Who cares what Annika shot? It was way more fascinating to watch (ex-BYU golfer) Dean Wilson, her previously low-profile playing partner, worm his way into the hearts of women everywhere with his strong-but-sensitive work. The Hawaii native, who had kind of a Dean Cain thing going, started by wearing the "Go Annika" pin to the Tuesday press conference where he and Aaron Barber, another low-pro pro, were thrown to the wolves. Then, on the 10th tee Thursday morning, where the threesome started their historic round, Dean-o was chatting Annika up, big-time. Keeping her loose, making her laugh, looking cute. He kept it up all day, with the shy smile and all that.
The babes swooned.
By Friday, he had a cult following. One woman in the crowd had the "Aloha, Dean: I LOVE YOU" sign going. He sealed his place as the Sensitive Stud by sporting the "Go Annika" pin on his head cover — which is in the shape of a pineapple, by the way.
Dean Wilson: Sweet, like a Pineapple of Love.
All the male reporters could see right through it. We'd all been there. We'd all tried to fashion similar bits at one point in our lives. We saw him working, and whether we wanted to admit it or not, the guy was good. — Brian Murphy, ESPN.com
In 25 years I've been to at least 1,000 press conferences. World Series, Super Bowls, prizefights — huge rooms full of tough guys. But the most gripping press conference, the most unforgettable one, was in a little room in Grand Junction, Colo., starring a guy as skinny as a two-iron.
That was when 27-year-old adventurer Aron Ralston described for the world how he had saved his life by cutting off his lower right arm with a dull pocketknife.
For five days Ralston's arm was pinned by an 800-pound boulder — after he'd lowered himself off it, the boulder had shifted onto his arm — in a forbidding three-foot-wide crevice in the remote Bluejohn Canyon in southeastern Utah. He tried everything to move the boulder, throwing his body at it, chipping away at it. The thing didn't budge.
On the third day, out of food and water and ideas, he stared at his cheap multiuse tool, the kind you get free with a $15 flashlight, and realized what he had to do. He used a pair of cycling shorts for a tourniquet, picked up the knife, took a deep breath and began sawing into his own skin. — Rick Reilly, Sports Illustrated
Give it away. If I may offer one piece of advice to LeBron James — who in the span of 24 hours last week sold his soles to Nike for $90 million, had $1 million pressed into his palm by Upper Deck and watched, on prime-time television, as the Cleveland Cavaliers wept with gratitude for winning the privilege of enriching him further — it's this: Give your money away.
In less than a week, LeBron, you will graduate from high school with an eight-figure income and a two-figure life span. That life, almost certainly, will be one swift blur — of Swiss banks and Tyra Banks, walk-in humidors and lobster thermidors, English valets and Alpine chalets.
Make no mistake, however. You could live the same life on one-tenth of your income and still ensure that your unborn offspring are never bereft of the Bentleys that are their birthright. How much money can one man spend?
May I remind you, King James, what the King James version of the Bible says? "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity." And so the choice is yours. You may live by the principles of faith, hope and charity, or stuff singles in the G-strings of Faith, Hope and Charity. Which will it be? — Steve Rushin, Sports Illustrated