If a caddie can help you, you don't know how to play golf.

Part of the charm of basketball lies in the fact that it's a simple game to understand. Players race up and down a fairly small area indoors and stuff the ball into a ring with Madonna's dress hanging on it.

Lonnie says it doesn't take long to write a song if you're stricken with a severe case of the Tennysons. He wasn't necessarily talking about a chart-climber.

I quickly discovered that trying to go play golf while living in Manhattan was about as easy as trying to grab a taxi while standing out in front of Saks Fifth Avenue in the freezing rain on the last shopping day before Christmas.

A sportswriter's life means never sitting with your wife or family at the games. Still working after everyone has gone to the party... Digging beneath a coach's lies, not to forget those of athletic directors and general managers and owners of pro teams. Keeping a confidence. Risking it.

I am among those who firmly believe that a round of golf should not take more than three and a half hours, four at most. Anything longer than that is not a round of golf, it's life in Albania.

Regardless of what the tour pros think, golf is a rich and varied game, and what all of us awkward fools do on weekends is what golf is truly all about.