By This Logic, Sampras Must Be a Moron

Jim Courier, apparently on the downside of a championship tennis career, is thinking about life after tennis but he says having played the sport is no help at all.

“Tennis unfortunately doesn’t encourage any kind of intellectual development; it actually discourages that,” he said. “The dumber you are on the court, the better you’re going to play.

“That’s a kind of truism of sport. When you’re playing your best tennis . . . you’re in the zone. You’re not thinking about anything, it’s all instinct.”

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Trivia time: Which golfer holds the tournament record for the Mercedes Championships, concluding today at Kapalua, Hawaii?

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Money matters: The Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, which will be played Jan. 20-24, pays $540,000 to the winner.

Defending champion Fred Couples said, “Unless a top player wins, the winner may end up with $800,000 for the year, which is nice, but that’s a utility player in baseball, or the 10th man on an NBA team.

“But I think golf pays off in the long run. Until we screw it up, I believe anyone playing golf should be able to play for a lot of money for a long time.”

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One man’s view: Joe Hamelin of the Riverside Press-Enterprise, on the state of Indy car racing:

“The IRL [Indy Racing League] is as exciting as brie on saltines.”

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Busy, busy, busy: Khalid El-Amin, Connecticut’s talented point guard, is a busy man these days, juggling family life--a wife and two children--with basketball and his Muslim faith.

“When it’s time for basketball, it’s time for basketball, and after that it’s your family time,” he says. As a Muslim, he fasts from dawn to dusk during the current holy month of Ramadan, except for game days.

“I tried it [fasting] in high school, but it just didn’t work out. I just don’t have enough energy to do that.”

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Getting a team: When the Cleveland Browns choose players in the NFL expansion draft Feb. 9, they must use 38% of the 1999 salary cap, expected to be $59 million, to obtain 30 to 42 players.

Each player selected will receive $10,000; if he reports to training camp, $20,000; and if he is on the roster for the first game, $30,000.

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How embarrassing: The best showing by a conference in bowl games was the Big Ten’s 5-0 record, including four victories on New Year’s Day.

And the worst was the Pac-10’s 1-4. Only Arizona managed to win, 23-20 over Nebraska in the Holiday Bowl.

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Trivia answer: Calvin Peete, who shot a 21-under-par 267 in the 1986 event played at La Costa. The record could be in jeopardy, however, as David Duval was 21 under through three rounds in this year’s event.

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And finally: Track and field’s governing body, the IAAF, has declared 1999 the Year of the Woman in Athletics, but in Peru the concept has taken a strange turn, where many women apparently use sports as a springboard.

According to the IAAF News, Peruvian track and field “has been a remarkable source of beauty queens, advertising models and TV presenters.”