When you fall in love with golf, you seldom fall easy. Itʹs obsession at first sight.

Quarterbacks have to ask the crowd to quiet down. Pitchers never do.

Football is played best full of adrenaline and anger. Moderation seldom finds a place. Almost every act of baseball is a blending of effort and control; too much of either is fatal.

At its best, the US Open demands straight drives, crisp iron shots, brilliant chipping and putting, and strategic position play. Plus the patience of St. Francis and the will of Patton. At its worst, the Open eradicates the difference in ability between a Tom Purtzer and a Tom Watson and throws both in the same jail of high rough and high risk shots. This is the disturbing tendency in the Opens of the seventies and eighties, one which worries everyone in golf.

There is no substitute for excellence. Not even success.

More than any other American sport, baseball creates the magnetic, addictive illusion that it can almost be understood.

Cheating is baseball's oldest profession. No other game is so rich in skullduggery, so suited to it or so proud of it.