In this article: Birthdays Last week's Who's News This week's bonus: Patricia Heaton

"Fluff" (with Tiger at left) isn't talking, but golf insiders figure the split had to do with Tiger's "sophomore slump." Dad Earl says Tiger simply "outgrew Fluff." The 51-year-old caddie, a Grateful Dead fan who made $1,000 a week and 10% of Woods' winnings, now carries the bag for Jim Furyk, 29. At Tiger's side now: Steve Williams, who once caddied for Greg Norman.

Animated Italian filmmaker Roberto Benigni made the Oscars worth watching. Will America see more of him now that he's won such acclaim for Life Is Beautiful? We have the same last name, so I try to follow his career.
Jim Benigni, Royal Oak, Mich.

We'll see a bit more of him: His 1994 comedy The Monster will be rereleased. And his name comes up for anything Jim Carrey rejects. But not even Italians have seen much of Benigni, 46, since the Oscars. With wife Nicoletta Braschi, he took a vacation before beginning to write another film. The man Steven Spielberg calls the "Italian Furby" was comical even as a boy in Tuscany. A creative prodigy, he probably stood on chairs even then.

Unlike George Stephanopoulos, Dee Dee Myers, President Clinton's first press secretary, hasn't come out with a tell-all book. What is she doing?
Bill True, Utica, N.Y.

She doesn't rule out a book, but for now she's a talking head, Vanity Fair contributor and popular lecturer. Married since '97 to New York Times writer Todd Purdum, Myers, 37, tells us they want a family. "If I could squeeze out a kid or two between now and whenever it's too late, that would be great." Of Clinton, she says: "It wasn't that I was unfamiliar with his flaws, but I had higher hopes." He never made advances to her, she says, but "he's a big flirt. He flirts with men, women, pets and anybody he comes across."

I'd buy anything, even a pickup truck, from the handsome guy in those clever Ford commercials. Why does he look so familiar to me?
Siobhan McDonagh, Petaluma, Calif.

He's John Corbett, 37, a West Virginia-born ex- steelworker who took up acting only after a job injury sidelined him. You know him as the mellow, Jung-quoting D.J. from the early-'90s TV hit Northern Exposure. He's also in Sci-Fi Channel reruns of The Visitor, a failed Fox series about aliens.

Frank McCourt's Pulitzer-winning Angela's Ashes touched me so much. I'm dying to know what happened to everyone. Did McCourt marry? Did his mother leave Ireland for America?
Kim Cobb, Panora, Iowa

His mother, Angela, to be played onscreen by Emily Watson, arrived for a visit and stayed 20 years, until her death. McCourt married and has a daughter and two grandkids. All the details are in his sequel, 'Tis, due this fall just before Angela's Ashes hits theaters. "There are some laugh-out-loud things in it," says Watson, 32. "But it's a sad story. I don't know why I get these tragic parts. I have a wonderfully pathological sense of humor waiting to be tapped."

It may not be edgy or hip, but Everybody Loves Raymond is the best show on TV. And Patricia Heaton, who plays Ray Romano's wife, is a key reason. How does her real life compare with the show?
Luis G. Gutierrez, El Paso, TX.

Offscreen, TV's funniest mom is balancing work and home like the rest of us. As the mother of four boys, newborn to age 5 1/2, she makes family her priority - which gets tougher as Heaton, 41, gets more popular. Ask why TV moms are so often collected while husbands are bumblers and she laughs. "Because it's true? I'm going to sound sexist, but men are very competent in their workplaces. Women are better at running households and juggling kids' schedules," she tells us. "Sitcoms usually show men at home, which to them is a foreign environment."

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BIRTHDAYS

June 13: Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen 13; Ethan Embry, 21; Ally Sheedy, 37; Tim Allen, 46.
June 14: Steffi Graf, 30; Yasmine Bleeth, 31.
June 15: Ice Cube, 30; Courteney Cox, 35; Helen Hunt, 35.
June 16: Joyce Carol Oates, 61.
June 17: Jason Patric, 33; Greg Kinnear, 36; Barry Manilow, 53.
June 18: Isabella Rossellini, 47; Paul McCartney, 57.
June 19: Nate Morris, 28; Paula Abdul, 37.