Absence Of Malice

Sometimes a reporter can't get far enough from a story. Take Valerie Helmbreck. This week the Wilmington (Del.) News Journal reporter will put some distance—about 2,000 miles—between herself and the McDonald's LPGA Championship. One year ago at that event her interview with Ben Wright touched off a firestorm in women's golf and at CBS. Helmbreck's life has not been the same since she reported Wright's remarks regarding lesbians' hurting the LPGA. She still receives mail about the story, and while most of the letters have been supportive, 20 or 30 have been "absolutely hateful," she says. Wright's life was also altered irrevocably in Wilmington. The longtime British golf analyst was suspended indefinitely by CBS in January. Last weekend he completed treatment for alcoholism at the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif.

Helmbreck, who remains a general-assignment features writer at the News Journal, had every intention of helping out with this week's coverage of the LPGA Championship. But she hadn't anticipated the interest in her story. "It started with a trickle of calls," she says. By last Friday there had been dozens of calls, so she reluctantly decided to avoid the event. "It wouldn't be fair to the LPGA," Helmbreck says. "When the reporter is the story, the reporter is out of place."

Helmbreck decided not only to skip the McDonald's but also to skip town for the week. She and her husband have rented a "tiny hut on a beach in the Yucátan," she says. "No phone, no TV, no fax."

Helmbreck says she feels no animosity toward Wright. When she heard that he had been admitted to the Betty Ford Center, she sent him a get-well card. She included a note and a business card, she says, because she "wanted him to know it wasn't in jest and that it was really me."
—AMY NUTT

Ball Wars

Bridgestone and Spalding have put a new spin on golf-ball design by developing balls with two covers. Nick Faldo used the Bridgestone Precept Double Cover to win the Masters, while Mark O'Meara has a first and a second with an as-yet-unnamed Top-Flite ball that has a second cover. No double-cover ball is available to the public yet. The manufacturers of the new balls say they offer the distance found in Surlyn-covered two-piece balls with the feel associated with softer balata-covered models. "It's our opinion that multilayer constructions are the future in golf ball design. We see it as the frontier," says Joe Henley, Top-Flite director of marketing development and professional relations.

Others, particularly those who have not developed a multicovered product, view the new balls as a marketing gimmick. After all, they say, is Nick Faldo longer because of his Mizuno T-Zoid driver or the ball? "The dimple wars have ended, and now we're into the construction wars," says Dick Lyons of Maxfli. "For all of us it's about marketing. The improvements we make are small steps, and we always want to project them as big steps."

Tiger's Record Day

Peaking for the upcoming NCAA Championship, the one major amateur title he has yet to secure, Tiger Woods won last week's Pac-10 tournament by a whopping 14 strokes. Woods shot 270, 18 under par, at Big Canyon Country Club in Newport Beach, Calif., breaking Corey Pavin's 1982 tournament record of 273 (11 under par). But it was Woods's torrid 36 holes on the first day, when he shot 61-65, that will go down as perhaps the most spectacular day in collegiate golf history.

"Everybody was shell-shocked," says Randy Lein, coach at Arizona State, which won the team title by 17 shots over runnerup Southern Cal and by 26 over fourth-place Stanford. In shooting 61, Woods made 11 birdies, an eagle and two bogeys. His nine-hole scores were 30 and 31. Arizona State's Scott Johnson was in second place after the morning round, seven shots back. "So far I'm low amateur," he joked.