Compiled by Steve Fox
Washingtonpost.com Staff

Shirley Povich was covering golf when segregation within the sport made the possibility of the Tiger Woods phenomenon seem as unlikely as multi-million dollar salaries. He was also present at one of the most tragic events in sports history — the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. Povich was one of the few journalists able to get inside the Olympic Village and was an eyewitness to the terrorist incident. What dismayed Povich was the cavalier attitude of other athletes as they blared rock music from their transistor radios.

He also had the good fortune to witness Ben Hogan's perfectionist approach to golf and Ken Venturi's gutsy performance in the 1964 U.S. Open at Bethesda's Congressional Country Club.

• The Sam Snead Classic? Why, the Man's a Classic
  Sept. 17, 1990
  Slammin' Sammy Snead played in an era, Povich wrote, when players lived to "become icons of the links, clothed in golf's history and constituting a roll call of men renowned for their wondrous deeds with the instruments of the game."

• 1972: The Echo of Shots That Rang Through the Dawn
  July 9, 1992
  As the Barcelona Summer Olympics approached in 1992, Povich revisited the horror of the 1972 Olympics in Munich. A team of "eight Arab murderers" would forever change the concept of brotherhood and the Olympics, and Povich was there to see it all.

• Berlin, 1936: At the Olympics, Achievements of the Brave in a Year of Cowardice
  July 6, 1996
  A show at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1996 portraying the Nazi influence at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin prompted Povich to revisit the behavior of U.S. Olympic officials who kicked their only two Jewish athletes off the 4x100-meter relay team.

• The 1964 U.S. Open: Victory in the Heat of Battle
  June 11, 1997
  When the U.S. Open returned to Congressional Country Club in 1997, Povich revisited the circumstances surrounding the previous Open at the course. That was 1964, when the temperature on the course hovered around 100 degrees and Ken Venturi pulled out the victory despite suffering from heat exhaustion.

• A Master Mind Obsessed With Perfection
  July 26, 1997
  When golfer Ben Hogan passed away at the age of 84, Povich recalled the scientific approach Hogan brought to the game and his incredible comeback from a car accident in which he suffered a double fracture of the pelvis, broken collarbone, left ankle and right rib.