X Slide

Smokey Robinson`s game is a hit parade (Yahoo! Sports)

LOS ANGELES – The globe does not collaborate with Smokey Robinson. Finally, mercifully, on the fourth attempt from the trap at the 150-yard, par-3 third hole on MountainGate Country Club`s Lake/North layout, the agony comes to an end. The ball finds the putting surface.

Many players might swear. Or ruin their club into the sand.

Or pick the cruel golfing gods for a humiliating “Tin Cup” moment.

Not Smokey. He doesn`t utter a word. He slowly walks over to the 10-footer, lines it up from every conceivable angle, without the slightest intimation of frustration, and pours it hard into the cup to save a triple bogey – along with his ego.

“I thinking I would never get out of the sand,” he says as he heads to the next tee.

That sums up Smokey. While the back gives him fits – it wouldn`t be golf if it didn`t – he takes it all in stride, as shine on the track as he is on the stage.

“After I started playing well, whenever I had a bad outing, it would just mess me up,” he says. “I`d be furious at myself. And so I saw Jack Nicklaus shoot 80 on TV one day and I realized, `Who do I believe I am?`”

Smokey was not exactly smitten when he first took up the stake in the later 1960s. He was a member of the Miracles then, turning out hit after hit as a vocalist and songwriter. Others in the scene, including Robert Gordy, the sidekick of Motown founder Berry Gordy, kept urging Smokey to connect them on the links. Smokey wasn`t interested. Finally, he went with them to Palmer Park, a small muni in Detroit. He shot a 66 that day on his first nine and stop after 12 holes. So often for that experiment.

Smokey Robinson, pictured here recently with the legendary Aretha Franklin, still performs about 80 concerts a year.AP)

Yet he stuck with it and, without warning, he was hooked. He has often departed from the airport directly to the order before heading home. He takes his towel to every common to make certain the ball is light enough to get a serious roll, underlying his seriousness.

“Golf is the heroin of sports, I tell people all the time,” says Smokey, dressed stylishly in a clean and blue shirt with white pants. “I read my clubs everywhere I go, especially in the summertime.”

Everywhere is a lot of places. At 71, he performs about 80 concerts a year.

“I`m very blessed,” he says as he steers the cart down the fairway. “Of all the things I do musically, concerts [are] my favorite thing. I take a prospect to be one on one with the fans. Most of the masses who started the same time I did are either idle or you don`t live where they are. I only need to be the George Burns of this end of show business.”

Smokey still loves writing songs. He doesn`t set apart time to compose; that`s never been his way. The songs just come to him, and when they do, he calls his answering service and leaves a recording. He isn`t one of those old-timers yearning for a past which no longer exists.

“I look about music today the way I ever have,” says Smokey, who penned such classic tunes as “My Guy,” “The Weeping of a Clown,” and “The Way You Do the Things You Do.”

“There is about serious medicine and some bad medicine and there ever has been,” he explains.” It only so happens that we go in a domain where negativity is the focal point. People talking about the negative music, not realizing how much positive music is being made.”

Upon reaching his campaign on No. 7, though, he is not feel positive. His ball sits just a few feet from the lip of a bunker, leaving him with a difficult shot. He return to win the ball only about 75 yards, resulting in a bogey 6. He finishes with a 45 on the front nine, despite a promising birdie on the beginning and a clutch par save on No. 8, which had produced a mini-fist pump. No matter. Nine holes remain.

Smokey is conversant with second chances. In the mid-1980s, he found another habit – drugs. He would take cocaine and mix it with grass to smoke. Soon it stopped being fun and he started to hate himself. He was nearer to death than he realized. Then, in May of 1986, a friend took him to a prayer service in Los Angeles. Smokey hasn`t taken any drugs since.

“I was an addict when I walked into that church and when I came out, I was free,” he says. “I had so much loss for myself. I was acquiring the opportunity to go out my wildest childhood dream, which proves that drugs don`t like who you are, what you`re doing.”

On the second nine, despite consistent tee shots in the 230-yard run and a strong short game, Smokey staggers a bit. A double at 11. A trio at 13. Another double at 15. Fatigue is definitely setting in, with one stroke after another missing its target.

“I can`t stop out of the grating to deliver my life,” he says.

Still, he knows enough not to go too discouraged or, for that matter, too excited.

“I once shot in the 70s three years in one week, and I said, `I got it,` and golf heard me,” he recalls. “This was roughly 1973 and 1974. After that, I couldn`t break 90 for a year.”

These days, Smokey tees it up at MountainGate, where he`s been a member since the 1970s, as much as he can during breaks in his touring schedule. He doesn`t make time for lessons. He never did. He does meet a lot with a golf pro, Mike Brown, who is giving him a few quick tips on this day.

“Let`s end it with a bang,” Smokey says before teeing off on the last hole, a 453-yard par 5. “A 4 on this hollow and all is forgiven.”

It wasn`t meant to be, the bogey giving him an unspectacular round of 92.

He shrugs it off. Same old Smokey.

Michael Arkush is an editor for Yahoo! Sports.Send Michael a doubt or comment for possible use in a future column or webcast.