Golf Central

On this day in 1958, Ian Woosnam, the champagne-snorting captain of the 2006 Ryder Cup team. member of the European "Big Five" and 1991 Masters champion, was born in Oswestry, Wales.

Little Woosie was famous as a pint-sized golf star, winning 28 times on the European Tour and the '91 green jacket before coming up the greatest display of blowing champagne and snot from his nostrils like a firehose in the celebratory haze of the European victory two years ago at the K Club in Ireland ...

One of the European "Big Five" of the '80s and early '90s that brought European golf to its pinnacle - along with Nick Faldo, Seve Ballesteros, Bernhard Langer and Sandy Lyle - with a series of majors and Ryder Cup wins. Woosie's also known for firing his longtime caddie Miles Byrne for a 2001 drinking binge before showing Byrne how to properly drink in the K Club party ...

It was also on this day in 1932 that Aussie trick-shot genius Joe Kirkwood shot a round of 83 over 18 holes, with six pars and a birdie, by using only his putter in Belleaire, Florida ... and in 1997, Faldo won his ninth and final PGA Tour title by beating Craig Stadler by three shots at the Nissan Open ...

In the real world: On this day in 1877, Rutherford B. Hayes was declared the winner of the US presidential election despite losing the popular vote to the Democrat Samuel Tilden, setting a precedent for Republicans winning elections that they actually lost ...

Strangely enough: It was on this day in 1717 that John Weaver's The Loves of Mars and Venus became the first ballet performed in England at Drury Lane in London. Chances are your humble correspondent's wife would have loved it and everybody else would have thought it was a snoozer ...

In sport: On this day in 1962, Wilt Chamberlain of the Philadelphia Warriors scored an NBA record for points in a game when he netted 100 against the NY Knicks. Wilt the Stilt scored all but 69 of his team's points; no word of how many "laydays" Wilt - who boasted of sleeping with 20,000 women in his life - scored with that night ...

So it's janma divas mubarak!, as they say in Gujarat state in India, to former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev (77) and his funny birthmark; to dopey American rock star Lou Reed (66); to the Welsh rugby legend JPR Williams (59); to US rocker Jon Bon Jovi (46) and his mullet; to the new Bond, Daniel Craig (40); to whiny-voiced English popstar Chris Martin of Coldplay (31); and to Irish and Newcastle winger Damien Duff (29).

It also would have been a birthday  ... for the iconic American children's author and cartoonist Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr Seuss, b. 1904), had he not drawn a blank in 1991 ... 'Til tomorrow! ...