Ed. note: Tiger Woods’ return to golf at the Masters will entail security rivaling a presidential appearance. If you hear any of these phrases at this year’s Masters (or you utter them yourself), expect to be promptly pulled from the crowd and whisked away to a black site in the Middle East and tortured mercilessly—with none other than a nine-iron.

These are the top 10 phrases you will not hear at Augusta:

10. “It’s all in the hips.”

(more…)

Forget the Super Bowl, the Winter Olympics, and March Madness. The biggest sports event of the year (decade? century?) will come April 8-11 in Augusta, Ga.

Tiger Woods, the most talked about man in America since Thanksgiving, will make his return to golf at (where else?) the Masters.

If Tiger knows one thing, it is how to do something big. He is the most followed golfer in the sport today, and likely in its history, and his name parallels Michael Jordan and Pele’s around the world.

How will this layoff affect him though? Surely Hank Haney has been hard at work with Tiger to get his swing in-tune, but is Tiger willing to risk potential embarrassment at the Masters? Tiger won his first major there, but the time off presents a very real scenario of his missing the cut.

In most ways, though, Augusta probably is the perfect place for his return. Few will expect Woods to win, and he will be well protected from the media frenzy at the club. There is no doubt the powers that be at Augusta will move to circle the wagons around one of their own and protect him at all costs. Perhaps they will ship in Blackwater troops to escort Woods from hole to hole, which would only be appropriate.

Is there any historical comparison that can be made to Tiger Woods’ return to golf? It will be an event like no other—especially if he wins.

Are you a hockey fan? An art collector? Do you have $12 million to burn?

Courtesy of Puck Daddy, this is an art deco abstract painting of a hockey player by a Latin American artist named Tommervik:

"Pass el puck, senor."

This is certainly a sign of hockey’s growth since the Winter Olympics, right? Far as we know, Latin America is not known as a traditional hockey powerhouse.

But maybe we’re wrong. Perhaps he’s a Scott Gomez fan.

As announced earlier today, six-time all-star, Nomar Garciaparra (ˈnoʊmɑr ɡɑrˌsiːəˈpɑrə for those phonetic nerds out there) returned to, and immediately retired with the Boston Red Sox. Boston signed Nomar to a one-day minor league contract so he could retire with the team he grew up with.

Originally drafted by the Red Sox in 1994, Nomar was a fan favorite for nearly a decade. He claimed the American League Rookie of the Year award in 1997 and was in constant consideration for American League’s Most Valuable Player from 1998-2000. In 2001, the “Sports Illustrated cover curse” struck. A week after Nomar was featured on the cover, his season ended abruptly with a wrist injury. This marked the beginning of what one would consider an injury-plagued career. (more…)

One night after misspelling the name of Tampa Bay Lightning forward Steven Stamkos (and using Corey Perry’s picture in the thumbnail), Versus continues to show the “quality” employees hired to work the network’s one and only major sports league broadcasts.

In the first period of Tuesday’s Flyers-Islanders game, someone behind the scenes at the Worldwide Leader in…(Rodeo?) misspelled the name of New York coach Scott Gordon:

Aside from “Gordan”, the caption is indeed correct: Gordon was an assistant coach on Ron Wilson’s Team USA staff. So much for that spike in NHL interest coming out of the Olympics, eh?

Topps’ attempt to feature Cliff Lee in his new uni failed miserably. It’s a hell of a Photoshop job but one minor detail makes this laugh worthy. Notice the HK patch?

(Photo courtesy of Crossing Broad)