Golf Central

On this day in 1969, the PGA Tour was really going nowhere fast. Its stars were in slumber. Jack Nicklaus hadn't won in ages. Nor had Billy Casper or Gary Player.

But Arnold Palmer yawned, stretched out his lion-like muscles in the December air and, after having gone winless for a 14-month span, Arnie won for the second straight week, taking the last event on the PGA Tour calendar, the Danny Thomas Diplomat Classic in Miami, Florida.

Palmer capped off a so-so year in golf by being named the Associated Press' Athlete of the Decade for the 1960s. But how dreary a year in golf was 1969? ...

It was so dreary that Frank Beard (remember him?) finished No. 1 on the money list with $164,000. Dave Hill (remember him?) won the Vardon Trophy with a 70.34 stroke average. And Orville Moody (remember him?) was named the PGA Tour's player of the year. Ho-hum. Good thing Arnie woke up in time, because 1970 was to be a very good year in golf ...

And speaking of not waking sleeping giants, it is our solemn duty to report that today is the 66th anniversary of the Japanese surprise aerial attack on the US fleet at anchor at Pearl Harbour, Hawaii. The carrier-borne attack, led by a reluctant Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, plunged America in the Second World War, and every resonably educated schoolchild should remember Yamamoto's hesitant words: "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." ...

On a lighter note, on December 7, 1983, a ginger tomcat called George climbed all the way up to 160 feet along an industrial chimney in Bolton, Lancashire. George was a claw in the side of chief chimney-toppler Fred Dibnah, who had to stop his steeplejack work for 30 hours as the RSPCA and fire brigade got involved before George had all four paws back on solid land ...

That said, it's meow! as they say in the Cat Language for "happy birthday", to tremendously overpaid Chelsea and England defensive centerpiece/skipper John Terry (27); to basketball Hall of Famer Larry Bird (51), possibly the only transparent man ever to play in the NBA; the Austrian super-skier Hermann "The Hermannator" Meier (35); and France international rugby lock Fabien Pelous (34).

Musical birthdays then too, to gravel-voiced "musician" and actor Tom Waits (58); lead singer of the Psychedelic Furs Tim Butler (49); and too-sensitive Irish singer-songwriter guy Damien Rice (34). He'll learn with age.