OKATIE, S.C. — One issue raised by the Golf Nut Society's annual honor, Golf Nut of the Year, is whether a single act of obsession should count more than a steady 12 months of folly in pursuit of the game.
Michael Jordan won in 1989 after he skipped the ceremony awarding him the NBA Most Valuable Player trophy to get in 36 holes in Pinehurst, N.C. Though Jordan accumulated Golf Nut Points for other acts -- for challenging Mickey Mouse to a putting contest in Orlando, for instance, and for having "Registered Golf Nut" license plate frames on his Ferrari -- one has to believe his grand gesture of blowing off the MVP event was key to his victory.
So it was in 2001, when Golf Nut of the Year went to Ireland's Ivan Morris, who had asked his pregnant wife to have labor induced so he could play in a tournament, then plopped their new son in the trophy, a large loving cup, when he won.
This scoring issue was no casual matter to Jim Malone, who a year ago decided to go for the Golf Nut title in the wake of his cancer surgery, then set out to obliterate the field.
Risking one's health is one of the three prime ways to score points, up there with risking one's marriage and livelihood. The first Golf Nut honoree, in 1986, Joe Malay, quit his job to play 53 tournaments over the year. He figured employment "would have a negative effect on his golf," according to a summary by Ron Garland, who founded the Golf Nut Society 22 years ago and as Head Nut had sole authority to award points, as 2007 began, to its 4,000 members.
Golf Nut of the Year for 2000, Mike Noyes of Fountain Valley, won points on the health card by chipping and putting within a week of quintuple bypass surgery on a three-hole green he'd spent $10,000 to build in his backyard, complete with dry creek bed, ball washer and bar stools.
James L. Malone III had an artificial putting green too, in the basement of his home in Connecticut, and similarly was practicing on it almost immediately after his prostate surgery in the closing days of 2006. He'd prepared for his operation by speed-walking a golf course twice daily while hitting two balls -- in effect playing four rounds a day. Then, after the surgeons at Johns Hopkins were done with him, he made a supposedly recuperative trip to Florida, where he "tried to hit a few nine-irons," he reported, "but the surgical area pulled a bit."
That's when a friend -- me -- suggested he was crazy and he e-mailed back, "There's actually a Golf Nut Society. I've been meaning to go on their website ( www.golfnuts.com) and join," so he did, sending in $24.95 and becoming member No. 4122.
A tad shorter than average, with prematurely white-gray hair and a pixieish face made to seem rounder by oval glasses, Malone would not be picked out of a crowd as a fanatic of any sort, though a stranger might guess he was a lawyer, given his litigator's confident strut. He made his name successfully battling IRS efforts to collect tens of millions of dollars from the estates of two legendary football team owners, the Chicago Bears' George Halas and Cincinnati Bengals' Paul Brown, and such cases enabled him to retire in 2006, at 58, with enough free time and resources to pursue a certain hobby like few others.
As winter segued into spring, and his wounds healed, his campaign began for real: He managed three loops on opening day at his club in suburban New York and that first week played 216 holes in all, a dozen rounds. Soon after, he got in a round before a morning meeting on rules changes -- he's twice attended a United States Golf Assn. "rules school" -- then was flying to a law school reunion in Charlottesville, Va., while squeezing in a tournament there, another in Colonial Williamsburg and third in Baltimore. Then he had one on Long Island, but had to be among the leaders after the first round to play the second, so he signed up for yet another tournament on that same day -- back down in Virginia -- just in case. Being a good player is not a factor in being a Golf Nut, but Malone happens to be one. Though likely to be out-driven by 100 yards by the young brutes of today, he excels around the greens. When it was time to try to qualify for the Massachusetts Amateur Championship, against college players and the like, he picked a qualifying site suited to short-hitting and made it, with a 73.
Have we mentioned that he belonged to two clubs in Massachusetts -- both on Nantucket -- in addition to the ones in New York and Virginia? He did drop a club in Chicago in 2007, but immediately added one -- in Ireland. And among his spring e-mails was one gushing about a new course in South Carolina, designed by former Masters champ Ben Crenshaw, where if you signed up as a distance member it cost only. . . .
