"Practice what you preach"

Hard as it is to believe, but someone is calling Gary Player out for not practing what he preaches. Shocking, I know. From Grahame Jones in the LA Times, writing about Gary Player hanging at Santa Anita's Clocker's Corner after receiving some sort of Breeder's Cup award.

"I'm a horse nut, so I come and see this every year," Player, who turned 74 on Sunday, said of the Breeders' Cup, whose 14 races take place today and Saturday in Arcadia. "All the best horses are here."

Player knows a thing or two about thoroughbreds.

"I just bred the best filly in our country, Lady Windermere," he said. "That happens once in a lifetime. She's won two Grade 1 races already. So it's big thrill."

Player, winner of nine major golf championships, not to mention owner of a 20,000-acre spread, including a stud farm, in South Africa, was presented with a bit of crystal by the Breeders' Cup folk in honor of his sporting achievements.

He also was presented with a blunt reality check.

After Player told onlookers the owners of top horses have an obligation not to duck the Breeders' Cup, he ran into Chip Woolley, the trainer of Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird.

"Practice what you preach," Woolley tersely told Player, noting Lady Windermere's absence from Arcadia.