Dale Earnhardt Jr. said it will "take a long time" for NASCAR to regain the popularity it had in its heyday. He said, "The growth of our sport to its peak, that took decades. ... You can take that apart overnight. It can be broken easily. Building it up again is going to take that same perseverance." Earnhardt added, "The tracks and the industry want things to get better, they want more fans to be at the racetrack. That's just going to take a long time. It's not going to happen overnight, not going to be next year, not going to be five years from now" (DETROIT FREE PRESS, 8/10).
ON THE CLOCK: In Jacksonville, Garry Smits notes the PGA Tour will "evaluate its current pace of play policy" after a "week of turmoil at The Northern Trust." The Tour will be "using ShotLink technology and evaluating whether to penalize players whose groups are not out of position but still take longer than the rules allow to hit their shots." The first event of the FedExCup Playoffs was "overshadowed by the issue" of pace of play (FLORIDA TIMES-UNION, 8/12).
GOING THE DISTANCE? In Boston, Peter Abraham wrote the Yankees-White Sox "Field of Dreams" game in Iowa next season "seems like a stretch." The setting will "surely be nice, but playing a game to honor a movie more than 31 years after it first came out is not exactly marketing the game to a new audience" (BOSTON GLOBE, 8/11).
