Boyle sprang another giant surprise and picked seven teenage

Boyle sprang another giant surprise and picked seven teenage athletes for the supreme honor of igniting the Olympic cauldron. Together, they touched flaming torches to trumpetlike tubes that spread into a ring of fire.

The flames rose and joined elegantly together to form the cauldron. Fireworks erupted over the stadium to music from Pink Floyd. And with a singalong of "Hey Jude," Beatle Paul McCartney closed a show that ran 45 minutes beyond its scheduled three hours.

Organizers said the cauldron would be moved Sunday night to the corner of the stadium where a giant bell tolled during the show. 

Forking over a hundred grand apiece to select players

Lamented one middle-tier tournament director, who feels as though the firing spitwads against Justice's billion-dollar battleship: "We don't have the resources to throw another $1 million into the budget to buy players. It just doesn't fit our tournament model ... It's not a fair fight."

It's all the latest rage, really. In essence, select tournaments have become evermore clever and resourceful in finding ways to attract top players while skirting, albeit barely, the appearance-fee regulations. For the sake of propriety, let's call them inducements. Two of the tour's deep-pocketed sponsors, Zurich and Royal Bank of Canada, over the past 2-3 years launched what have become known as ambassador programs, wherein a handful of notable players have been signed to endorsement deals.

Forking over a hundred grand apiece to select players isn't against the rules, as long as the lone requirement in the contract agreement isn't to merely show up and play. That would connote an appearance fee, and as most fans know, they are verboten in the States, although not on other global tours.