A friend said to me earlier in the day: “That’s the Olympics for you – a series of lines that lead to nothing worth waiting for.” I ignore this advice, of course, because I want to party.

Stephen Smysnuik has been away from his hometown of Vancouver for a few months, but he's back for the Olympics and impressed with how robust and well fed the city looks. It’s all dolled up and handsome, dressed in its finest attire for the Olympics, caked with the finest makeup money can afford. There’s hardly a hobo in sight. The cities veins are in fine shape as well, bleeding streams of red and white.

Stephen Smysnuik headed home to Vancouver for the Olympics and will be supplying us with an insider's look at the goings on in and around the games. As you can see from this collection of pics from the streets of the city as the Olympics opened of Friday, the party has begun.

Alex Kovalev took time out before his Senators faced off against the Toronto Maple Leafs to promote his latest DVD, Off-Ice Training, which shares his strength and conditioning tips. He personally starts his intense fitness regimen a month and a half before his first regular-season game. Have his efforts paid off? His record – a Stanley Cup, an Olympic gold, 400 NHL goals and over 1,000 games played – speaks for itself.

Every year, lists come out about the top courses in the country sparking much debate among golfers. Of course, the only way to really critique the rankings would be to play each course yourself. So why not make it a mission? Take a summer off and travel from coast to coast. We´ve outlined 18-or-so of the countries best public courses.

Blame it on television, if you like – the precious and buttoned-down game that golf has become. (Pricey too, in case you hadn’t noticed.) Blame it on colour television, to be exact, because in ushering out the grainy shadows of old black and white and bringing us instead a bright range of greens, it suddenly put more emphasis on how a golf course looked than on how it played.