Wooden Is Never Par for the Course

John Wooden has accomplished many rare feats in basketball. He has also accomplished one of the rarest of feats in golf.

Wooden, honored Monday at the Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment Commission’s Golf and Tennis Classic at Riviera Country Club, once had a hole in one and a double eagle -- in the same round.

“It was in the late 1930s,” Wooden said. “I can’t remember the exact year.”

But he can remember everything else -- that he was playing at the Erskine County course in South Bend, Ind., that he achieved the ace on a 174-yard, par-three hole on the front nine, and the double eagle on a 525-yard par-five on the back. He holed out the par-three with a five-iron and the par-five with a brassie two-wood.

Was it luck or skill?

“For anyone to do that, I don’t care who it is, it’s luck,” Wooden said.

And, he said, he never got another hole in one or double eagle. “Never even close,” he said.

Trivia time: Wooden is one of three men in the Basketball Hall of Fame as a player and a coach. Who are the other two?

An amazing save: If there were a Hall of Fame for good Samaritans, a San Diego man would be a shoo-in.

He’s the man who cleaned the bus that had taken the Cincinnati Reds from the airport to their hotel when they visited San Diego last week. He found a wallet belonging to Red closer Danny Graves, and mailed it to Graves’ home in Florida.

But that’s not all.

“The guy kept the cash and exchanged it for travelers’ checks so it wouldn’t get stolen through the mail,” Graves said Tuesday. “It was like $1,400 in cash. He did say, ‘I borrowed $26 to overnight it to you.’

“He sent his name, address and phone number. He said, ‘All I ask for is, could you please sign an autograph for my father.’ He’s going to get a little more than an autograph.

“Good things are going to happen to that guy. It’s just an amazing story.”

One thing is missing: Stratis Strategis was in charge of the Athens Olympic Organizing Committee for a year and a half before quitting in frustration. He tells Bernard Goldberg on HBO’s “Real Sports” that it was impossible to get anything done because of the bureaucracy.

Says Goldberg: “Well, you Greeks invented bureaucracy.”

Strategis: “We did. We invented most everything -- except organization.”

Looking back: On this day in 1973, Secretariat, ridden by Ron Turcotte, rallied from last with a powerful move on the clubhouse turn and won the Preakness by 2 1/2 lengths over Sham.

Trivia answer: Bill Sharman, who was elected as a coach last month and will be enshrined, again, Sept. 10, and New York Knick Coach Lenny Wilkens.

And finally: Comedian Janice Hough, in the San Francisco Chronicle: “Exciting news for LeBron James, Stephon Marbury and Shawn Marion, who will all reportedly be invited to go to Athens. Wait till they hear it’s to help with construction.”

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Larry Stewart can be reached at larry.stewart@latimes.com.