Football legend Jim Brown recently was interviewed on the HBO show "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel" and criticized Tiger Woods for his lack of social activism.

"You know what's so interesting about Tiger to me?" Brown said. "He is a killer, he will run over you, he will kick your (bleep). But as an individual for social change? Terrible. Terrible. Because he can get away with teaching kids to play golf, and that's his contribution. In the real world, I can't teach kids to play golf and that's my contribution, if I've got that kind of power."

Woods was asked about Brown's criticism at his news conference Tuesday in advance of the AT&T National that he is hosting at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Md.

"I think I do a pretty good job as it is what we're trying to do with the (Tiger Woods) Foundation," Woods said. "We have this event here (The AT&T National), the Chevron World Challenge, our (Tiger) Jam in Vegas and our Block Party in Orange County. What we're trying to do (is) not just here in United States, but what my mom's doing in Thailand.

"I want to not just do it, but do it right. And that takes time. And you have to understand, you just don't jump into something. You want to do it right. You want to have a plan, and I think what we've done so far has been very good, very efficient and it's helped a lot of kids, and taught a lot of kids how to get back and learn, learn how to lead, learn how to give back. Learn how to teach others, have confidence in themselves to be able to do all these different things, and have these attributes going forward. That takes time. And I think we've done it right."

Woods said his foundation has helped 10 million kids since its inception in 1996. "I think that's a pretty good stat so far, and we're going to obviously increase that, especially on a global basis. This is a foundation that's not going to be here for just the short term. We're here for the long haul. We're trying to help as many kids as we possibly can, but do it right. That's one of the reasons why we've taken our time expanding and growing because we don't want to make mistakes. We want to help these kids the best way we possibly can and be with them and stay with them."

Woods might have added, but didn't, the manner in which he has led by example -- as a father devoted to his family and as a son who speaks incessantly about his own father's substantial role in his life and how it has contributed to his success. To boot, his has been a scandal-free career, which puts him at least one-up on a substantial contingent of professional athletes, past and present.

-- John Strege

Prolific author and Golf Digest contributing editor John Feinstein underwent successful heart bypass surgery on Monday "and is recovering well," according to an update on his website, feinsteinonthebrink.com.

In a Sunday blog post, Feinstein announced that he was undergoing surgery the following morning. He said that an angiogram late last week revealed “'four to six,' blockages in my heart—one of them 100 percent."

Feinstein's most recent book was a collaboration with Rocco Mediate entitled, "Are You Kidding me?" Recently, he has been working on two books -- the fourth in a series of kids' mysteries and one on the 2003 major championships, in which the winners (Mike Weir, Jim Furyk, Ben Curtis and Shaun Micheel) and contenders largely were unknown.

-- John Strege

Aaron Stewart today will play Pinehurst No. 2, the course on which his late father Payne won his last tournament, the U.S. Open, a decade ago, and it is a round from which he has no intention of shying.

Stewart is there to play in the North & South Amateur, and he will employ the same caddie with whom his father won the open, Mike Hicks, and will carry the same yardage book his father used that week.

Ed Hardin has the story in the Greensboro News & Record.

-- John Strege

...whether two holes at Augusta National ultimately will keep Kenny Perry from the World Golf Hall of Fame.

Perry, whose victory in the Travelers Championship on Sunday was the 14th of his career, would have remained a Hall of Fame long shot even had he parred either the 71st or 72nd hole at Augusta and won the Masters in April. But with a major championship and 15 career victories on his record, Perry might have been within four or five wins of Hall of Fame consideration and probably inclusion.

Tom Kite, for instance, had 19 career victories, including a major, and is in the Hall of Fame. Presumably, Davis Love III, with 20 victories and one major, will eventually be inducted.

Perry, 48, has five victories in the last 13 months, and given the state of his game (he's now ranked fourth in the world), there is nothing to suggest that he can't win another four or five tournaments in the next couple of years. He's addressed 20 wins as a goal before, and he was asked about it in the aftermath of his victory on Sunday:

"I'm making people think a little bit. Still, six more wins is a lot of wins. You know, I've won three last year, two this year already. Who knows? If I get hot again, get on a little streak, sneak in two more by the end of the year, it might be very realistic.

