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Is golf world ready for a Knievel?
Published: 4/16/2012 10:16 AM
Last Modified: 4/16/2012 10:16 AM

I’ve got a new favorite golfer.

The Golf Channel reported that one of Evel Knievel’s sons (Kelly, age 51) will attempt to qualify for the U.S. Open.

Evel Knievel, in case you were never introduced to the 70s, was a motorcycle daredevil who broke nearly every bone in his body while jumping cars, buses and the fountains at Caesar’s Palace. He made an unsuccessful attempt to jump Idaho’s Snake River Canyon in a rocket cycle.

I interviewed Evel in 2005 before he made a guest appearance at Buffalo Run Casino in Miami, Okla. It’s still my favorite interview of all time because: 1, He had no filter and would say anything. 2, He was my first sports idol. The dude seemed like a real-life superhero during his heyday.

When Evel (suffering from diabetes and a lung ailment) died in 2007, former promoter Billy Rundle told this to the Associated Press: “It’s been coming for years, but you just don’t expect it. Superman just doesn’t die, right?”

The Golf Channel reported that Evel was a single-digit handicap golfer and said Kelly carries a handicap index of .6. That means Kelly -- who lost in a playoff in the Southern Nevada Amateur last year -- is a heck of a golfer.

I like Kelly’s chances of hitting a golf ball over the canyon which fronts the 18th green at Patriot Golf Club in Owasso. I also would have liked his dad’s chances of jumping that canyon.



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Tulsa World sports writer Jimmie Tramel is a former class president at Locust Grove High School. He graduated magna cum laude from Northeastern State University with a journalism degree and, while attending college, was sports editor of the Pryor Daily Times. He joined the Tulsa World on Oct. 17, 1989, the same day an earthquake struck the World Series. He is the OSU basketball beat writer and a columnist and feature writer during football season. In 2007, he wrote a book about Oklahoma State football with former Cowboy coach Pat Jones.

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