way.

“Poof!” Grönholm exclaims as he removes one hand from the wheel to mimic a car launching off the road and into the abyss.

Reaching the 14,000-foot summit, which is thick with clouds and tourists, Grönholm unfolds himself from the Flex and smears the toe of his racing boot across the loose grit on the ground. He’d hoped for some rain to tamp down the dust and make the course tacky enough to yield a new speed record. The Japanese racer Nobuhiro Tajima clocked 10:01 in 2007, and since then everyone has been trying to break the 10-minute mark.

Now, though, Grönholm has another prize in mind: hot chocolate and donuts. He’d read in a guide book that the summit concession has top-notch pastries, so he and Alanne happily join the long line. After all, the driver officially retired from racing after the 2007 season, and competing on Pikes Peak is his version of a vacation—one he’s hoping will make him the fastest driver ever to reach this cloud-piercing summit.

PIKES PEAK IS A LEGENDARY RACE, the second-oldest in America after the Indianapolis 500 and a feather every off-road racer would like in his cap. Part of its mystique is the road’s breathtaking implausibility. Hacked into the rugged rocky mountainside in 1915, Pikes Peak Highway is the brainchild of Spencer Penrose, who owned the grand Broadmoor Hotel at the foot of the mountain. To celebrate the road’s completion, he hosted a race to the top the following summer.

Since then, the Hill Climb has drawn the world’s best drivers. At the mountain’s height, engines lose 30 percent of their power, drivers’ reflexes grow sluggish, and snow and hail are commonplace, even in July. All great races have their unique demands: Baja has sand, Rally Finland murderously high speeds. Here, the challenge is altitude. And those brutal turns.

Racing is in Grönholm’s blood: His father, Ulf, was one of Finland’s top drivers, and his Finnish countrymen have long dominated the sport of rally racing. One of the most famous carracing movies ever made, Climb Dance, captured Finnish driver Ari Vatanen as he drifted around Pikes Peak’s dusty corners in a Peugeot, his tires tracking mere feet from the road’s fearsome dropoff. (Remarkably, only three drivers have died in the race’s 92year history.)

When Grönholm’s friend, four-time Swedish Rally champion Andreas Eriksson, asked him to come out of retirement and join a Pikes Peak assault, the feisty Finn couldn’t say no. It’s a risky move. He’s a little rusty and, at 41, a tad old for such a tough race. “If the driver makes a mistake here, Oy! Oy! Oy!” says Grönholm, shaking his head at the consequences. He’s fond of making comic-book sound effects, though he’d rather avoid a slapstick ending.

AT 7 A.M. ON RACE DAY, Grönholm stands in the pit sipping a bottle of water. He’s got a cowboy’s build, tall and lanky, with a hard-edged jaw and long legs that propel him quickly along without ever seeming hurried.

Next door, Tajima sits in his car, waiting. Grönholm’s Fiesta is splayed open beside Eriksson’s, like a patient on an operating table, as the white-shirted engineers bustle about. They’ve worked through the night, tweaking both vehicles, and now they look haggard.

The Fiestas are specially tailored for Pikes Peak. Despite their extra-large race wings (to compensate for the mountain’s thinner air), they look a lot like the showroom Fiestas Ford will roll out in summer 2010—except, of course, they have bigger brakes, a roll cage, a high-test turbo charger and a stampede of additional horses under the hood.

Eriksson’s car also boasts a rebuilt shell, since he wrecked it in practice three days before the race. So it’s really up to Grönholm to challenge the 10-minute mark. “Today I’ll prioritize safety,” Eriksson says from the doorway of the team truck. “Marcus, he does everything right, all the little stuff. When he makes a mistake, it’s huge, a real screwup.” But such snafus are rare, which is why rally fans revere Grönholm and expect a dazzling performance from him on a course that’s famous for intimidating lesser drivers. Adds Eriksson, “Marcus is not afraid of anything.”

Grönholm slides into his racing seat, buckles his harness and straps on his helmet. He revs his engine to the redline, then slams it into gear. All four tires spin and the Fiesta rockets forward. He has no clue how fast he’s going—there’s no speedometer—but as he whips around the first corner, the raw acceleration sends a shiver through the crowd. A helicopter shadows him from above, filming Peak Performance an homage to 1989’s Climb Dance.

