New Style on Slopes: Vintage Tendons

Australia’s Lydia Ierodiaconou says she’ll do whatever it takes to keep her Olympic hopes alive, and what it will take may make you cringe: The skier is having a damaged knee ligament replaced with an Achilles’ tendon from a corpse.

“I was totally numb when my surgeon said they could put a dead person’s tendon in my knee,” she told Australia’s Daily Telegraph. “I’m like, ‘You can’t be serious,’ but they say it will allow me to be back in time for the Olympics with a much stronger knee than I would have if they used my own tissue.”

Trivia time: Which golfer holds the record for lowest fourth round during a U.S. Open, and what was his score?

Opposite Larry: How did the Detroit Pistons, who looked as though they could do nothing right in the first two games of the NBA Finals, turn things around to even the series, 2-2, with the San Antonio Spurs?

They made like George Costanza in a famous “Seinfeld” episode, according to Coach Larry Brown, and did the opposite of what they thought they should be doing. “He got the girl and we got the win,” Brown told ESPN after Game 4.

Seinfeld fans will agree, then, that the Pistons have “hand” going into Game 5.

Bottom line: Phil Jackson cited many reasons for his return to the Lakers, but there is only one, says Red Auerbach, 87, who, like Jackson, has nine NBA titles to his credit.

“It’s done for one reason -- the money,” Auerbach told USA’s Jon Saraceno. “Ten million dollars a year? What’s all this ... about ‘Oh, I want to make up with Kobe,’ and ‘I want to go back to the Coast.’ It’s a lot of baloney.

“If the Knicks offered him $12 million, he’d be in New York.”

Picture perfect: The Dodgers and Yankees are playing the Chicago teams this weekend and fans there are amused that the White Sox and Cubs are considered the tougher of the teams.

Writes Phil Rogers of the Chicago Tribune: “There haven’t been many times in history to snap this postcard. Between them, the Yankees and Dodgers have won 32 World Series championships and 57 pennants since 1901. The White Sox and Cubs have played a combined 183 seasons since their last victories in the Series.”

Back to school: South Carolina football Coach Steve Spurrier said it was good to be back among college kids but told Street & Smith magazine he wishes they’d act like adults.

“We’ve had guys steal; we’ve had a few guys involved in pot smoking. We had one guy who broke in his ex-girlfriend’s apartment, got arrested and was kicking and screaming, from what I hear,” Spurrier said.

The good news, he added, is that those players are “finished” and the Gamecocks can move forward. The bad news: “Some of them were pretty good players.”

Trivia answer: Johnny Miller shot a 63 to win the 1973 Open at Oakmont Country Club with a four-round total of five-under 279.

And finally: Chi Chi Rodriguez, asked by Golf Digest magazine about the decision to ban carts on the Champions Tour: “If Franklin Roosevelt can run the country out of a wheelchair, we should be able to use a golf cart.”