RICK REILLY, 45, is in his 19th year as a senior writer for Sports Illustrated. He has been voted National Sportswriter of the Year eight times. He is the author of the weekly "Life of Reilly" column that runs on the last page of SI. It's the first such signed weekly opinion column in the magazine's history. He is also a frequent contributor to Time magazine.

Publishers Weekly called him "an indescribable amalgam of Dave Barry, Jim Murray and Lewis Grizzard, with the timing of Jay Leno and the wit of Johnny Carson."

His current book Who's Your Caddy? (Doubleday), in which he caddies for everyone from Jack Nicklaus to Donald Trump to a $50,000-a-hole gambler, hits bookstores May 6. His last book, The Life of Reilly: The Best of Sports Illustrated's Rick Reilly became a New York Times bestseller.

His first novel, Missing Links, (Doubleday) a comic golf romance, was hailed by the New York Times as "three laughs per page." He also wrote Slo-Mo: My Untrue Story, (Doubleday) a farce on the NBA, is a "romp that could have been written only by someone who has seen the game from the inside," according to the Denver Post.

Reilly has won numerous awards in his 23-year writing career, including the prestigious New York Newspaper Guild's Page One Award for Best Magazine Story. He is the co-author of The Boz, the best-selling autobiography of bad-boy Oklahoma linebacker Brian Bosworth; Gretzky, with hockey superstar Wayne Gretzky of the Los Angeles Kings; I'd Love to but I Have a Game, with NBC announcer Marv Albert, and the The Wit and Wisdom of Charles Barkley. He is co-author of the screenplay Leatherheads, a comic romance centered on the 1927 Duluth Eskimos of the fledgling NFL.

He has written about everything from ice skater Katarina Witt behind the Iron Curtain to actor Jack Nicholson in the front row, from wrestling priests in Mexico City to women caddies in Japan, from playing golf with President Clinton to playing golf with O.J. Simpson and back again. He has four times had the disagreeable task of accompanying the models on the annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. He was once featured in a Miller Lite ad with swimsuit cover girl Rebecca Romijn-Stamos.

Reilly has flown upside down at 600 miles per hour in an F-14, driven a stock car 142 miles per hour, competed against 107 women for a spot in the WNBA, done three innings of play-by-play for the Colorado Rockies, played 108 holes of golf in one day.

Reilly began his career in 1979 taking phoned-in high-school volleyball scores for his hometown Boulder (Colo.) Daily Camera while a sophomore at the University of Colorado, from which he was graduated in 1981. He wrote for two years at the Camera, two more at the Denver Post and two more at the Los Angeles Times before moving to Sports Illustrated in 1985.

Reilly married his Boulder High School sweetheart, Linda Campbell, in 1983. He dabbles in magic, piano, mountain biking, SCUBA, back-alley basketball, skiing and snowboarding. He lives in downtown Denver with his wife, three kids, too many fish, an eel, a rabbit, a bird and an 7 handicap that keeps him from concentrating on anything very important.