Bernhard Langer has compiled 36 victories and just over $25 million in earnings on the PGA Tour Champions, and he is a seven-time player of the year. It might help the others if the 60-year-old German would take a week off every now and then.
"Sometimes they say, 'Why don't you take a week off?' I joke back and say, 'If you pay me some disappearance fee, I might.' But I haven't received any yet," Langer said Monday while previewing the Senior PGA Championship in Benton Harbor, Mich.
Leave it to Langer's son to arrange that.
Langer revealed that he won't be able to defend his title May 24-27 because his youngest son, 18-year-old Jason, is graduating from high school that weekend.
"Family always comes first in my life, so I've got to be there to support him, to celebrate him moving on to college," Langer said.
He said his son will attend Penn's Wharton School of Business and plans to play golf.
"I wouldn't want to miss that," Langer said. "I'm going to miss competing for this, but hopefully, there will be more chances in the future."
Langer won last year at Trump National outside Washington, D.C., to complete the career Grand Slam on the 50-and-older circuit.
A year ago, Phil Mickelson sat out the U.S. Open at Erin Hills when his second-oldest daughter graduated from high school. Corey Pavin nearly had the same conflict in 2005 for the U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2, but he flew cross-country after his opening round Thursday and caught a redeye back to North Carolina for his second round.
Polly wants a pick
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have selected Zsa Zsa the parrot to make their fourth-round draft pick from the deck of the franchise's pirate ship at Raymond James Stadium.
Zsa Zsa is a Catalina Macaw from the Florida Exotic Bird Sanctuary, which is known as a retirement home for parrots. She is 8 years old and excellent at mimicking sounds at the sanctuary that houses more than 150 Macaws.
"We're honored [the Bucs] called us because even if this does nothing but raise awareness, I think that would be just fantastic," Florida Exotic Bird Sanctuary founder Patricia Norton said in an interview featured on the Bucs' website.
With the Jacksonville Jaguars announcing they are adding a pet area so that fans can bring dogs to games and the Miami Dolphins' long history with, well, Dolphins, it's clear Florida NFL teams are all about animals.
Ogre convert?
In a tweet sent out by The University of Toledo on Tuesday morning, the school said it was willing to change its mascot in exchange for a ton of social media activity.
The school's official Twitter tweeted a photo of Shrek and said the famous DreamWorks character will become the school's new mascot if the tweet gets 500,000 retweets.
The retweet number grew to approximately 100,000 before the school deleted the tweet Tuesday afternoon.
Sports on 04/25/2018