Par fore the profession: What is it about doctors and golf?

When the pressures of practice have you teed off, maybe it's time to do some birdie watching. Maybe you'll even see an eagle.

By Damon Adams, AMNews staff. June 10, 2002.

Paul Paris, MD, doesn't consider himself a great golfer, but he's got a great story about the day he made a hole in one. Last year he was practicing on a country club golf course in Pittsburgh while recovering from a torn rotator cuff. With the cup 150 yards from the tee, he swung his 5-iron, the ball soared a straight path, landed about eight inches from the hole, then rolled in.

"When the ball disappeared, I just started screaming," said Dr. Paris, professor and chair of emergency medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

His son, who witnessed the feat, was less excited.

"He was sort of jealous. He's 13 and wanted to be the first one to get a hole in one," Dr. Paris said.

If you're a doctor who plays golf, you're bound to have a good story about your days on the fairways, right? After all, there long has been a public perception -- as well as some bad jokes -- about doctors and their relationship with the game of golf.

Years ago, Wednesday was known as the day when doctors closed up shop and met their colleagues for a round of golf. The joke was, if you couldn't find a doctor, check the golf course. Those days have vanished, physicians said, largely because of stressors such as managed care hassles and time constraints. Yet in the minds of many, golf and doctors remain inexorably linked, much like cops and doughnuts.

So just what brings doctors to the golf course again and again?

For one thing, playing a round of 18 holes takes them away from the stress of their job and provides a refreshing escape. [...]