The Week Nov. 21-27

Myth Hits
Colin Montgomerie can't win in the U.S., and you can't win the
Skins Game without a birdie.

Am-Pro
The difference between Aaron Baddeley's 1999 and 2000 Australian
Open W's? Exactly $117,000.

PGA Montgomerie, who made $415,000 at Landmark Golf Club in
Indio, Calif. ($340,000 of it by beating Fred Couples on the
third hole of a playoff), became the first player in Skins
history to win the event without making a single birdie.... It
took Couples 219 starts on Tour to earn $2 million. He passed
that sum in Skins Game earnings on the first hole of this year's
event, his eighth.

LPGA The Jan. 12-14 LPGA.com Classic at Grand Cypress Resort
in Orlando will be the fourth different event in five years to
kick off the tour's season.... Rookie Grace Park, who dropped
out of Arizona State after her sophomore year in 1998, is taking
correspondence courses from Ewha Womans University in Seoul.

SENIOR Larry Nelson's putting average of 1.724 this year broke
the nine-year-old record set by Jim Colbert by .001 of a
stroke.... Hale Irwin, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary
Player will compete in the Jan. 27-28 Senior Skins at Wailea
Resort on Maui.

ALSO The only player besides the 19-year-old Baddeley to win
the Australian Open as an amateur one year and as a pro the next
was Carnegie Clark, in 1910-11. Baddeley, who hopes to secure
the maximum seven sponsors' exemptions into U.S. Tour events
next year, beat Robert Allenby by two shots at Melbourne's
Kingston Heath Golf Club....

Recent Georgia Tech grad and '97 U.S. Amateur champion Matt
Kuchar made his pro debut at the Australian Open, finishing
31st....

No one has ever won the U.S. Open, the U.S. Women's Open or the
British Open as an amateur and a pro....

Thanks to a three-shot swing on the final hole, Mark McNulty,
who made a birdie, edged Jean Hugo, who had a double bogey, by a
stroke at the Zimbabwe Open in Harare.

COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPH BY ERIC GAY/AP Remember the Alamo Ben Crenshaw, the '99 Ryder Cup captain, and his wife, Julie, returned the favor of George W. Bush, who read Col. William Barret Travis's "Victory or Death" appeal for the U.S. team at Brookline, by joining a pro-Bush rally on Nov. 22 in Austin.

UP and Down

Aaron Baddeley Adam Scott
Williams World Challenge Skins Game
World Championships Silly Season
Tim Finchem Mark McCormack
PGA Tour NFL