June 14, 1992

THE name comes from "General Purpose Vehicle," shortened to "GP" and then to "jeep." Designed for the Army in World War II, it caught on with civilians after the war. No one ever polished a Jeep. You bought it as Army surplus and left itout to rust. But now Jeeps are showing up in places Sergeant Bilko never went: the mall, the suburban train station, the parking lot at the beach.

If Fred Couples wins the 92d United States Open, which begins Thursday at Pebble Beach in California, he will be be completing one of the greatest sustained 12 months of golf in the last 30 years: He would have two major championships, seven North American victories over all, and a run of top-six finishes equal to the most consistent years of Palmer, Nicklaus, Miller and Watson. But no matter what happens at Pebble, Couples, like every significant player, has already contributed the identifying emblem of his swing, a hitting style that will be remembered as raw, electrifying and elegant all at the same time.

Early in "Rising Sun," Michael Crichton's bestselling suspense novel, a Los Angeles police detective is dumbfounded to learn that the Japanese doorman who stands in front of an otherwise ordinary middle-income apartment building is a member of the yakuza, the Japanese mafia. "You must understand," says the detective's older, more worldly partner, a font of wisdom about all things Japanese. "There is a shadow world here -- in Los Angeles, in Honolulu, in New York. Most of the time you're never aware of it. We live in our regular American world, walking our American streets, and we never notice that right alongside our world is a second world . . . a shadow world, available only to the Japanese."

Every day from 4 P.M. to midnight, New York's worst nightmares are beamed to millions of viewers. From a teen-ager charged with trying to murder the wife of her lover to subway slashers to youths shot while using a squirt gun, television news is often sustained by a daily menu of crime and grief.

MAGIC JOHNSON had better get home quick and say hello to his wife and his baby boy, and start training seriously. This may not be any emotional cameo appearance for Magic at the 1992 Summer Games. He may be asked to play major minutes for the United States if Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen and Clyde Drexler suffer from chronic hoop fatigue syndrome. And why wouldn't they? No matter what they do today, all three Olympians are going to be back in Oregon in exactly two weeks, playing Cuba, a band of desperados fighting for an Olympic berth and the continuance of three training meals a day outside their impoverished island.