Golf Central

Mark Brooks: knows a good job when he's got one...

Mark Brooks was born in Fort Worth, Texas, on March 25, 1961. Winner of the 1996 PGA Championship at Valhalla, he has notched up six other victories on the PGA Tour.

As you might well imagine, Brooks doesn't stand on ceremony when it comes to airing his views.

Take this example about the way contemporary golfers obsess about their work ethic:-

"A guy works hard, that's fine, but there are people earning $20,000 a year that really do work hard. They go in a coal mine at 4am and come out at 7pm. Hitting a bunch of golf balls and working out in a posh gym and driving home in your nice car isn't the same."

And so say all of us. Except for the bit about the coal mine, obviously, as you don't get many of those any longer.

On this day in 1965 the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. led 25,000 marchers to the state capitol in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest against the refusal to give voting rights to black people. On this day in 1980, meanwhile, The British Olympic Association voted to defy the government and send athletes to the XXII Olympiad in Moscow. Future gold medalists Allan Wells, Steve Ovett, Sebastian Coe, Daley Thompson and Duncan Goodhew would be particularly grateful.

It's Wilujeng Tepang Taun! as they say in The Sudan to Sex And The City actor Sarah Jessica Parker (43), former piano-bashing pop singer Elton John (61) and soul vocal legend Aretha Franklin (67). It would also have been the 661st birthday of patron Saint of Italy Saint Catherine of Siena had she not died of a stroke in 1830.