[ringin]

Several years ago I was playing in quite a few charity scrambles each year. I had the opportunity to play with several sports celebrities including Kenny Landreaux (LA Dodgers), Linda Cohn (SportsCenter), & Van Earl Wright (Fox Sports Net). The most fun, by far, was James Worthy at a Lakers Youth Foundation event. He actually wasn't supposed to be playing with our group that day, but he showed up late and they sent him out with us. He rolled up in a cart when we were on the second hole. According to him, he hadn't touched his clubs in weeks and looked like he just rolled out of bed. He jumps out and says, "Hey guys, I'm James and I'm playing with yall today". We just said cool, and all hit our shots from that fairway.

He didn't hit the ball very straight, but as big Worthy is, he hit the ball a ton.

We get to a par 3 which was a hole in one / closest to the pin hole. HIO gets a nice Mercedes coupe, but in the circle gets a bottle of Jack Daniels. We all proceed to miss the green, but James knocks one to about 4 feet and instantly asks the hole attendant for his bottle of JD. Somehow JW convinces us that we need to do some shots of Jack (bad idea in retrospect), but we couldn't turn down Big Game James. Next thing we know, there are 3 Laker Girls riding around in carts with our group, local TV stations & camera men are following us and everything erupts into just a crazy scene. That's the first and only time I've ever had to play golf in front of television cameras...and with James Worthy, Laker Girls, and a ton of other people watching, the stress level was peaked. But I hit some good shots and didn't look too stupid I think.

We finished out the rest of the round, and he was nice enough to hang out with us at the dinner that evening. Former Laker Michael Cooper even showed up for the dinner and hung out with us for a while. We talked Lakers, basketball, golf, while James managed finished off the rest of his winnings from the par 3. Fun guy to play a round of golf with, and a really nice guy.