There can’t be any fan of Philadelphia radio
who won’t be saddened to learn of the death this morning of WIBG-AM and WOGL-FM
legend Don Cannon at the age of 74. For a time, Cannon also hosted "Inside
Golf" on Comcast SportsNet. He will be missed.
I got to know Cannon more than 25 years ago, when
I covered the local radio scene for the Philadelphia Inquirer, before I ever
wrote a word about golf.What I
remember most is that Don Cannon enjoyed life about as much as anybody I’d ever
met.
Off the radio, Cannon was an avid and pretty
good golfer.We must have played a
dozen rounds together over the years.Once, I was his "guest" in the weekend Member-Guest tournament at his
club, Cedarbrook CC.We didn’t win anything but we laughed a
lot.As much time as Cannon spent
on the golf course at Cedarbrook, he probably spent
more time in the card room, just off the locker room.
In 2000, I played a round with Cannon and his
best buddy, Bobby Rydell, the teen heartthrob, for a story
for the Inquirer’s Sunday golf page.
Here’s a passage from that story about Cannon’s
game:
Cannon is a
different story. He's got game. His legs weren't much to look at in those shorts,
but his swing was. It's fluid, natural and athletic, the swing of a man who has
aged well and has entirely too much leisure time on his hands. Cannon maintains
a 13 handicap at Cedarbrook, but it has been lower -
single-digit lower - and he still pulls off the occasional shot that is beyond
the grasp of a 13-handicapper.
Cannon's
problem, in as much as a man as happy with his life as Cannon is can have a
problem, is that into each round he sprinkles a few chunks, tops, chilly-dips,
foozles and flame-outs, which cost him big-time.
That recent
day at Blue Bell, for example, Cannon opened with birdie-par-birdie-bogey,
before stone-cold topping one into a festering pit of nastiness at the fifth,
setting the stage for a dreaded double-bogey.
"Man, I
had it for the few first holes," Cannon moaned in frustration.
Rydell, good friend and sage
counsel that he is, looked at Cannon with pity. "Remember," he said,
"you never own it, you only rent it."
Cannon
nodded at the grim reality and drove on.
Cannon actually comes with a certain golf
pedigree. When he was growing up in Yonkers, N.Y., when dinosaurs still roamed
the planet, he caddied at Elmwood Country Club. But he had actually started
playing the game in third grade with a couple of neighborhood buddies, Wes and
Jon Voight, who were pretty serious about the game
because their father was a club pro. Jon Voight, you
may know, would later have some success as an actor.
Don Cannon The legendary voice of Philadelphia Morning Radio
passed away Friday morning August 22, 2014 after a brief and sudden illness. He
was 74.
Don Cannon’s voice was a top rated morning radio fixture in
Philadelphia spanning five decades starting in 1969 with WIBG (WIBBAGE) through
his retirement in 2004 from WOGL 98.1. "Cannon in The Morning" entertained
millions of people each day for thirty five years as the handsome and
entertaining radio star on WIP, WFIL, WIFI, and WSNI and Oldies 98.1 WOGL. Don
also spent time on the management side of the industry as Program Director of
WSNI and WPGR. From 1990 until his retirement in 2004 WOGL FM 98.1 was home to
the legendary "Cannon in the Morning"
Cannon, born Dominic Canzano is
considered by many as one of the main originators of conversational, irreverent
humor based personality morning radio that opened the way for future talent
like Howard Stern. First to release top selling comedy albums based on his
on-air humor and listener pranks, Cannon is a member of The Broadcast Pioneers
who regard him as the "Dean of Philadelphia Morning Radio" because of
the benchmarks, success and contributions he made to the community and
industry.
Throughout his career and into his retirement, Don worked with
hundreds of charities, raising millions of dollars throughout the region and
was awarded the March of Dimes Lifetime Achievement Award.
Cannon an avid golfer was also the host of "Inside
Golf" on Comcast Sports Net.
