Tom Talks

Kicker Rhys Lloyd adjusting just fine

Some of the Carolina Panthers play table tennis after lunch. It’s not ping-pong the way they do it. They have talent.

   “We’ve started rankings,” says kicker Rhys Lloyd. “Matt Moore’s No. 1, I’m No. 2. Lester (Ricard, a quarterback) says he’s No. 3.”

   But Lloyd and Moore have yet to make it official.

   What is official is that

Moore

is No. 1.

   “He’s beaten me twice and I’ve beaten him a lot,”

Moore

says.

   Lloyd is an athlete, an excellent golfer and soccer player. He grew up in

England

and loves soccer. Football, our football, attracted little interest there.

   “There might be a five-minute episode on the London Monarchs,” says Lloyd. “It would be, ‘Oh, really.’ That’s it. We’d hear about the all-American teams like the Cowboys, the Dolphins, the 49ers.”

    Lloyd has one of the most powerful legs I’ve seen. The impact sounds different when he strikes the ball. In soccer, the idea was to keep the ball low, below head level. In football, he had to adjust to height, to getting the ball up quickly.

   That was his only adjustment. Being part of a team here is like being part of a soccer team there.

   “It’s something very special,” Lloyd, 26, says. “Charlotte's a great city and N.C. is a great state, and I can sit here with my teammates and talk to somebody making the league minimum or with a millionaire. It’s all the same.”

   He regularly checks Sky Sports and the Internet for soccer news.

   Are you saying the Charlotte Observer’s soccer coverage is not sufficient?

   Lloyd laughs.

   “A few scores in the corner and then back to the regular stuff,” he says.

   Lloyd has good taste in literature. I’m not a soccer fan. But I read a great novel, life entwined with soccer, by Nick Hornby (“High Fidelity”) called “Fever Pitch.”

   “First book I read cover to cover,” says Lloyd.

Spurrier on SEC, Clemson, Uncle Bob ...

I spent an hour with South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier Monday morning. With some coaches, there’s a script. Spurrier has no script.

He jumps from subject to subject, talking about getting closer to being able to compete in the SEC with Florida, Georgia and Tennessee, talking about the old days at Florida, talking about Clemson, about the garnet steam through which players will run onto the field at Williams-Brice Stadium this season and about his Uncle Bob.

Uncle Bob lives in Charlotte and Spurrier says I should call him. I tell him I will and Spurrier gives me Uncle Bob’s telephone number. Hi, Uncle Bob.

Out Spurrier’s window is the unlined field at Williams-Brice, the grass thick, pieces of the stadium newly painted. On his desk is an N.C. State media guide. The Gamecocks open the season at home against the Wolfpack. In the bookcase behind Spurrier are footballs commemorating victories past. Two jump out, and both come from his days as head coach at Duke. They are: Duke 21, Clemson 17, and Duke 41, UNC 0. It’s odd to see the higher number next to Duke and the lower number next to Duke’s opponent.

On the dry erase board to the right of his desk is a play that his son, Steve Jr., the receivers coach at South Carolina, diagrammed. He borrowed it from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Spurrier is a friend of Tampa Bay coach Jon Gruden.

Oh, about Clemson, Spurrier says: “Well, I wish one of the sportswriters when they start picking everybody’s record this year would write how they’d do if Clemson played South Carolina’s schedule and South Carolina played Clemson’s schedule. They don’t do that.”

In Tuesday’s Charlotte Observer, I suspect that one sportswriter will.

I ask Spurrier what he’d write if he were me.

“Hope is still alive at the University of South Carolina,” he says. 

Fans close to players at training camp

Training camp is one of the best deals in sports.  I watched the fans at

Carolina

’s practice Sunday afternoon, some leaning against a fence, some in the coveted shade of a big tree. They brought coolers and blankets and pens and paper and grandfathers and grandmothers and children.

   It feels like a high school football game. Yet there was one of the sport’s top receivers, Steve Smith, stopping the ball with his left hand and commanding it to remain in the air until he can wrap his right hand around it.

   The fans, who get in free, loved it. They loved the runs DeAngelo Williams made, finding room on the left side and seizing it and then, on the next play, changing directions and losing about 10 defenders.

