Sport: One for the 19th

There is nothing more humiliating than to step up to a golf ball, plant your feet (closed stance), set your hands (interlocking grip), wiggle your hips (pros call it "waggle"), swing mightily, and miss. When it happens to a pro athlete—ha! —there's one for the 19th hole.

In Miami Beach it happened to Heavyweight Champion Sonny Liston. "Get this!" he yelled to a photographer. Whoosh! He whiffed. Ouch! He wrenched his left knee. That was more than a month ago. But last week Listen's knee still hurt, so much that he limped right out of his return bout with Floyd Patterson.

Still, it was more honorable than eating his way out. While he was supposed to be training. Sonny was clumping around Miami Beach nightspots. Estimates on his weight ranged all the way up to 245 lbs., or 30 lbs. over his fighting weight. With Liston facing surgery for a torn meniscus, or cartilage, and out of action for at least six months, the title fight was postponed indefinitely. But only $75,000 worth of tickets had been sold anyway, and nobody seemed to care much.