"But as I said before, it was a pretty unrealistic goal. I just kind of threw that number out there to see everybody roll their eyes in the back of their head. But it is a goal of mine. I may not ever reach it and if I don't, that's fine. My career's been unbelievable, the things I've been able to accomplish. But that keeps me working each day, keeps me going back to work."

Should he ultimately win 18 to 20 times and none of them in major championships, the bogeys he made at the final two holes at Augusta might prove to be the roadblock keeping him from the World Golf Hall of Fame.

-- John Strege

So says Smart Company, an Australia-based company that calls itself "an online news and resource site for entrepreneurs."

Apparently Norman's divorce settlement of $103 million a year ago was only a momentary setback, his net worth having increased in the last 12 months by $123 million (to $377 million).

It puts him $39 million ahead of the second richest celebrity down under, Nicole Kidman.

-- John Strege

President Obama was on the golf course again on Sunday, and we'll leave it to others to decide whether he ought to be teeing it up so often with the world in turmoil. But one pundit, Asher Embry, has taken notice. Embry, a frequent contributor to The American Spectator, has taken to weighing in politically in verse. Here's his Sunday offering:

When crisis hits our troubled world, Barack knows what to do.
They’re cracking down in Tehran; in Honduras there’s a coup.
O’s whisked off by the Secret Service; we know where he’ll be:
He’s at his “undisclosed location” at the 14th tee.

-- John Strege

John Daly does seem somewhat dedicated to resurrecting a career gone awry, to wit the weight loss and the newfound patience he has shown when his golf is uncooperative, the latter evident by the fact that he hasn't withdrawn from a tournament in more than a year. The w/d once was a staple on Daly's resume.

The fact that he finished second in the Italian Open in May gave rise to the perception that better days were here, that his bountiful skill would again be allowed to flourish and would carry him to the top of the golf world. Indeed, when he returned to the PGA Tour at the St. Jude Classic, CBS' David Feherty interviewed him and wondered whether the new John Daly might even be prepared to add a third major championship to his record.

Daly on Friday missed the cut again on the European PGA Tour, this time by three strokes at the BMW International Open. That's four missed cuts in eight European Tour starts on the '09 schedule. By way of comparison, in 2008, when his career was bottoming out, Daly also made the cut in 50 percent of his European Tour starts (three of six).

In other words, it's less a comeback than more of the same.

The next three weeks should be telling about where he's at in his attempted comeback. He's scheduled to play in the French Open, the Scottish Open and the British Open, which would give him four starts in a row against formidable fields.

We won't be looking for a victory, necessarily, but we will be looking for progress.

-- John Strege

Ryo Ishikawa, the Japanese star who has yet to do anything on the international stage to warrant such billing, nonetheless has earned a spot in the British Open next month by winning the Japan Golf Tour's Mizuno Open.

Ishikawa, 17, had missed the cut in three of four PGA Tour starts, and finished 71st in the other, the Transitions Championship. He had fallen to 103rd in the World Golf Ranking prior to winning the Mizuno, his third Japan Golf Tour victory.

Say this for Ishikawa: He apparently is unflappable. En route to winning, he opened a five-stroke lead that he relinquished in its entirety on the par-4 12th hole by hitting two shots out of bounds and taking a quintuple-bogey 9. He rebounded with an eagle at the 16th hole and a birdie at 18 to win by three.

-- John Strege

Gary Player was among the first to speak out against Augusta National's membership policy that excludes women, so it should have come as no surprise to the hierarchy at Muirfield that he disagrees with the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers' similar men-only policy.

Yet it apparently caught club secretary Alastair Brown off guard when Player spoke out against Muirfield's policy, according to this report in the Scotsman.

"One thing travel has taught me is to have respect for other people's point of view but I have to tell you, I do not agree with (the policy)," he told the Scotsman.

"Golf would not be the game it is without women. Winston Churchill said that change is the price of survival. I agree with that. I just don't see the point of excluding any member of society."

The story, written by Tom English and Marc Horne, says that Brown "was taken aback by Player's comments. He said: 'We are a private members' club and we conduct our own affairs. We don't have lady members, but ladies play here every day as guests.'"

Fifty years ago, Player won the British Open at Muirfield.

-- John Strege