   They loved the catch Muhsin Muhammad made along the left sideline and the moves of rookie Jonathan Stewart and the Jason Baker punt that has yet to land. This crowd came to cheer. Two kids screamed their support every time Ryne Robinson caught one of Baker’s punts.

   Sunday afternoon was a celebration of football. It was an opportunity to get so close to the Panthers the fans felt as if they knew them.

   No matter where they sit in Bank of America Stadium, they won’t get as close all season.

Don't mess with these Panthers pranksters

    In Saturday's newspaper I wrote about the one that couldn't go to camp, Mike Rucker, instead of the ones who did. Rucker, who retired in April, talked about how much he missed his teammates. He said he missed the jokes and the practical jokes and said the three players you don't mess with are running back Nick Goings, quarterback Jake Delhomme and fullback Brad Hoover.

   Hoover says Rucker is right.

   "We never instigate it," says Hoover. "But we don't stop."

   One of Rucker's tricks is to take a packet of ammonia and slip it beneath the nose of a teammate snoozing on the massage table.

 

   Here's why you don't mess with Hoover: He'll take several packets, put them in a box, perforate the box and slip the whole thing into the chamber in which the players stick their head. The victim doesn't so much wake up instantly as he does go from zero to 60.

On Day 1, rookie Brinkley was a media darling

Saturday was Day One of the Casper Brinkley Era. Brinkley, a rookie defensive end, played at South Carolina, and since Spartanburg was full of S.C. media, Brinkley was a star. Five writers or broadcasters approached him for an interview and then there were 10, and because we move in packs others joined the scrum.

   Many of the late arrivals probably didn't know who Brinkley was. But they knew he was popular. He could have been Jonathan Stewart. It was the first day of camp and the players showed up for interviews in street clothes. Nobody had a number and nobody knew what the new guys looked like.

   Hey, don't accuse us of pack journalism. Don't accuse me, anyway. I was waiting for a bigger name -- Tyler Brayton.

   But I did stand on the periphery of the Brinkley interview. That was as close as I could get. Around him were 23 professional journalists.

Nadal, Federer match classic

The last time I was enthralled with tennis John McEnroe held a racquet instead of a microphone. Back then there were several players to like and intensely dislike, on and off court drama and more arguments than a pick-up basketball game at the Dowd YMCA. The tennis was great, too.

   I don’t follow the sport the way I once did. But I happened to turn on the

Wimbledon

men’s final. The quality of the work, and the drama, were mesmerizing.

   I didn’t watch all of it. I kind of forgot about it, to be honest with you. But I caught it at a restaurant late Sunday morning and again mid and late Sunday afternoon. It was like the NFL in that it lasted all day. But it did not include Chris Berman and there was no fantasy angle or home team.

   Before, between and after rain delays, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal played stunning tennis. Nadal’s quickness and athleticism appeared not at all muted as they played into the night.

   I was pulling for Federer, the aging veteran. But I can’t complain. Although he almost came back from a two-set deficit, young Nadal earned the five-set victory.

   I don’t know if tennis can regain its former glory. Some sports fade, as fans of boxing and horse racing will attest. But the next time Federer and Nadal play, I suspect I’ll watch from the start.

Baron Davis will be highly sought

Baron Davis is one of the NBA’s elite point guards, a powerful guy who makes passes that many guards don’t see.

Davis, 29, opted out of his contract with Golden State Tuesday, and the interest in his services will be considerable from the teams that are able to afford him.

When I think of Davis, it’s not as a Warrior or even as a Charlotte Hornet. It’s as a New Orleans Hornet.

I was in New Orleans for a story during the 2004-05 season and was waiting at courtside after a game. The Hornets had just played the New York Knicks.

Davis did not play. He was injured.

After the court had emptied, he came onto it, wearing sweats. After he loosened up, he began to get serious. He hit long shots, went to the hoop and dropped a beautiful hesitation move on an invisible defender. He was better than anybody on either team had been that night.

   It was the best workout I have ever seen from a player who was too hurt to help his teammates. They could have used him. The Hornets were terrible at the time. This was before Chris Paul.

   

Davis didn’t play because he didn’t want to play. He never did play another game for New Orleans. He wanted out and got his way. The Hornets traded him to team in his home state, Golden State.

   The trip west restored him. When he landed, he was healthy enough to play for the Warriors.