May 17, 2006 For more information: Frank R. Scatoni 619-807-1887 frank@ventureliterary.com "No Kill Date" Venture Literary Sells Tiger Woods/NCAA Golf Tournament Narrative to Houghton Mifflin On May 17, 2006, Greg Dinkin of Venture Literary sold the North American rights to Neil Hayes and Brian Murphy’s The Match of the Century: The Greatest Player, the Greatest Comeback, and Golf’s Greatest Untold Story to Susan Canavan at Houghton Mifflin. The Match of the Century chronicles the epochal 1995 bid of the Stanford golf team—with Tiger Woods at the helm—to become back-to-back national champions in arguably the greatest tournament in college golf history. Day by day and stroke by stroke, Neil Hayes, author of the critically acclaimed When the Game Stands Tall, and Brian Murphy, the award-winning former golf writer for the San Francisco Chronicle and current sports-radio host and ESPN.com weekly columnist, detail this compelling chapter of golf history. Surprisingly little has been documented of Woods’ two years at Stanford, where Tiger’s steely character was forged and his golf prowess captivated his fellow competitors. The Match of the Century expertly captures the spirit of this exciting time. The Match of the Century resonates more than a decade later not only because of what the participants accomplished then, but what they would go on to accomplish. The societal impact made by Woods, Notah Begay, and Casey Martin of Stanford, as well as Trip Kuehne and Coach Mike Holder of Oklahoma State, would help open country club gates to minorities and the handicapped, change the face of college golf forever, and recall the glory of the game’s more innocent past. Neil Hayes is a sports columnist for the Chicago Sun Times and was recently named one of the nation’s top ten sports columnists by the Associated Press Sports Editors (APSE). He has won numerous awards for enterprise reporting, project reporting, feature writing, and game-story writing from the APSE, California Newspapers Publisher’s Association, and the Pro Football Writer’s Association of America during his eighteen-year writing career. He has appeared as a guest on ESPN numerous times and is a sought-after guest on other national and local radio programs. He has contributed to Sports Illustrated, The Sporting News, MSNBC.com, and numerous other publications and websites. Brian Murphy is the co-host of the highly rated KNBR Morning Show in San Francisco, on the 50,000-watt flagship station of the San Francisco Giants, San Francisco 49ers, and Golden State Warriors, and a weekly columnist for ESPN.com, the sports world’s best and most popular website. As a former staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, he has also covered the San Francisco 49ers, Oakland A’s, and Oakland Raiders for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat and San Francisco Examiner, where he won numerous writing awards, including a first-place award for game-story writing by the Associated Press Sports Editors and two other top-10 finishes. In November 2000, Murphy joined the San Francisco Chronicle as the national golf writer, and held the post until November 2004. In 2004, Murphy won a top-10 Large Newspapers Game Story APSE honor for his story on John Daly’s win at Torrey Pines. Murphy then left newspapers for radio. To learn more about Venture Literary, visit: www.ventureliterary.com. To learn more about Houghton Mifflin, visit: www.hmco.com.