His signature voice and style that was a morning staple for 35
years in Philadelphia and then globally online for listeners tuning into WOGL,com is also part of motion picture history. Cannon’s
signature voice with a smile was part of a pivotal scene from the original
"Rocky" motion picture. As Sylvester Stallone readied for his run throughout
Philadelphia it was Don Cannon’s energetic voice on then WIBG that was Rocky’s
soundtrack to drinking his signature raw egg drink.
Cannon is survived by his wife Terri and sons Chris, who
continues the family dynasty in Philadelphia broadcasting as a talent and
manager, Russell in Las Vegas, grand children, family and millions fans who
will never forget their moments connecting with the legendary Don Cannon.
A service for family, friends colleagues and the public is
schedule for Sunday Levin Funeral Home 4737 Street Rd, Feasterville-Trevose, PA 19053.
We’re coming down the home stretch of another
summer and Joe Bausch, Villanova chemistry professor and curator of the unique and
comprehensive array of golf course photo galleries that is the Bausch
Collection, has wasted no time.
Since my last update on the Bausch
Collection, in early May, Joe has added another 30 new course galleries,
plus revisited and updated another 13.The total number of course galleries has grown to 223.
What can I say, the man is a machine?
Here is a list of the new galleries Joe has
added to the Bausch
Collection:
1. The Ridge at Back
Brook
2. Moselem Springs
3. Brookside
4. Allentown
Municipal
5. Chisel Creek
6. Mahoning Valley
7. Abington
8. Hideaway Hills
9. Lakewood
10. Llanerch
11. Flourtown
12. Penn Oaks
13. Fairways
14. Essex County CC
15. Mays Landing
16. Sunnybrook
17. Arrowhead
18. Somerset Hills
19. Trump Bedminster
Old
20. Upper Montclair
21. Quartette Club
22. Oxford Valley
23. Lancaster Host
24. Green Hills
25. Limekiln
26. Twin Woods
27. Doylestown
28. Tumblebrook
29. Beechtree (shot
probably 4 years ago)
30. Freeway
(Beechtree, as you may know,
closed a year or so ago, but it was a Tom Doak design that Joe really liked and
thought should be memorialized in the Bausch
Collection.)
Here are the courses that
Joe revisited and updated:
1. Seaview -- Bay
2. Berkleigh
3. Glen Mills
4. Hershey West
5. Country Club of
York
6. Edgmont
7. Trump Bedminster
New
8. Lancaster
9. Philadelphia
Cricket Club: Wissahickon
10. Radnor Valley
11. Tavistock
12. White Manor
13. Plymouth
If you have never watched the
video of Joe shooting a course, it’s worth a few minutes of your time.
The New York Times has a
nice story
today on the evolution of Rory McIlroy, as the young winner
of the British Open seeks to charm a new generation of golf fans.
In it, Times golf writer
Karen Crouse mentions that McIlroy’s ascension comes
just as we find ourselves in the "autumn of Tiger Woods."
The autumn of Tiger Woods. I
love that.It so perfectly
describes the slow career fade-out that Tiger seems too helpless to stop or
even slow.But with every major,
every tournament, we are faced with more evidence – doses of reality --
that Tiger’s run of domination is over, that he will never come close to
recapturing what he once had.
Remember those days when it
was a foregone conclusion that he would top Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18
majors?Heck, who didn’t
think Tiger would ultimately win 25?
Now, we are left to wonder
how long he will play.We he retire
at 40?He always said he would hang
it up when he could no longer win.These days, does he still have the inspiration and desire?
It’s not time yet to think
of Tiger’s career in the past tense, but it’s not too early to begin to ponder
the great sports question:
Who was the greatest golfer
of all-time?Jack, with his 18
majors, longevity and a Masters title at 46?Or Tiger, who shot across the sky like a
meteor, a mesmerizing figure who dominated golf for a decade like even Jack
never could?
Every September, Pine Valley, the most
exclusive club in Philadelphia – maybe in the country – opens it
doors to the general public for one day.It’s called the Crump Cup, named for the club’s founder.
Consider this a heads-up that non-members can get
an up-close look at two more very good, very private clubs in the area in the
coming days.If you can make it to
either one, or both, you’ll thank yourself.
