Columnist Ron Kantowski: Dull matchup leaves fans with ‘Battle’ fatigue

Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2000 | 10:20 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's notes column appears Tuesday. His page one column appears Thursday. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or 259-4088.

Two weeks ago, had somebody suggested that Tiger Woods be paired against Bob May in the second annual Battle at Bighorn Monday night, some made-for-TV executive might have suggested you go to Little Bighorn instead, on a reconnaissance mission for George Custer.

He would have massacred the idea, plain and simple.

But the truth of the matter is more diehard golf fans would have tuned in, hoping to watch Woods and May reprise their stirring PGA Championship duel, than probably watched Woods go club head to club head with Sergio Garcia, who, quite frankly, is playing more like the flash in the pan that May used to be. (At least in not-made-for-TV golf).

Kudos to May, the Summerlin resident who obviously is well on the way to removing that modifier to describe him. Not content to rest on his laurels -- or wallet -- following his gutsy performance at Valhalla, May followed up with an excellent third-place finish at last weekend's Reno-Tahoe Open and earned another $204,000.

That's $740,000 won in the past two weeks, which even after Uncle Sam takes his greens fees should leave the affable May "a little something for the effort" (as Carl the "Caddyshack" greenskeeper might say).

At his present earnings rate, May may soon outgrow the motorcycles he rides as a hobby and start collecting Formula One race cars.

Speaking of BYU and contrary to what one of the sports talk dummies was espousing on the radio Sunday, the 29-3 loss to the nation's second-ranked team bodes well for the Cougars when they return to reality -- a k a the Mountain West Conference. The numbskull on the radio suggested it would be a shame were the Cougars to finish 3-8 or 4-7 in LaVell Edwards' final season in Provo. ...

How desperate is Jim Harrick at Georgia? Until recently, he was recruiting Kenny Brunner, a point guard that even Jerry Tarkanian didn't want anything to do with. Tark ran Brunner, who started his career at Georgetown, out of Fresno after a series of transgressions, one of which included Brunner and others on the periphery of the Bulldogs' program threatening an FSU student with a Samurai sword before robbing him.

Harrick's team are fast becoming college basketball's Boys Town -- former UNLV recruit Lamar Odom wound up playing for Harrick at Rhode Island after his UNLV scholarship was revoked amid charges of falsified entrance exam scores. ...

The following item was sacrificed in the aftermath of boxing referee Mitch Halpern's suicide last week, but fight promoter Bob Arum was more wrong than Harold Lederman's scorecard to question the timing of his hearing with the Nevada State Athletic Commission. Arum accepted a hefty fine and probation for confessing that he paid what amounted to extortion money to the International Boxing Federation for sanctioning the 1995 George Foreman vs. Axel Schulz bout as a heavyweight title fight.

That confession stands -- even if a jury somehow found IBF president Bob Lee innocent of the major bribery charges just a day after Arum swallowed his medicine from the NSAC. The two cases really are not related. ...

And finally, a story on the business wire said XFL officials spent several months producing the logos for the eight teams in the fledgling pro football league.

But I'll bet it would have taken an art student at the community college all of 15 minutes to design a more attractive -- and original -- logo for the Las Vegas Outlaws. The design that was unveiled last week at a news conference looks suspiciously like the one the tie-dyed rock band Grateful Dead had/has been using for decades.

Hits and misses

Then the IRL goes and plucks Kimberly Miller, one of LVMS' public relations assistants, away from the superspeedway to go to work for the IRL. Go figure. MISS(ED THE SETUP).