The Loop

Missing Links: Tiger Woods' possible 'Willie Mays moment,' and McIlroy and a torch passed

August 09, 2014

Stories of interest you might have missed…

"We might look back someday and remember what happened at this PGA Championship as [Tiger Woods'] Willie Mays moment," Jim Litke of the Associated Press writes.

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(Getty Images photo)

"Rory McIlroy] hits it too far to be hitting it so straight, and too close too frequently to avoid making birdies," Louisville Courier-Journal columnist Tim Sullivan writes in making the case that the torch has been passed, from Woods to McIlroy.

"[Woods] needs to quit playing through it now. He needs to forget about the Ryder Cup, give his back the rest of the year off, and start preparing to stop all this Rory McIlroy madness at Augusta National, the one place the kid hasn't conquered," writes Ian O'Connor at ESPN.com, echoing a popular opinion.

"Tom, I'm Paul McGinley from Ireland, would you mind if I joined you?' He looked at me with those steely eyes. It felt like five minutes but it was only probably two seconds and I thought oh my god I shouldn't have asked him.' Then he stuck out his hand and said, Irishmen are always welcome in my company,'" a story in the Scotsman says in this look at McGinley, the European Ryder Cup captain.

Babe Didrikson Zaharias was a chain-smoker, brash and no one's idea of a lady, according to the social norms of the day. "Nowadays Zaharias is no longer a household name, but she deserves to be — not only for her pathbreaking athletic achievements, but for her struggles to acquire fame and commercial success as a champion whose maverick personality clearly disconcerted a considerable number of the fans who watched her perform," historian Michael Beschloss writes in this profile of Zaharias in the New York Times.