Golf Central

On this day in 1997, the Aussie swing machine Steve Elkington - a golf star who bizarrely has a severe allergy to grass - breathed deeply enough to waltz around the TPC Stadium Course at Sawgrass by winning The Players Championship for the second time by a wheezingly large margin ...

Elkington scythed down the field at the PGA Tour's headquarter course, whipping Scott Hoch (giving the media a rest, for a change) by a whopping seven shots to add to his 1991 title round the Stadium course. It was one of 10 PGA Tour wins for the smooth gingery man from Wagga Wagga, who is one of only five men to have won The Players more than once (Jack Nicklaus, Fred Couples, Davis Love III and Hal Sutton are the others).

And it is on this day that we humbly pay respects on the birthday of the late Ernest "Dutch" Harrison (b. 1910, d. 1982), one of the old boys who went head-to-head with the likes of Nelson, Hogan and Snead in the postwar era and still came away with 18 PGA Tour wins ...

There's a real world outside of golf ... and in it on this day in 1981, US president Ronald Reagan was blasted by would-be assassin John Hinckley Jr outside a Washington DC hotel. And it was also on this day in 1822 that Florida became a US territory, paving the way for rain-plagued golf tournaments on the Florida swing ... Also, in 1997, the Five Channel began broadcasting in the UK, and today it remains the only terrestrial UK channel to show God's great game of baseball ... live ...

And strangely enough, it was on this day in 1999 that a Portland, Oregon jury awarded a settlement of 81 million smackeroos to the family of Jesse Williams, who croaked of lung cancer, ruling against tobacco kings Philip Morris, since the dearly departed had sucked down Marlboros for four decades (the jury decided those compelling "cool" Marlboro Man adverts were to blame for Jesse biting the dust). Nice work if you can get it ...

So, it's Joey Sindelar! as they say in Horseheads, New York, to wacko Aussie funnyman Rolf Harris (78); slowhand Brit guitar ace Eric Clapton (63); bad-ass rappa MC Hammer (45); slimy UK journo insider-guy Piers Morgan (43); and Argentinian-slapping footballer Jérémie Aliadière (25). It's also the big 40 to French-Canuck songstress Céline Dion, whom we were tempted to honour with pride of place on the site front, but we couldn't find any hot pics so we went with the Marlboro Man ... 'Til tomorrow!