Frankly Speaking: 'Golf is the great leveler,? regardless of skill

It's a good thing the Scots didn't have TV in the 1400s or we wouldn't have the Buy.Com Ozarks Open to talk about in this issue.

Not that we'll talk much about it here. Others are more knowledgeable about golf and the tourney than we, and you can check their coverage on page 22 and in golf features throughout this week's section.

We do have to share the following with you, asking your forgiveness in advance.

A young man once started to play a round of golf alone when a very, very old man shuffled up to the tee and asked if he could play along. Not wanting to have his game slowed down, the young man hesitated, but finally, out of courtesy, agreed.

During the game the old man indeed was slow of movement and unable to hit the ball very far, but he was also persistent enough to take his shots rather quickly, so the delays weren't too bad. Then came a hole where the young man, after his tee shot, found his ball lying a few yards out from a very tall pine tree that stood between him and the green. It seemed an impossible lie, and he puzzled over it.

Finally, the old man piped up, "When I was your age, I always hit the ball right over that tree."

The young man brightened, picked the iron he thought would have the right lift, and hit the ball as hard and true as could be. The ball rose beautifully, smacked into the tree about 10 feet from the top and stayed there. "Of course, when I was your age," said the old man, "that tree was 3 feet tall."

Ah, the irony. Irony is, of course, the main ingredient in virtually every golf joke under the sun, ranging from Mark Twain's "Golf is a good walk ruined" to Lee Trevino's "When I'm on a golf course and it begins to rain and lightning, I hold up my one iron, because I know even God can't hit a one iron."

"Golf is the great leveler," says media salesman Jerry Hayes of KTTS radio. "It's a game that continually humbles you because you'll never get good at it. No matter how good you get, you'll still hit a shot that you can't understand."

Hayes, who for decades has sold more media advertising than is comprehensible in radio, television, billboards, print ads, and audio and video production also sheds some light on the virtual marriage between golf and the business world. "Any time you have any camaraderie with your customer, that always gives you a leg up," he says. "Golf takes about a half a day to play, and it's also usually in a nice, peaceful, relaxing setting. You have a lot of time with your customer he's not going to be getting a phone call every two seconds or be interrupted by a waiter or distracted by a lot of surrounding noise. You have a chance to actually make some points about your subject. It's just a much better sales situation."

Hayes cites the integrity of the game as a great bonding factor. "Golf is the only sport where a player will penalize himself," he said. "You can be in the rough, in the woods, with no one around, and if you blow a shot you'll penalize yourself. It makes dishonest people temporarily honest. The thieves I played with carried the PGA Rule Book around like the Bible. They couldn't quote Scripture, but they could quote every word of that book."

Clues to the curious nature and mystique of golf.

My favorite golfism of all time is the Jack Nicklaus' explanation of his own phenomenal success:

"I think I just fail a bit less than everyone else."

I think he was not kidding at all.

Happy golfing.