On Wednesday Applebrook GC in Malvern, a 2001 Gil Hanse design,
will host the Philadelphia Open, the
most prestigious event on the annual calendar of the Golf Association of
Philadelphia.Applebrook
isn’t longby modern standards,
6,815 yards from the back tees, but it is choice real estate and, dare I say,
one of the finest modern courses in the area, rich in subtleties and nuances.
It was also designed to be a walking-only
course, which will become evident when you realize that several of the tees are
only steps away from the last green, much like the first green and second tee
at the Old Course in St. Andrews.
Then, next Monday, July 28, Bidermann
GC in Wilmington, which I have dubbed the "Most Exclusive Course You Never Heard Of," will host a qualifier for the U.S. Mid-Am.Again, we’re talking about a very
place, which began life as a private course on a DuPont estate.
Given the success of the U.S. Open at Merion GC
last summer and Aronmink’s GC’s guest-hosting of the AT&T National in 2010
and 2011, why in the heck does a historic hotbed of golf like Philadelphia
still not have a regular stop on the PGA Tour?
Whatever your feelings about golf, this hole on Philadelphia's
scorecard is, like the Phillies front office, difficult to comprehend. After
all, if you were ranking potential PGA sites by purely objective standards, few
cities would seem to compare.
Consider some of the Philadelphia area's attributes
as a golfing venue:
Its golf history and traditions are as rich as
those of any American city.
It's home to dozens of classic courses, including
two of the top 10 - No. 1 Pine Valley and No. 6 Merion - in Golf Digest's
rankings of America's top 100.
It displayed Tour-worthy passion and interest
during those two AT&T events at Aronimink and again during last year's U.S.
Open at Merion.
It's the nation's fifth-most-populous city and
fourth-largest television market.
All good points.Fitzpatrick goes so far as wonder aloud
why the biggest, baddest corporation in town, Comcast, owner of NBC Sports and
Golf Channel, doesn’t step forward to bring a tournament to town?
It is the same
question I asked in the Inquirer in 2002, in a post-mortem
column on why the SEI Pennsylvania Classic couldn’t make a go of it at
Waynesborough Country Club.I, too,
went so far as to propose a Comcast Championship:
So, imagine, if you will, the $5.7 million Comcast
Championship at Waynesborough, Aronimink, Merion or maybe that new ACE course
they're building in Lafayette Hill.
Imagine a prime date, maybe in late June, when the
weather is perfect, the kids are out of school and everybody is not at the
Shore.
Now imagine Pat Croce out there working the golf
circuit, talking up the tournament to the players, pointing out to the players,
by the way, that Comcast owns their beloved Golf Channel and would very much
appreciate it if they supported the event by vying for the $1 million winner's
check.
You think things would fall into place?
Alas, nothing
happened then and, I suspect, nothing will happen now.If the golf-hungry crowds at the AT&T
at Aronimink, and the fever pitch of the Open at Merion, couldn’t jumpstart a
conversation at Comcast to sponsor at tournament in Philadelphia, nothing
likely will.
The load in the back of the
car was just a little heavier driving home on Saturday after our beach week in
North Carolina.The coveted Conrad
Cup, after all, was on board.
That is correct.Against all odds, and perhaps several
laws of the universe, your humble correspondent prevailed in the Conrad Cup,
the long-running annual golf competition between me, my brother-in-law, Dan,
and my nephew-in-law, Cole.See earlier blog for
background.
It was a runaway. Or a
giveaway, depending on your perspective.Fact is, on the day of the official Cup competition, Thursday, Dan held
a decent – some might say substantial – lead after the front
nine.Sadly, for him, on the 11th,
Dan’s ball found a nasty, plugged lie in a greenside bunker.It was so bad, he had no choice but to
play it out sideways.Still, on
impact, he heard a "pop" and Cole and I heard a "whimper."After that, Dan was toast.
"I’ve got no feeling in my
left hand," he moaned on the watery par 3 14th, after dunking two
balls in the pond.By the 16th
Dan was done, doomed to drive his cart and post "x", "x" on the 17th
and 18th.
