Published: June 17, 2008 12:09 am            

Tiger, Dale Jr., Griffey Jr. have made recent days memorable

Tiger Woods, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Ken Griffey Jr. are three athletes who figured big on the sports pages in recent days.

• Woods bested Rocco Mediate, of course, to win the U. S. Open in sudden-death golf action Monday. What a finish.

We had not been able to watch the first four days due to relocating due to the floods but got to watch the finish and read several accounts of the first four rounds.

If I understood the commentator correctly, Woods is 7 for 7 in tournaments played at Torrey Pines.

The argument still remains as to whether Tiger is No. 1 in pro golf since his career is just beginning but he certainly added a solid argument for that title, coming back from his surgery and doing what he did.

• Earnhardt snapped a 76-race losing streak in NASCAR action Sunday when he won in Michigan.

Junior is not one of our big favorites, but we have always felt he was good for his sport and was glad to see him win.

Now, maybe Vitor Meira will get his first win in IndyCar Series racing with the next event being this week.

• Griffey made headlines when he hit his 600th home run in National League baseball action.

Mike Lopresti, a native Hoosier who writes a national sports column, summed up this milestone pretty well, we thought.

He thought the Cincinnati player should have an asterisk by his name — for doing it the right way.

Amen.



• Honor for Bishop — We got an email from Terri and Randy Bishop with good news about the former boys basketball coach at Casey and Martinsville in Illinois.

The 1972 graduate of Paris High School was inducted into the Missouri Basketball Coaches Hall of Fame in May.

Inductees either have to win 500 games in Missouri or be nominated for the honor and elected. Bishop has been coaching 30 years and has a super 516-272 record.

His teams have won 26 tournament championships, eight district titles, nine conference tournament championships, nine holiday tournament titles, 12 conference championships, and Blue and Gold titles in 2003 and 2007 in Missouri.

His Branson, Mo., Pirates this year won a district title for the first time since 1962 and he was named district coach of the year.

Congrats, coach.



• Way to go Lakers — We could not write this column without offering congratulations to the Shakamak Lakers for being champs of Class A baseball in Indiana.

The Lakers finally did it and did it the hard way this year, winning close games and rallying in the last one to get the championship.

Terre Haute South and West Vigo both advanced to the semistate before losing and can take solace in the fact that they lost to the champs — Decatur Central in Class 4A and Crawfordsville in 3A.



Tom-Cattin’ It — One of the “major” Terre Haute golf championships is slated this week with the Hulman Links Club Championship scheduled for Saturday and Sunday.

A junior event also is on tap at Rea Park.

• Former Western Indiana Conference standout athlete Cory Martin won the shot put and hammer events in the NCAA Track and Field Championships last week.

The All-America weightman from Edgewood won both events on his final attempt.

• Ron Korfmacher is the new football coach at Taylor University.

He’s a former Taylor quarterback and has been an assistant for 23 seasons. He succeeds James Bell.

Bob Robertson has resigned as the football coach at Triton Central to become an assistant at Lawrence Central. He was 37-25 in six seasons at TC.

Indiana University has hired Michelle Gardner as its new softball coach. She had a 1877-176 record at Nevada in six seasons.

And so it goes on a very nice day.



Tom Reck may be contacted by telephone at (812) 232-3231 (it may be out of order yet), by email at treck@ma.rr.com or by mail at 4284 South 5th Street Apartment 3, Terre Haute, IN 47802.

        

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