Captains Courageous?

Being the captain of any U.S. golf team used to be easy duty: Fill out the lineups, do the press conferences, make the speeches and collect the hardware on Sunday. When he was Ryder Cup captain in 1983, Jack Nicklaus said one of his biggest responsibilities was to make sure his team had enough towels and tees. Times have changed. Now that the U.S. loses international matches as often as it wins them, the captain's chair has become the hot seat. Judy Rankin and Arnold Palmer found that out last week while filling out the final two spots on the 12-player rosters of the Solheim and Presidents Cup teams, respectively.

Both Palmer and Rankin wanted to avoid the kind of criticism heaped upon Lanny Wadkins after he used one of his captain's selections for last year's Ryder Cup to pick Curtis Strange, who was 23rd on the points list and bogeyed the last three holes to lose the crucial match against Nick Faldo. Palmer's strategy to avoid any controversy was simple. He said he would take the 11th and 12th players off the Presidents Cup points list (the first 10 automatically make the team), but Palmer wavered when the slumping David Duval took last week off instead of protecting his No. 9 spot on the list. After the World Series and the concurrent Greater Vancouver Open, Duval had been overtaken on the list by Fred Couples and Justin Leonard. "I'm disappointed in David," said Palmer, who nonetheless decided to make the 11th-ranked Duval and No. 12 Kenny Perry his picks. Earning spots on the team, in addition to Couples and Leonard, were Mark O'Meara, Tom Lehman, Phil Mickelson, Mark Brooks, Davis Love III, Corey Pavin, Scott Hoch and Steve Stricker.

Rankin didn't make any promises about whom she would select. Keeping her options open to the end, Rankin could be seen at numerous LPGA events this summer, including last week's Star Bank Classic in Dayton, checking out the players and pouring over charts and computer printouts. Rankin's husband, Yippy, offered this advice: "I told her it was like buying a thoroughbred racehorse. Take the one that's running the best."

But that's not what Rankin wound up doing. After selecting the 11th-ranked Beth Daniel, Rankin passed over second-year pro Emilee Klein, the 12th player on the points list and the winner of back-to-back events in August. Instead Rankin selected the more experienced Brandie Burton, 13th on the list and 3-0 in Solheim Cup competition, after giving serious consideration to Kris Tschetter (14th) and Nancy Lopez (15th). Those who automatically qualified were Dottie Pepper, Meg Mallon, Kelly Robbins, Michelle McGann, Jane Geddes, Patty Sheehan, Rosie Jones, Pat Bradley, Val Skinner and Betsy King.

Atom Ant

At 5'7" and 128 pounds, Hidemichi Tanaka, the 1995 rookie of the year on the Japanese tour, is built along the lines of Corey Pavin, yet he hits the bail more like John Daly. Last week Tanaka delighted galleries at the World Series of Golf, in which he finished 23rd, by consistently hitting drives in excess of 280 yards.

A teen heartthrob in Japan as well as his country's most promising young player, the 25-year-old Tanaka qualified for the World Series by winning Japan's richest tournament, the Philip Morris Championship, last October. At Firestone he was hitting wedge approach shots into many of the 400-plus-yard par-4s, which raised eyebrows among his competitors. Tanaka relishes his image as a mighty mite. In fact, he incorporates a drawing of an ant in the logo on his custom-designed golf shirts. "It is small but very powerful," Tanaka says, "and I am small but powerful."

The Gambler

Laura Davies's go-for-broke style on the golf course is apparently an extension of the way she gambles on horses and greyhounds and in casinos. In her new autobiography, Laura Davies Naturally, the world's top-ranked woman golfer confesses to losing about $800,000 gambling over the past 12 years. "I gamble because I find it fun, and it seldom bothers me when I lose," Davies says in the book. "I bet heavily, but I can put my hand on my heart and say there has only been one time when I have broken my own rule of never betting more than I was prepared to lose."

In a passage from the book that appeared last week in London's Daily Telegraph, Davies recalls having lost £4,000 in a casino when her self-imposed limit was £3,000. That's nothing compared with the tens of thousands John Daly reportedly has blown in one sitting at the tables, but it bothered Davies. "It was obscene to have lost that amount of money in a world where so many are struggling," she says.