I almost felt bad for him,
until I remembered that Tiger Woods won a U.S. Open on a broken leg, and that nobody
feels sorry for Dale Jr. when he blows an engine on the final lap at
Talladega.It’s part of sport.Besides, on a brighter note, it
opened the door for me sneak in the back door and claim the Cup.
Cole, by that point in the
Cup, was also toast.He had played
his best golf in the two warm-up rounds.Dan was fairly steady all three days.I, on the other hand, got better by the
day.Never mind the scores.Some things are best left to the
imagination. There are also privacy laws to consider.
In my earlier pre-Cup
preview post, I mentioned that I was going to try to negotiate for strokes, or
distance, or maybe the creation of a Senior Division, since Dan is about 10
years younger than me and Cole is 15 years younger.We settled on letting me play from the
white tees (6,351 yards), while they played from the blues (6,750).
Later, back at the beach
house, I posed with the Cup.I considered
prancing around or doing cartwheels in some sort of World Cup-style post-goal
celebration, but ultimately concluded that would be in poor taste, considering
the ice pack on Dan’s hand.Instead,
I tried to be humble in victory.
Back home in Philadelphia, the
Cup now occupies a prominent place on the bookshelf in my office.It will remain there until next June,
when my family returns to the beach to pig out on Eastern North Carolina
barbecue, hush puppies, shrimp, ice cream cake, assorted adult beverages and,
of course, another Conrad Cup.
A very gracious victory speech. Well deserved and Congrats to the victor. Now you can focus on your second favorite sporting event, World Cup Soccer.
Eleanor
[7/3/2014 5:48:13 PM]
Take good care of it because I have a feeling that the competition level just went up several notches.
Jane Sellers
[7/3/2014 5:38:37 PM]
I wondered how the story would finally come out. I guess "negative publicity" for the non-winners is better than none at all. In the meantime, congratulations on a well-written story (full and humor and wit as always) and oh yes...for winning the Conrad Cup. Dad would be proud. :-)
Now that the U.S. Open is behind us, I can turn
my attention to perhaps the most anticipated event on my personal golf calendar.I refer to the Conrad Cup, a heated intra-family
competition that takes place every summer during our annual beach week in North
Carolina.
Named in honor of my late father, the Conrad
Cup, which is coming up on it’s 25th anniversary, is a dog-eat-dog
– or, more accurately, a brother-in-law eat nephew-in-law, battle royale each June when my two sisters and our families descend
on Emerald Isle for the one time of the year that we all get together.
No money is at stake in the Conrad Cup, only
pride, dignity, suffering and humiliation.Each evening after the round, somebody’s got to trudge up the steps to
the beach house with his head hung, to be met by wives, sisters, fiances and assorted offspring, all trying to access the
day’s outcome by the looks on our faces.
"Oooohhh, Joe does
not look happy..." is an often-heard refrain from the peanut gallery.
The actual Cup is a coffee can, which my sister
Eleanor created years ago by painting it green, in the spirit and color of
golf, then mounting it on a pedestal made of three golf balls.Fancy, it is not.Coveted, it is.
The field for the Conrad Cup is so-so.There’s my brother-in-law Dan, from
Raleigh.He’s married to my baby
sister, Jane.Dan has been a good
player for years, with a handicap that never climbed above the high single
digits.Dan is almost 10 years
younger than me and he’s at least 10 yards longer than me off the tee.He’s most dangerous with a putter in his
hand.
There’s also Cole, from Durham, who is married
to my niece, Julie.Cole, who is 15
years younger than me, is also mid- to high-single digit player, and he also
hits it past me.A criminal defense
lawyer, Cole hates to lose and he is not above resorting to gamesmanship if he
thinks it will give him an advantage.
Then there’s me, a former mid-single digit
player, whose game has been eroded by Father Time and two titanium hips that
cost me considerable distance off the tee.There’s also the undeniable fact that I’ve never met a putt I couldn’t
gag.My trend lines are not headed
in the right direction.
In the early years, when my father was alive
and still playing golf, we’d go out as a threesome – me, him and
Dan.Dan and I would call our match
the Conrad Cup. We had some hard-fought matches, often punctuated with
trash-talking and frequent cases of lock-jaw when one of us was facing a two-footer
that meant something.
