IT TOOK 17 days to get there, but no one who watched the denouement of the Masters this month will be surprised to know that the most famous golf shot of this year has already become an advertisement. It started running on the Golf Channel in the United States on Wednesday. The star is Tiger Woods; the setting, the 16th green; and the brand, who else but Nike.

You cannot buy publicity the likes of which Woods provided for Nike with his chip on the 16th. Viewers may remember the ball rolling towards the hole and that when it turned to its momentary rest on the edge of the cup before plopping in, it brought into frame its slightly askew, winking-at-the-camera, great big Nike swoosh. Furthermore this was the new Nike One Platinum ball, which Woods has been playing all season. It goes on sale next week and a huge marketing campaign had been planned.

Watching the shot from his sofa in Portland, Oregon, was Chris Mike, Nike Golf’s marketing director, who reacted with such overexuberance that his two children left the sitting-room in terror. “As soon as the shot went in,” he told Magic Sponge, “I called our advertising company and started discussing ideas as to how to use this.”

From that minute, Nike had a team working on the new campaign. Which raises the question: why did it take so long to surface? The answer: because three rights-holders had to be negotiated — the Augusta National, which owns the TV footage, CBS, the broadcaster that owns the audio to the TV footage, and Vern Lundquist, the CBS commentator, who owns the intellectual rights to his commentary: “Have you ever seen anything like that in your life?”

The Augusta National probably drove the hardest bargain. The club is infamously protective of its image and likes to turn a nose up to commercial exploitation, although when it is Nike and Woods, who would not just sit back and name a price? Before punters can purchase them, Nike has sold out its first 100,000 balls.

The ad is simple: the chip shot interspersed with a series of title cards. The penultimate card reads: “We gave you (Woods) a ball with more control”, the ball then stops on the edge of the hole, followed by a final card: “And you didn’t centre the logo”.

A good week for:

1. Phil Daly, the Leeds Tykes’ programme editor, who pulled the wool over the eyes of Phil Davies, the Leeds director of rugby. Davies was anxious that the Tykes’ Powergen Cup triumph a fortnight ago did not deflect from the task, on Tuesday, of beating Harlequins to help to avoid relegation. There was, he decreed, to be no parading of the cup and no big cup-glory features in the programme. Daly, however, went ahead with a 64-page "Cup-winners souvenir edition" and prepared 50 separate cup-free editions of the programme for the dressing-rooms. Only after the game did Davies find out. And Leeds won.

2. The players of Odense, the Danish football club, who, after a run of poor results, were joined at training by a stripper, paid for by fans who felt they needed some light relief.

3. The Batmobile, which has been signed up to work as the pace car for a speedway race in Michigan.

A bad week for:

Shaquille O’Neal, who is being reminded of a promise to make down payments on sports cars for his Miami Heat team-mates if they win the NBA. Miami won all three games this week and are on a six-game winning streak.

Check your bookshelf for Britcher

DUST OFF THE bookshelves: the value of aged cricket tomes has become the subject of what is believed to be a City-led price explosion. Christie’s, the auctioneer, has just had the record smashed for a cricket book: "A complete list of all the grand matches of cricket that have been played in the years 1804 and 1805", published in 1806, compiled by Samuel Britcher, who was a scorer. The price was £98,100; the previous record was £20,000. With catchy titles such as this, it is hardly surprising that Britcher’s other similarly named works went for £90,000 (covering 1795), £45,600 (1796) and £28,800 (1802). MCC’s chief librarian was sent along for the auction, but he could not compete.

The seller — rather pleased, we guess — owns a further five of Britcher’s works. There are 15 in all, which means that a further six are sitting on bookshelves elsewhere.

BOA seeking contact with Awol athletes

MISSING IN ACTION: Zola Budd-Pieterse, Eddie Edwards, Diane Modahl and Derek Redmond. To celebrate its centenary year, the British Olympic Association (BOA) is organising the largest yet reunion of British Olympians, at the Royal Festival Hall in London on May 21, and about 1,000 Olympians have apparently vanished, including the four named above. Athletes and sailors, it seems, have been the most prone to going Awol.

If any readers have spotted a missing Olympian, encourage them to phone the BOA’s missing-persons hotline: 020-8871 2677, extension 207.