Former Gopher and NCAA wrestling champion Brock Lesnar will throw out the first pitch at the Twins-White Sox game on Monday night, according to a source who requested anonymity.  Lesnar will be a featured participant in the Ultimate Fighting Championship event on Saturday, August 9 at Target Center.  Lesnar, 1-1, will fight Heath Herring, 28-13-1, in a heavyweight match-up.

The event will be the first UFC promotion in the state and over 12,500 tickets have  been sold at an average cost of $225, according to the source.  He also said a news conference promoting the event will be open to the public beginning at 1 p.m. on Thursday, August 7 at the Mall of America Rotunda.

Worry warts and “I told you so” types took note that Wolves’ rookie Kevin Love developed soreness in his right Achilles tendon last week.  Love, whose durability was questioned by some before the NBA draft, didn’t finish the fourth Wolves game in the Las Vegas NBA summer league, nor did he play in the finale Sunday night.

Last weekend was the largest three-game home series attendance for the Twins this year.  The games against Texas drew 101,248 fans, an average of 33,749 fans per game.

When Glen Perkins of the Twins defeated Texas last week he won his third straight game and improved his record to 7-2.  The Minnesota native hasn’t lost since May 30 and is 5-0 with a 3.81 ERA in his last nine starts.   He starts in New York against the Yankees today.  

Left fielder Delmon Young has three or more hits in 12 games this season including four in July.  He’s hitting .381 in his last 10 games with one home run and six RBI.

John Bell Wilson was a student manager for former Gopher basketball coaches John Kundla and Bill Fitch. Kundla is in basketball’s hall of fame in Springfield, Massachusetts for coaching his five world champions with the Minneapolis Lakers.  Wilson thinks Fitch should be in the hall of fame, too.  Fitch coached the 1981 world champion Boston Celtics and the 1986 runner-up Houston Rockets.  He coached five different NBA franchises to the playoffs and is seventh in all-time wins among NBA coaches.

Former Viking wide receiver Ahmad Rashad, who had six seasons here with 50 receptions or more, has to be a candidate for the team’s Ring of Honor recognizing the franchise’s greatest players.  Rashad, who played collegiately at Oregon, was recently inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend.

Former Gopher Dan Coleman told Sports Headliners earlier this week he’s been impressed with Kevin Love, the Timberwolves’ rookie who was chosen fifth in the first round by Memphis in last month’s NBA draft and then traded here.  Coleman and Love are teammates on the Wolves’ summer league team competing in Las Vegas this week.

Love, 6-10, has skills such as ball handling and passing that often are uncommon in bigger players.  Coleman has observed Love’s versatility that also includes rebounding and shooting.   “He’s just got a nice little package.” Coleman said.

The two are power forwards on the summer league team, a collection mostly of players who won’t be on the Wolves’ roster next season.  Love’s audition with the summer league version of the Wolves is to show just what he has and where he must fine tune.  Coleman, not drafted by NBA teams last month, is trying to show he’s deserving of making the Wolves’ roster or another team.

Love has had much more playing time than Coleman in the team’s games this week.  In the opening game Monday night Love led the Wolves in points, 18, and rebounds, 13.   He also had six fouls.  Wednesday night he had 18 points again, plus 17 rebounds.  Last night he came up with 26 points, 15 rebounds.  Three games, three double-doubles.

Coleman, 6-9, didn’t have eye catching stats or dominant games like Love in college who averaged 17.5 points and 10.6 rebounds at UCLA, and threw impressive outlet passes to teammates on a regular basis. Love scored more than 20 points in 11 games and had 23 double-doubles on the season while setting UCLA freshman single-season records for points scored (681) and rebounds (415). But Coleman, who needs to add muscle, is a long 6-9 with quickness and the potential to play professionally some place next fall, perhaps in Europe.  “Yeah, I’ll play somewhere,” he said.

Coleman said he’s also been impressed with center Chris Richard, 6-9, 255, a player the Wolves drafted on the second round from Florida a year ago.  “Chris Richard is playing really well,” Coleman said.  “You don’t really know how big he is until you play him in person. …”

Gary McCord, whose influence with golf includes as a player, TV commentator, author and movie consultant, is concerned about a national economy he describes as a “recession/depression” and its impact on his sport.  McCord, in town to play in the 3M tournament for seniors, told Sports Headliners during an interview earlier this week that golf participation has been declining nationally for four years.

“Basically, golf is too expensive,” he said.  “It takes too much time. …We’ll get a lot of people on the fringes, especially during these economic times, (that) are going to be falling off.  Like everything else, it’s in a decline. …”

The future of the pro tours is a concern, too.  McCord said “we’re really going to find out what’s going on with contracts that haven’t been signed.”  All the weight of a slumping economy on ticket sales, sponsorships, and TV ratings is a challenge to the sports and entertainment industries including golf.

It’s a minus, too, for golf to have Tiger Woods sidelined.  Interest in watching golf on TV, particularly among casual fans, isn’t the same without Woods who won’t play again this year because of knee surgery.

“He’s the best I’ve ever seen,” said McCord who is 60 years old.  He expects Woods to break Jack Nicklaus’s record of 18 majors titles if he stays healthy.

“There’s no question he’ll be good when he comes back,” McCord said.  “No question.  This is going to be quite a hurdle for him and his flow, as he is flowing very well to  overtake Jack.  I would say just a mental thing of waiting out a year and then wondering.  Wondering if his knee is going to be okay.  Wondering if he needs to change the way he goes about swinging a golf club with his left leg. …All the usual questions and the longer he stays out the more angst he’s going to get.”

McCord didn’t have a prediction as to who will win the 3M tournament that runs through Sunday.  How about him?  “I would be very surprised,” he answered. “Very, very surprised.  I haven’t played in four months.”

McCord said he’s heard from other players that the tournament galleries at the 3M Championship are “fantastic.”