He hits all his turns perfectly, Alanne calling commands into his microphone from the passenger seat. But just three miles from the top, where the course steepens and drivers prepare for a final punch to the summit, the Fiesta’s turbo quits, cutting the power in half. Grönholm plows ahead, mulishly urging the failing Ford up the last switchbacks. A fire breaks out. Just a quartermile to go. He persists, trailing flames in the final turns. When he crosses the finish line, a rear tire is engulfed.

“I wanted to get to the top,” Grönholm says later, with a grin. Amazingly, he finished with the day’s fifth-fastest time. But he takes comfort in knowing that Tajima didn’t break 10 minutes either, despite finishing intact. There’s always next year. “I know what I need to do now to come back and be fastest,” he says. Besides not catching on fire, he plans to skip the donuts.

Boulder, Colorado–based writer KELLY BASTONE races a 1964 Volkswagen Beetle convertible, which rarely crosses any finish line first.

As summer turns to fall and America goes berserk for the Major League Lacrosse playoffs, the Vuelta a España bike race and the return of the Chinese Badminton Association—better known, of course, as the CBA—we’d like to suggest sharing a little love with another sports league, one that desperately needs your support.

The NFL.

That acronym stands for National Football League. The group has been around since 1920, when it launched as the American Professional Football Conference, before changing its name two years later. And you know what football is, right? No, it’s not soccer—that’s a common mistake in America, where  every family huddles around the television watching soccer every night. Football is the game with the helmets and oblong brown ball and the guy 
who calls himself Ocho Cinco. Yeah, 
you remember it. It’s on Sunday afternoons. That’s right, the sport that comes not long after Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer.

Football needs your help. It doesn’t have the glamour of badminton or the household names of lacrosse, like legendary attackman John Grant Jr., who won two consecutive MLL MVPs with the Rochester Rattlers. People 
don’t grow up following football 
teams the way they do European cycling squads, with children marching off to school wearing spandex outfits advertising their chosen teams, be they Rabobank, Silence-Lotto or our personal favorite, Liquigas.

Football is fighting for attention. It’s so unpopular, in fact, teams play only 16 regular season games a year. Basketball plays 82 and baseball a brisk 162. Fan interest is static. Take the case of the New England Patriots—they’re one of the best teams, with the quarterback who’s married to Gisele. Last year the Patriots drew 550,048 fans, filling 100 percent of the seats in their 68,756 seat stadium. But the previous year, they drew the exact same number. That, my friends, is known as zero growth.

There are other dispiriting signs.

Each year, more and more football followers are so dissatisfied with the real product the NFL puts out, they’re forced to create their own “fantasy” teams. Meanwhile, the NFL also runs an embarrassing sideshow each year called the “draft,” in which clean-cut college stars are selected by teams and forced against their will to travel to distant cities to play the game they love. This draft is attended by thousands of angry fans, who drink beer and loudly boo the players who get picked. Usually, they are dressed in green and white, signifying an allegiance with a team called the New York Jets.

But what’s most troubling is the behavior of the league’s biggest stars. Last year, Plaxico Burress, one of football’s most gifted wide receivers, was caught wearing sweatpants to a nightclub. We’re not sure how you were raised, but we’ve never worn sweatpants to a nightclub. White polyester, silk shirts and gold chains, perhaps, but never sweatpants. Oh, and as if it couldn’t get any worse, there was something about Burress shooting himself in the leg with his own handgun. But that’s what you get for wearing sweatpants, dude.

Then let’s take the case of Brett Favre. He’s one of the all-time great NFL heroes—he’s won a Super Bowl, which is football’s equivalent of the Major League Lacrosse championship. But he doesn’t even know if he likes football anymore. Every summer, Favre vacillates about returning to the game like a guy debating a pelvic wax. Does he really detest football so?

Or how about the Dallas Cowboys? They’re one of the more recognizable teams in the NFL, even if they have to share a city with the Dallas Stars of the National Hockey League. They generate a fair amount of attention, some of it for their players’ private lives. Their quarterback, Tony Romo, dated the ex-wife of Nick Lachey, the co-owner of the Tacoma Rainiers minor league baseball franchise. Poor girl. Talk about a step down in the sports world.

But the news isn’t all bad. Football can be a highly entertaining sport, except when it’s played in Detroit.

There are games on Sunday nights and Monday nights, and if you’re interested in getting divorced, you can watch all the contests on satellite TV. The NFL also has cheerleaders, who have all the same responsibilities as the New York Knicks City Dancers—except coaching a basketball team.

