GOLFER, 91, ASKING FOR HIS DRIVER BACK

THE OTHER day in Evansville, Norman Dahl shot a 53 for nine holes.

"I chipped in from off the green and really had it going,'' Dahl said. "My
friends were calling me 'Little Tiger.' ''

Dahl is 91 years old.

"If I had known I was going to live this long,'' he said, quoting Eubie
Blake, "I would have taken better care of myself.''

We were speaking Friday because Dahl, who lives and cares for himself in a
home near Odana Hills Golf Course, had a 91-year-old moment last week.

"I'm getting so forgetful,'' he said.

Dahl was the first one to tee off in his group at Odana. "I decided to go
to the men's room while the others were hitting,'' he said. Dahl walked
back to the clubhouse and noticed he was still carrying his driver.

"It's a Wilson 1200, part of a set I've had for 25 years. Back then, those
were the top of the line.''

Dahl has played a lot of golf since retiring 30 years ago. He was born and
raised in Kansas and came here to work for a construction firm that his
brother co-owned. He can walk to Odana from his home and has played with
the same group of guys there since 1973.

That day last week, rather than take his driver into the bathroom, Dahl set
it down in a basket outside the door. Unfortunately, it was a waste basket.
"It was my mistake,'' Dahl said. He came out a few minutes later and the
driver was gone.

If you know the game at all, you know a person who loses a driver after 25
years may as well have lost an arm or leg.

So if you thought someone was throwing away a Wilson 1200 driver at Odana
last week Thursday, do the right thing and give me a call and I'll arrange
for you to get the club back to Dahl. Maybe we can all play a round
together. I told Norman he would have to give me strokes.

"I played yesterday and got a little tired,'' Dahl said Friday. "But I came
home and took a little nap and I was fine.'' ... THE MUSICAL group Garbage
- -- Shirley Manson and Madisonians Butch Vig, Steve Marker and Duke Erikson
- -- got together earlier this month intending to finish the album of
"B-sides'' they've been working on. Instead, feeling creative, they began
to write songs for a new studio album. "Needless to say, we are
superpsyched,'' Manson noted on their Web site. ...

At last weekend's annual meeting of the Libertarian Party of Dane County at
Tenney Park, among their endorsements was Mount Horeb Republican state Rep.
Rick Skindrud.

Skindrud addressed the group, and on the issue of the medical use of
marijuana said he saw no reason why it should not be legal for medicinal
purposes.

At which point Ben Masel, long a pro-pot advocate in Madison, asked, "Does
that mean you'll co-sponsor a bill?''

Skindrud, Masel told me Friday, replied, "Yes.'' I swapped voice mails with
Skindrud this week but on Friday a staffer in his office said, "What he has
said is that he will not take the lead but would sign on'' if someone else
introduced a bill. ...

Isthmus News Editor Bill Lueders has a stinging piece, highly critical of
the new Supermax prison in Boscobel, in the August Milwaukee Magazine. ...
The Greater Madison Convention & Visitors Bureau is out with a new
magazine, "Kid's Guide to Greater Madison,'' which includes a membership
application to get newsletters on what's happening in the city for kids.
... MOE KNOWS: "Survivor'' is for wimps. Just ask 1972 East High grad Laura
Bly (Laura Schmalbach back then). She had a cover story in Friday's USA
Today about her week enrolled in BOSS -- the Boulder Outdoor Survival
School. For $875, you, too, can go to Colorado and spend seven days, as Bly
writes, having this kind of fun: "Forget barbecued rats and mock treasure
hunts. ... You haven't suffered until you've slurped water from a
slime-covered puddle teeming with tadpoles, puked bile in 95-degree heat
and bedded down under a scraggly juniper tree with nothing but the clothes
on your back.''