Couples' Ex-Wife Jailed In Florida

Golfer Fred Couples' polo-playing ex-wife was jailed yesterday after allegedly fleeing a Palm Beach (Fla.) County Sheriff's deputy.

After Deborah Couples was stopped for alleged improper passing, a deputy discovered she was wanted for failing to appear in court on a traffic matter, authorities say.

"I'm going to call the police," Couples, 35, said, as she made a U-turn in her Ford Bronco and headed back to her home in Wellington, sheriff's deputy Carlton Nebergall wrote in an arrest report.

Couples resisted arrest after she came to a stop outside her home, Nebergall wrote.

"No. No. I'm not going to jail," she told the deputy after he requested that she put her hands behind her back.

Couples, who received temporary support payments of $52,000 a month last year during her highly publicized divorce from Fred Couples - a former Seattle resident and a two-time PGA player of the year - was released from the county stockade after meeting $850 bail.

She was charged with failing to appear in court on a charge of driving with a suspended license, resisting arrest without violence, fleeing and eluding a police officer, and driving under a suspended license.

Her attorney, John Christiansen, said his client told him she was injured in the arrest. She also told him she thought all issues relating to her driving problems had been settled, Christiansen said.

MR. MUSCLE

Linebacker Lawrence Taylor of the New York Giants recently

retired after one of the most illustrious careers in pro football.

Tim Irwin, a Minnesota Viking offensive lineman, remembers standing in line behind Taylor at the NFL scouting combine in 1981. They were waiting to be tested on a machine that measures leg strength.

"He was so strong that he just broke the machine," Irwin told Jim Thomas of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "I couldn't believe it."

BIG JERKO?

When Mike Ditka recently showed interest in the coaching job with the Atlanta Falcons - and was spurned - it did not escape Jay Mariotti of the Chicago Sun Times.

"Why in the name of a heart palpitation would Ditka want to leave what he has now?" Mariotti asked. "If Atlanta hired him, he would have to deal with the two-sport headache known as Deion Sanders, the moods of Andre Rison. He'd have to deal with Bobby Hebert, who has a gun arm but makes Jim Harbaugh look like a Mensa achiever."

HELMETS GALORE

Dale Jarrett, who drives stock cars for Joe Gibbs, former Washington Redskins coach, wears his helmet in the colors of a different NFL team for each NASCAR race. Asked about the cost of repainting the helmet, Jarrett said, "They're not repainted. We have 29 different helmets, each with a radio setup."

The cost: $450 per helmet.

Why 29 helmets, when there are only 28 teams in the NFL? The racing team, which makes its home in Charlotte, N.C., apparently has included the hometown expansion club, the Carolina Panthers, which won't begin play until 1995.

THEY SAID IT

-- Rick Schwartz, a Southern California radio voice: "If the Dallas Cowboys are America's team, then the Buffalo Bills are America's in-laws." Compiled by Chuck Ashmun, Seattle Times