Making Noise on a 'Quiet' Weekend

This is supposed to be a quiet time of year in sports. Things are usually so dull that a one-day holdout from an NFL training camp by a first-round draft pick passes for news.

Actually, those one-day holdouts and the seemingly never-ending Brett Favre soap opera did still pass for news last week, but those paying attention to those non-stories missed quite a bit.

They missed the first real comeback of Michael Phelps's remarkable career; Phelps bouncing back after being beaten soundly in the 200-meter freestyle at the World Championships in Rome to set world records in both the 100- and 200-meter butterfly -- beating his self-declared nemesis Milorad Cavic in the finals of the 100. They also missed Phelps showing some real emotion -- anger even -- after he had come from behind to dust Cavic. This came after Cavic had spent most of the week claiming a faulty timing mechanism -- and not Phelps -- had beaten him in the 100 fly in Beijing.

Of course, Phelps and Cavic were only part of the subplot in Rome. The biggest story centered on the controversial polyurethane suits worn by many swimmers, including Cavic and Paul Biedermann, the German who easily beat Phelps in the 200 freestyle and obliterated his world record in the event.

Biedermann readily admitted the suit was worth at least a 1 1/2 seconds (more than his margin of victory over Phelps) but, like other swimmers, wasn't about to stop wearing it until someone told him he had to. Cavic jokingly offered to buy Phelps one of the suits before their race because Phelps had to wear his now-outdated Speedo suit because that company has not yet come up with a polyurethane suit.

Fortunately for Phelps and Speedo, that apparently won't be necessary. In much the same way that the U.S. Golf Association and the R&A hemmed and hawed over new technology in golf years ago, FINA, the international swim federation, has done the same with the new suits.

In both cases, stalling was a business decision: The golf equipment companies had millions of dollars invested in their new clubs and the governing bodies didn't want to just rule them illegal and, in all likelihood, face a wave of lawsuits. The same was true here. At one point FINA said the suits would be banned Jan. 1. Then it backed off to later in 2010. When that happened, Bob Bowman, Phelps's coach, went ballistic and said Phelps wouldn't swim internationally again until the suits were banned.

Guess what happened next? FINA decided to move the ban back up to Jan. 1. There are two athletes in the world bigger than their sports: Phelps and Tiger Woods. Even in his "slow" suit Phelps still dominated both butterfly events and was on three winning U.S. relays. His freestyle, with which he has been experimenting since his return from a six-month training break, showed signs that it needs some work. His butterfly wasn't merely as good as it has ever been, it was better.

Of course, if you weren't into swimming you could have spent the weekend watching Woods win yet another tournament. The only suspense during the final round of the Buick Open was whether someone from CBS would stop dancing around the fact that the tournament is going out of business after 51 ears and actually say it. Instead, David Feherty was left to say, "Whatever happens, these fans have been great," and Bill Macatee made references to "all the memories we have of this place."

Clearly the PGA Tour had given orders that the final round of the final Buick was not to be sullied with talk about General Motors being forced to end its sponsorship of the event, which dates to 1958.

Having Woods, a longtime Buick employee to the tune of at least $7 million a year until Buick had to cancel that deal a few months ago, certainly made the tournament more glamorous and no doubt boosted the TV ratings. It did not, however, make for a suspenseful finish. Woods shot 63-65 in the second and third rounds to take the lead and no one in the otherwise weak field made any kind of move on him Sunday. He won by three, looking so overconfident that he attempted to pull off an impossible shot from behind a tree on the 13th hole and found water. It didn't matter. He still parred the hole and cruised to his 69th PGA Tour win.