Golf Central

On this day in 1949, Jimmy Lee Thorpe was born one of 12 children in Roxboro, North Carolina - but life really started for Big Jim when he turned 50 nine years ago.

Jim Thorpe was good enough to become one of the few African-American regulars on the PGA Tour in the 1980s, where he won three times and nearly $2 million. But that was a far cry from the 1970s, when Thorpe played the hustling game - on the golf courses around Baltimore, on the horses, and on the poker tables ... and was so broke that his wife once said "We were broke as a joke ..."

But after those 459 tournaments on the PGA Tour (Jim's first regular job, at the behest of his patient wife Carol), Thorpe hit the magical half-century mark in 1999 ... and hit the gravy train of the PGA's Champions Tour with the mindset of "now all I want to do is win" ...

He sure has. The 6-foot, 200-pound Thorpe is one of senior golf's most popular and successful figures (stepping into the Chi Chi Rodriguez role, in a sense) with his cigars and colourful stories, and he's a huge success story.

The huge-hitting Thorpe, who still averages 275 yards off the tee while approaching 60, has won 13 times (including one major) on the Champions circuit and became a very rich man indeed: he has banked $12.6 million on the over-50 set. That's No. 7 on that tour's ever-changing career money list.

Not surprising given his humble start, Thorpe is known for his generosity these days. He's given more than a quarter-million dollars to his church alone, helps rebuild schools in Honduras, and is always signing cheques for various good causes. “I give to strangers,” Thorpe says. “It doesn’t bother me. If I got broke tonight, it wouldn’t change me. I know what it's like to be broke.”

Great story. Flash back, however, to the point in 1861, when on this day Texas voted to secede from the United States. Pity it didn't stay that way, however ...

And on a strange note, it was on this day in 1924 that the government of the United Kingdom officially "recognised" the Soviet Union. The UK would have to "unrecognise" the USSR upon the former superpower's dissolution in 1991, and then have to "recognise" all the former republics which were now independent states all over again. It must be as confusing as going to a school reunion, which is why these government diplomats make the huge money ...

And it was on this day in 1957, that the DKM 54, the first working prototype of Wankel Engine, was successfully tested by its inventor Felix Wankel in Germany. In the 1960s, the engine became popular as the powerplant of the cars built by Mazda, which simply called the machine a "rotary engine". Wonder why? ...

That said, it's Masego motsatsing la psalo!, as they say in Sotho, to the Welsh comic Terry Jones (66) of the Monty Python troupe and who nowadays does a bit of everything; to the singer Exene Cervenka (52)  of the Los Angeles punk group X; and to Lisa Marie Presley (40), the four-times-married "singer-songwriter" daughter of the immortal Elvis.

And February 1 is certainly a prolific day for footballers' birthdays: So happy b-days to Gabriel "Batigol" Batistuta (39), who banged in a record 56 goals for Argentina's national side; to Zlatko Zahovic (37), formerly of Porto, Benfica, and Slovenia; to Irish grafter Kevin Kilbane (31) of Wigan; and Scots and Manchester United middleman Darren Fletcher (only 24!).

It also would have been a birthday for the "King of Hollywood" Clark Gable, who was born on this day in 1901: A day on which strangely enough, the "Father of Golf" Old Tom Morris assisted at the proclamation of Britain's King Edward VII at St Andrews. But enough useless coincidences aside ... rest assured, that Clark probably did actually "give a damn" when he took his eternal bow in 1960 ... 'Til tomorrow ...