This Golf Story Is Really a Trip to the Rough

Boy, it looks like it’s going to be a tough campaign, all right.

If President Clinton thought rafting down Whitewater was difficult, wait until somebody tells him of the cover article in the September issue of the American Spectator about a round of golf he played in June.

The magazine unleashed its investigative reporter on Clinton’s golf game and Byron York’s eight-page article is titled, “Bill’s Bad Lie.” Once you see that, you just know it isn’t going to be positive.

Basically, York wrote that Clinton really didn’t shoot a 78 in San Diego, as the president had claimed, that he fudged the rules and that such actions raise troubling issues.

“If you want to learn about Bill Clinton’s character problem, you don’t have to subpoena Whitewater documents,” York writes. “Just watch him on the golf course.”

Golfers everywhere had better hope this isn’t the start of a new reporting trend.

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Trivia time: Among Emmitt Smith, Barry Sanders and Thurman Thomas, who has the highest season rushing average?

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Is that Dennis Rodman? After New England Coach Bill Parcells talked to reporters about “prima donna players,” one of the team’s public relations interns typed up a transcript of Parcell’s comments from the news briefing. It came out “pre-Madonna players.”

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Strictly speaking: Andruw Jones, the 19-year-old Atlanta Brave star-in-the-making, speaks three languages--Spanish, English and a creolized Spanish with admixtures of Dutch and Portuguese called Papiamento. Let’s see, that’s already 2 1/2 more languages than Yogi Berra spoke.

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Home on arrange: This from Caught On The Fly in the Sporting News: “No, no, no, no. Hakeem’s mosque did not arrange a three-way deal for Charles Barkley.”

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Or District Attorney: After 19-year-old D.A. Points of LSU lost to eventual champion Tiger Woods in the U.S. Amateur last week, he was asked what the initials D.A. stand for.

Said Points: “Don’t Ask.”

Actually, they stand for Darren Andrew. Ask any time.

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Can’t find a bridge? Rex Hudler told writer Dave Cunningham that the Angels aren’t giving up.

“We’re not going to throw ourselves on the freeway,” Hudler said.

Must be an L.A. thing.

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Trivia answer: Smith, a 1,493-yard average in six years; Sanders, a 1,453-yard average in seven years, and Thomas, a 1,216-yard average in eight.

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And finally: John Kruk, the recently retired outfielder who used to play for the Philadelphia Phillies, had a role as a baseball player named Jimmy Lanz in the Robert De Niro-Wesley Snipes movie “The Fan.” Snipes asked Kruk on the set one day what he thought about the movie business and Kruk told him it was boring.

“The people are good to you, but they won’t let me have no beer,” Kruk told the actor.

Snipes promptly had a 12-pack delivered to Kruk.

“I liked him a lot after that,” Kruk said.