Fairways

Timonium golfer Jenny Chuasiriporn made sports headlines with her own casual collegiate style. But should the amateur decide to trade up to glitzier golf attire, she'll have plenty to choose from.In recent years, designers and famous golfers alike have begun crafting clothes for the fairways, catering to the growing number of women taking up the game.Liz Claiborne's line includes sweater sets with racing stripes and capri pants. Ralph Lauren's Polo Golf collection features silk-blend cardigans and cotton tattersall shorts (shown here)

Much of what fueled the past year's effort to incorporate Columbia originated in the sometimes insensitive approach taken by the Columbia Association in its relations with the community.Continued evidence of such callousness can be seen in the way the association is handling construction of the $5.2 million Fairway Hills Golf Course. In that case, some unexpected modifications in the course's design angered nearby residents in Wilde Lake.For the larger community, the modifications represent minor tinkering.

GOV. ROBERT L. Ehrlich Jr. got his picture in the paper after making an eagle, two under par on a par-5 hole, during the Capitol Open golf tournament in Potomac, Md. More recently, he carded what amounts to a political and governmental "bogey" (one over) or maybe even a "snowman," an eight, in weekend golf parlance, when he began taking advantage of a free membership at the Caves Valley Golf Club, one of Maryland's most exclusive venues. It wasn't illegal. He apparently didn't seek it out. The membership was there, a gift to the governor's office, not to its occupant.

Camilo Villegas had just one request for fans now empowered to bring cell phones to the PGA Tour's fairways. "Just turn (the sound) off, guys — 'vibrate,'" the Colombian pro said during an appearance to promote next month's Honda Classic. As if on cue, someone's phone announced its presence at the back of the room. "Heard one!" Villegas quipped. It won't be the last. Intermittent breaches of the old "Quiet, please" standard are bound to happen. Heck, they've been happening for years as folks sneaked their mobile devices onto the course in violation of the old ban. Now, though, they'll be more annoyance than outrage, an occupational hazard.

DURING LAST month's Ryder Cup golf competition in Brookline, Mass., more bad manners were on display than you'd find at an NHL game or at my dinner table.A yahoo factor previously absent from golf revealed itself during this esteemed tournament when members of the gallery taunted our European opponents with insults and deliberate attempts were made to break their concentration. The wife of the European captain was spat upon, if you can believe it.In addition, American players displayed inappropriate exuberance.

J ean-Michel Frederick lives at the Petionville Club, near the golf course's ninth tee, with a grand view of the valley and the harbor. That would have meant prestige a few weeks ago. Today it means sleeping with his family on the side of a hill inside a patchwork tent made of sticks and bed linens, wedged into a human collage of 30,000 fellow Haitians displaced by the earthquake. "Of course, we do not choose to live here, but it is safe from the earthquake and the Americans are here," said Frederick, as he stood in line with his mother and a thousand others, clutching the green Catholic Relief Services ticket that promised his family a two-week supply of food.

If there's one word that sums up the feeling at the Yellow Dress Golf Classic dinner, it was "family." Not only did the event benefit the family-founded Kristin Rita Strouse Foundation, but there was a feeling of family in the Hillendale Country Club ballroom, where several hundred folks gathered. Sharon and Doug Strouse had started the foundation and the golf tournament not long after their daughter ended her own life in 2001. They and their daughter Kimberly and son Kevin warmly welcomed guests.

In a gap between new condominium and townhouse communities along Columbia Road, a hulking machine that looks like a headliner for a monster truck show digs topsoil near a boarded-up, pre-Civil War stone house that one day will be a golf course centerpiece.The $5.2 million Fairway Hills Golf Course, which will be the nonprofit Columbia Association's second course, is beginning to take shape in an area west of Route 29 and south of Route 108 through which the Little Patuxent River runs.What were once open fields are now expanses of graded brown earth, and woodlands have become a little sparser as construction crews prepare areas for seeding along the 204-acre, 18-hole course, the former site of the Allview Golf Course, which closed in 1985 to allow for housing developments around its perimeter.

There is an undercurrent of anger out there. It's impossible to count the individuals and groups who believe that they are openly insulted and treated with disrespect, contempt and hostility.Because I recently touched on a few of their complaints, members of one such group have bombarded me with accounts of their second-class status in our society."We have been silent and meek for too long," one of them said, "and all that does is encourage even more discrimination and abuse."Another said: "Your column was helpful, but it was only the tip of the iceberg.

Golf, as with a ladle of freshly dipped spring water, remains the purest and most refreshing of sports because of the care taken in upholding its rules and policies. For the last 100 years, the U.S. Golf Association has been the governing body, the heart and soul of its credibility and popularity.In Baltimore, a man named Jack Emich has exemplified ongoing integrity and leadership so important to the success of the game. His contributions have been such that the USGA, in its centennial season of celebration, has made him a recipient of its distinguished Ike Grainger Award, bestowed on those volunteers who have given so unselfishly to upholding a high standard of ethics and helping diligently guard its impeccable reputation.