Sports Fact and Book Rec of the Day 02/05/2008

2/5/1995:
Peter Jacobsen captures his first PGA tournament in five years with a bogey-free final-round 65 to win the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. Jacobsen's 17-under-par 271 for the four rounds over the scenic but treacherous coastal layout breaks Tom Watson's 1977 course record of 15 under (273). He starts his final round with a flourish, birdieing the first three holes to gain a working margin, which he never relinquishes. David Duval finishes second, two strokes behind, while Kenny Perry and Davis Love III tie for third.

Birthdays:
Hank Aaron b. 1934
Roger Staubach b. 1942
Craig Morton b. 1943
Darrell Waltrip b. 1949
Roberto Alomar b. 1968

1976:
At the Winter Olympic Games in Innsbruck, Austria, Bill Koch of Vermont became the first American ever to win an Olympic cross-country skiing medal when he won the silver medal for a second-place finish in the 30-kilometer race.

"Koch, moving by means of a lunging series of explosions, driving all-out over the top of each hill, twisting through turns in a muscular blur, gone before the snow his poles have uprooted returns to the earth, is a vision of compulsion." -Kenny Moore, February 6, 1984

THE GLORY THAT WAS SPARTA

“A kind of heroic saga, drenched in the gore of battle and the dust of Spartan discipline.”—The New York Times

In 480 B.C.E., 300 Spartans held the narrow pass at Thermopylae long enough to give the rest of Greece time to prepare a defense against the invasion of two million Persians under the leadership of King Xerxes. Steven Pressfield has written an ambitious narrative about the band of Spartan warriors. He conveys with compelling realism the gritty horror of the ancient battlefield, as well as the relations among the Spartans and their sacrifice at one of the most momentous battles of Western civilization.

GATES OF FIRE: AN EPIC NOVEL OF THE BATTLE OF THERMOPYLAE, by Steven Pressfield (Bantam Books, 1999)