Furman Bisher

In case you haven’t noticed, an increasing number of our big-time golf championships have been slipping away across the seas.

Of course, that was the trend in the early years of professional golf in the USA. Scots and Brits came over in droves in the 20th century, when we were neophytes, and it wasn’t until 1911 that one of our native-born lads was able to capture the national championship, John McDermott. When a mere caddie, Francis Ouimet, whipped both of England’s best, the great Harry Vardon — whose grip you might use — and Ted Ray, in 1914, that set a golfing rage across our states.

Lately, though, those pertinent intruders have been stealing off with some of our most precious titles, brought brusquely to mind when Henrik Stenson, a Swede, won The Players Championship, right behind Sergio Garcia, who took the prize home to Spain a year ago.

If you’ll begin checking down the list from 1994, seven of the 15 U.S. Open championships have crossed the seas. It began with Ernie …

Continue reading International golfers reap harvest of U.S. championships »

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — The afternoon was dwindling away, and so was the USA’s hand in The Players Championship. The leaderboard was a mixture of nationalities — German, South Korean, Swedish, (Louisianan), English, another Swede, South African, (St. Simons Islander), and Australian, but the shuffling was still to come. Alex Cejka, the overnight leader from Germany, was still holding steady at the top and would remain so as the shadows lengthened, but he was growing increasingly unsteady the closer he came to the holes where so often this championship is decided.

Through it all, though, one name kept edging up the board after Tiger Woods had long ago finished — and was at his leisure. And Woods had done it with a modest round of 70, just two under par. Cejka is a 37-year-old import who has won 11 times around the world, but never in this country. He escaped from Czechoslovakia when it was Communist, and he was nine years old, in the company of his father, of course. After a …

Continue reading Stage set for Tiger drama on Sunday »

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — This is a golf tournament, The Players Championship, that has more angles than a Hercule Poirot movie. One year it’s the wind. Another year it’s the rain and the wind, and another year it’s the hard greens, or the rough. But since the powers of the PGA Tour have been able to switch the dates from soggy March to glistening May, happiness has taken hold. No more over-seeded greens, no more mud balls, which Tiger Woods deplored. “We caught mud balls all the time [in March],” he said, drawing from his memory bank.

But, just like the fleas on a dog and gnats in the summer South, two nagging haggles aren’t going away. The Players will never become a fifth major, no matter how gracefully it ages. One of the leading world-class players, Geoff Ogilvy, from Australia — and probably the best player not American — referred to it in a news conference the other day as “the best tournament in the world, not a major,” and never blushed. Nor did it set off a raging …

Continue reading Players Championship has haggles that won’t go away »

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FLA. — Stop me if you’ve heard this before: that Craig Perks has won as many Players Championships as Tiger Woods. So has Jodie Mudd, before he switched from tee times to horses. So has Mark Hayes, and Mark McCumber, and Fred Funk, not a world challenger there.

Perks, a genial New Zealander, never won any other tournament and never came close afterward. He followed Woods in the winner’s  circle in 2002, and there you’ll find his name, sandwiched between Tiger’s and Davis Love III’s. And this is the PGA Tour players’ own course, their home campus, so to speak.

Strange, when Woods shows up on the Sawgrass course, his game seems to have gone in another direction. The past six times he has played here, he has finished out of the top ten, quite uncharacteristic of the man generally considered to be the best player in the world. He sat it out last year for knee surgery. This year he’s back, but his game is in recovery.

It’s simply strange that on this stage, a …

Continue reading Woods back at Sawgrass, site of much frustration »

Pitcher Kenshin Kawakami is the Braves' latest addition — not from the "farm" system. (Curtis Compton / ccompton@ajc.com)

Once upon a time, as fairy tales usually begin, the Braves were a baseball team that was home-bred, carefully incubated in the farm system, and nurtured all the way up to the major league level. There they won championships and pennants and played in the World Series, one of which they won. And they left their names scrolled on the walls of the ball park where they played, and in team and league record books. Then something began to change after the season of 2005, and the once-flourishing franchise has been groping ever since.

Now, the Braves’ “farm” system reaches from Venezuela to Japan. Deals are made, faces change, and only this season have they reached deep into their jeans to play a hand in the free agent rat-race. A payroll that once was held around the $80-million level, by order of the McScrooge ownership, has now zoomed to about $97 …

Continue reading Braves’ talent on the farm has dried up »

When the Falcons were accepted by the NFL in 1966, they were awarded two first-round draft choices. As it developed, the two they chose were from the same state, the same hometown, and at one time, the same housing complex.