Still, we’ve got a few suggestions to improve the NFL and raise its profile to another level.

1. Lose the Aggressive Attitude. If you’ve spent any time following sports in this country, you know if American audiences can’t stand anything, it’s violence. Bench-clearing brawls, pro wrestling, episodes of The Hills…we can’t stand it. The NFL should cease its celebration of hard-knock contact by encouraging something more humane. Firm handshakes? All-caps text messages? Extreme pouting?

2. Put analysts on the field. Look, the truth is that a lot of the NFL TV personalities are better known than the athletes themselves. So why not incorporate them into the action? Put Chris Berman at midfield on a barstool. Chris Collinsworth, dressed in a suit, running pass routes. John Madden just retired, but see if he’d like to lie down in the end zone, as an obstacle.

3. Rename everyone. Ocho Cinco is on to something. He used to be named Chad Johnson. Boring! You’ve already forgotten Chad Johnson. But Ocho Cinco works beautifully. Let’s rename other stars. Tom Brady? Greg Brady. LaDainian Tomlinson? LaDainian 
Gaga. Romo? Tony Obama. Just try to forget the Cowboys quarterback has the same last name as the president of the United States.


4. offer weekly Halftime Shows. If there’s one NFL event that everyone cares about, it’s clearly the halftime show at the Super Bowl. Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Prince—what’s not to like? All-time legends playing selections of the greatest hits. So why not expand it? We’re sure that Bruce would love playing halftime at a Bengals-Rams game in October.


5. upgrade to the Even-More-Super Bowl. This is nonnegotiable. We’ve got to make the Super Bowl better. Yes, we’ve had some classic ones lately—Pittsburgh’s thriller over Arizona, and the New York Giants’ shocker against the Patriots. But why not spice it up with another sporting event? Yes: a soccer game, played simultaneously on an adjacent field. Think of the television ratings and water-cooler arguments.

We know that old viewing habits are hard to break, especially if your family is used to sitting down on the couch after Thanksgiving dinner and watching several hours of badminton. But we’ve got a soft spot for football, 
and we believe you, too, will enjoy this niche sport. Better yet, if you promise 
to watch, Favre promises to play next year. With Bruce, onstage, at the halftime show.

Jason Gay played exactly 10 seconds of high school football. His coach slapped him on his helmet, and he decided to run cross-country.

HEAVY DUTY

The NFL is a growing league

Of the nearly 40,000 pro football players between 1920 (the NFL’s first year) and 1984, there were never more than eight in any season who weighed over 300 pounds

In the 2006 season there were 570.

IF YOU’RE LIKE US, you enjoy a casual game of tennis in the summer. We’re not talking about sweaty, grunting, anaerobic tennis, running all over the court and diving for volleys. That’s for lunatics. We’re talking about lazy, friendly tennis—forget-to-keep-score, let-the-ball-bounce-twice, cocktails-during-changeovers tennis. Sometimes we don’t even wait for the changeovers. Bud Collins, meet Tom Collins.

That’s the type of tennis we play, and thanks to cutting-edge technology, it’s become easier than ever. Have you gripped a modern tennis racket? Made with materials like carbon fiber and graphite, it weighs less than the magazine you’re holding. The face— that’s the big part, with the strings—is as sprawling as a Midwestern state.

These supersize rackets are absurdly forgiving, even if they look a little ridiculous in your hand. The other day, we played three sets with one while eating an entire plate of General Tso’s chicken—with chopsticks.

But as much as we love our fancy modern racket, we wonder if it’s not a little like fishing with a hand grenade. Somehow it makes a mockery of the tennis fundamentals—move your feet, keep your racket back—that Dad taught us 30 years ago. It’s time to reconsider tennis technology before it corrodes the game we love. It’s time to bring back wood.

Yes, wood. You know, that space-age material cultivated from exotic flora called trees.

Oddly, wood was used to make tennis rackets for generations, until aggravated hackers—some just like me—decided they didn’t want to hit every third shot into the parking lot.

But wood makes tennis a purer game. It was so uncompromising, it forced a tennis player to be much more skillful, almost artistic. You couldn’t just stick a wooden racket out and plop the ball across the net, you had to guide it there. The wood racket was heavier, with a smaller face and a thick, unwieldy neck. You had to carry it as an extension of your body—hold it close, grip it properly and take it out to dinner at least once a month.

