Ben Trefny

Billy Casper's new book “The Big Three and Me” is about golfing in the time of Gary Player, Arnold Palmer, and Jack Nicklaus. Casper won  51 PGA tournaments altogether, including the Masters and another US Open. He’s now in the World Golf Hall of Fame. Heady stuff for a kid who grew up poor and moved from place to place with parents who weren’t around much to take care of him. But Billy Casper found the game of golf, and in the process he found a gift.

Golf’s national championship has come to San Francisco. Right now, the game’s greatest players are teeing up at the Olympic Club, where they’ll compete in the US Open in two days time. It’s a true celebration of the game – not so much because of the stars who come out, but because of the workaday golfers who have the chance to take the same stage, like Todd Fischer. Until 2000, the golf instructor from Pleasanton had never played in the US Open.

“As a golfer, everybody’s dream, probably, is to play in the US Open once,” says Fischer.

(Sac Bee) // Support for the tobacco tax, Prop 29, is slowly going up in smoke – thanks in part to $38 million invested in advertising by tobacco companies R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris...

The San Francisco Writers’ Grotto is not a grotto, really. A grotto is a cave … or, something like a cave. This is just a floor in a nondescript office building: 31 offices surrounding a conference room, where a few dozen people can sit somewhat comfortably. From the hallways, each office door looks about the same. What makes this place special, though, is what’s behind each door.

KALW's Ben Trefny spoke with members of the SF Writers' Grotto for a recent story. Listen to full interviews with the writers below.