Over the long haul, as this story will bear out, the course they took in their life after football could not have presented a more diverse path. It was the accidental philosopher Yogi Berra who said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

In the cases of Tommy Nobis and Randy Johnson, each chose his own course. One led to an honorable life after football, the other to utter degradation. This is the story of all that, the gladness and the sadness.
Tommy and Randy both grew up in San Antonio. They went to different high schools, in Tommy’s case, “because of the coach.”

Tommy became a celebrated All-American at Texas and is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame. He is engraved on the memory of thousands for a goal-line tackle he made on Joe …

Continue reading Linked on draft day, Falcons’ first picks took different paths »

Amazin’, to quote Dr. Casey Stengel, the Florida Marlins come to Turner Field and take command. Three games in a row. A wipe-out. And it showed on the complexion of Frank Wren, who stepped on the elevator, looking neither right nor left. but glumly straight ahead. This was only the ninth game of the Braves’ season, but then again, these were the Marlins, who have been playing in a football stadium since they were born. A football stadium is a lousy place to play baseball at best — or should I say worst? — even though both teams are named for fish.

This is no occasion to engage in snobbery. The Marlins came into the major leagues 16 years ago. In that time they have played in two World Series’ and won them both, one with a manager who was retrieved from a farm in North Carolina. The Braves came to Atlanta in 1966 and have played in five World Series since. They won one, otherwise their fans have survived on a diet of division championship flags displayed above left field.

This …

Continue reading It’s too early for despair, gloom and doom, over Braves »

Augusta —  Even Sam Goldwyn would never have made a movie like this.

Nonsense, pure unadulterated nonsense. It was the championship round of that old Southern sports treasure, the Masters, and indeed, so eventually it developed, but inside that storm a tempest developed that completely distracted the invigorated thousands who lined the hills and hummocks of Augusta National. It was Easter Sunday, and the sun shone brightly, and the winds merely wafted through the pines as the 50 players teed off in pursuit of the precious green jacket. Intervening, however, was the match within the contest between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, paired for the 24th time in their careers, but rarely on such an emotional stage as this.

But first, the championship. After all the drives and all the putts, and birdies and bogeys of the day, nothing was decided until Kenny Perry, Chad Campbell and the Argentine, Angel Cabrera, played off a three-way tie. Campbell had already finished at 276 and …

Continue reading What a day, what a Masters »

Augusta — Well, the filling-station operator from Mississippi didn’t make the cut, and he was on his way back to Ocean Springs. He’d had two giddy days paired with Tom Watson, his hero — of course — and the English bloke, Ian Poulter, and the patina would take a few days wearing off. On the radio, local broadcasters were wallowing in self-flagellation about what dastardly fate had befallen their idol, Tiger Woods.

And there would be no relief once the third round of the 75th Masters was underway. Woods double-bogeyed the first hole, then failed to birdie the second, a par-5 hole that usually surrenders more sub-par scores than any hole on the course.

Meanwhile, the unlikely subject of Todd Hamilton rose to the surface in the mind of this roving correspondent. Hamilton is a native of Illinois, now a resident of Texas, but for the better part of 12 years a campaigner on the Pacific Rim, and out of sight, out of mind. He simply wasn’t able to cut it on the PGA Tour, so he set out …

Continue reading Back from Japan, Hamilton finds hope in Augusta »

Augusta — Turn back the clock? They turned back the sundial at Augusta National on Thursday. There was a surge of youth in the air, and Chad Campbell virtually ran the table, as they say, and by the time twilight fell over the 75th Masters, this grand old golf course was withering under the assault.

But, get this: Beginning with 73-year-old Gary Player, who shot 78, all the former champions broke 80. Bernhard Langer shot 70, Sandy Lyle 72, Fred Couples 73, and on they charged. High number was the 79 of Fuzzy Zoeller, playing in his 30th and last Masters.

But we turn now to the fascinating revival of the dramatic conclusion to the Masters of 1987, when Larry Mize, a native Augustan, pitched in off the green, birdied the 11th hole and shot down Greg Norman in a playoff. Another dagger crashing into the green jacket hopes of the Australian. Three times Norman had the championship on target, and three times he found a way to lose.

Now, 54, Norman was finishing his interview …

Continue reading Thursday in Augusta feels like 1987 »