Watching professional tennis players today, you can’t help but wonder how they’d manage with the old equipment. Tennis is lucky right now to have a surplus of great champions—the remarkable Roger Federer and his young nemesis Rafael Nadal, and on the women’s side, stars like Maria Sharapova and the indefatigable Williams sisters. All are uncommonly gifted; most would’ve been great players in prior generations. But you have to admit, the game is a smidge easier for them thanks to the tech. Wouldn’t you want to see them at least try wood?

Federer’s one guy who might embrace the change. The Swiss champ swings a small-headed racket that bears a passing resemblance to its wooden forefathers, and his nimble game is a throwback. He’s also played exhibition games of real tennis, a bizarre 12th-ish century version of the game thought to be the original racket sport, which awards points for hitting the ball through a courtside window. (Not kidding.)

But let’s not stop with the wooden rackets, people. Every professional sport could use a dose of demodernization:

BASEBALL
Yes, baseball has wooden bats. It’s a nice, retro touch. But let’s return to the days of one-out innings— you can watch an entire game in an hour! Forbid gloves, too (okay, maybe it will take longer than an hour). And here’s an offense-boosting idea: The pitchers must throw to batters underhanded. You know, just like the Baltimore Orioles do.

FOOTBALL
This one’s tricky. We want to keep players safe, and we’re not sure if we want to see all 270 pounds of Shawne Merriman chasing Eli Manning in a leather helmet. We’d like to retain the forward pass and even teach it to the Detroit Lions. But let’s move the goal posts to the front of the end zone and return field goals to their original five points. And how about encouraging more drop-kicking—as Bill Belichick knows, it’s still legal.

BASKETBALL
Yup, bring back the peach baskets. Who wouldn’t want to see Kobe Bryant charge down the lane for a ferocious dunk, and then watch Dwight Howard have to putter up a stepladder to retrieve the ball? Sure, it would slow the game down, but think of all the Nike-branded ladders Home Depot could sell. We’d also like to eliminate backboards (they didn’t have ’em in the old days), though a lot of fans would get hit in the head with jump shots at Clippers games.

HOCKEY
Goalies used to play without face masks. That’s way too dangerous, but right now the keepers wear more padding than Nfl cheerleaders. They could stand to lose a little bit of that goal-stopping protection. We also hear that back in the day, hockey used to—get this—allow the players to actually fight. Guys would drop their gloves and go at it right there on the ice, sometimes multiple players at once. Good thing they don’t allow that anymore!

GOLF
This game has benefited more from modern technology than even tennis. Have you seen those new drivers? They have heads the size of flat-screen TVs. Balls come with everything but anti-water radar detection. The game has lost its way as it tries to flatter (and suck the money out of) the weekend enthusiast. How about going back to actually making woods out of wood? Moving the tees back? Growing longer roughs? That might lead to rounds of…nine-hour golf. Never mind.

Please don’t misunderstand: We’re not hard-core traditionalists. We don’t mind night baseball at Wrigley or the NFL’s wildcard playoff format. We’re not giving back our carbon-fiber bicycle, our DirectTV football package, our glow-in-the-dark Frisbee or Wii tennis. We’re even fans of modern games such as indoor football, mixed martial arts and Battle of the Network Stars.

But it’s worth recalling that sports are supposed to be sporting. Frustration is part of the game. Getting challenged means getting better, and rules shouldn’t change just to make things easier. Likewise, technology can help, but it shouldn’t be a big, fat-faced crutch.

So: Wood-racket tennis, anyone? We’ll bring the lime juice and cigars.

JASON GAY’s father, Ward, has coached high school tennis for 30 years. He can still crush his son on the court.

GAME CHANGERS

Three innovations that rocked the world of pro sports

FORWARD PASS

It’s hard to believe the forward pass, a.k.a. the “pass,” was once illegal in football, which used to resemble ultraviolent rugby. Legalized by the Nfl in 1906, the forward pass is set to be adopted by the Detroit Lions in 2010.

24-SECOND SHOT CLOCK

No one wants to watch Kobe and LeBron play keep-away. Since the shot clock’s introduction in the 1950s, there are no more 25-22 final scores, and games have sped way up—except for the last two minutes, which still take nine hours.

ANABOLIC STEROIDS

The use of steroids actually dates back to ancient Greece, but they didn’t play a role in American sports until the 1950s. They’ve been banned since the ’70s, when pro athletes switched to Wheaties. Right Barry? Barry?