Eventually, my father turned 90 and put away
his clubs for good.But that was
about the time Cole married into the family, launching a whole new competitive
era of the Conrad Cup. In
fact, the last few years of the Conrad Cup have been the best.We found a new and better golf course to
host the Cup, and we all enjoy each other’s company.Besides, what could be more fun (or agonizing
for the loser) than a hole-by-hole review of the day’s Cup doings over dinner with
the entire family.
For a stretch of three or four years, Dan
dropped out of the Cup.He couldn’t
take the time away from work to make the trip, but he was also having knee
issues that prevented him from playing much golf at all.Then it was just Cole and me, mano a mano, for the Cup.
We all have our favorite matches and memories
from the Cup.If Dan or Cole want
to boast of their victories, they can get their own blog.Personally, my favorite Cup memory is
from 2008, when it was just me and Cole.We both were on top of our games the whole week, back in the days when
we both were shooting in the mid- to high-70s.
Anyway, that year, the Cup came down to the
final round, the final hole – a big, beefy 566-yard par 5, a classic cape
hole design, with a tee shot that is about an 180-yard carry over a lake, into
a banked fairway that turns left and wraps around the lake.It’s a three-shot par 5 for sure, and
the third shot is over the lake again, into a peninsula green that is buttressed
and surrounded by heavy planking, like the island green 17th at TPC Sawgrass.
With the Cup on the line, Cole and I both had
knots in the pits of our stomachs as we stepped to the tee.Naturally, the previous 71 holes of very
good play by both of us went straight out the window.Trying to bite off too much of the dogleg,
we both hit our tee shots into the lake.We reloaded and found the fairway
on our second tee balls.But the
our horrors were only beginning.
Lying three, I pulled my 4th shot
into the lake, giving Cole just the opening he needed.Too bad for him that he stone-cold
topped his 4th into the lake.
By then, our grand finale hole was becoming a
comedy of errors, as we both wilted under the pressure.Going for broke, we each hit
another ball in the lake, then Cole hit one more in for good measure.That’s when I thought he was going to
throw himself into the lake.
Now, it was on me.Lying eight in the fairway, with a
9-iron in my hand, I took one last look at the flag and pulled the trigger.As soon as I swung, I knew I hadn’t
gotten all of it.
"Go, ball, gooo" I yelled.
The ball landed on the planking fronting the
green, bounced straight up into the air like it had hit a cart path, then came
to rest 18 inches from the hole.
I laughed.Cole howled.
I won the hole, and therefore the Conrad Cup,
with a 10.
As a reminder of that most satisfying of
victories, stuck in the corner of the mirror over my dresser is a dollar bill
that Cole gave me that day, with the inscription:THIS
IS THE EXACT WIDTH OF THE BOARD THAT SAVED YOUR ASS!!!
In all the years, the Conrad Cup has been
cancelled only once.That was last
year, when Dan couldn’t make it to the beach and I was in the hospital undergoing
hip replacement surgery.It rained
most of the week, anyway.
So, as you can imagine, we are all excited
about this year’s Cup, which will be contested next week.It promises to be doozy.Dan will be back this year.His knee is apparently better, and he is
back to playing plenty of golf.Plus, he recently retired his set of 25-year-old Titleist irons in favor
of a brand new set of Mizunos.
The pre-Cup trash-talking, posturing and
excuse-making has already begun, mostly in a series of emails between me and
Cole.Because I now clank when I walk, I am
trying to negotiate a stroke or two a side, or maybe special dispensation to play
from the Senior tees.Heck, I might
even create a Senior Division and declare myself the winner.
Cole is claiming his game is rusty because he
has only played five rounds since November, owing to some cockamamie problem
with his elbow. But he says
he’s not worried, because he’s got a plan.He’s threatened to steer the conversation toward politics, which he
knows will get my more liberal blood boiling.
"You won’t make it past the turn," Cole wrote
in an email, no doubt cackling as he typed."That’s the secret weapon."
I told him that was cheating, like winning a bass
fishing tournament with illegal bait.