Bald truth about the PGA Tour

A shining moment for Boo. (AP/David J. Phillip)

Last week, my editor at Examiner.com advised me not to forget that Oct. 14 is “Be Bald and Be Free” day.

Was he trying to tell me something?

No worries. Among golfers, I’m in good company.

Boo Weekley is bald, and he’s 20 years younger than me. Jim Furyk, No. 11 in the Official World Golf Ranking, is king of the cue balls, followed closely by Stewart Cink at No. 14. Jonathan Byrd is hurting for hair, and it appears Bill Haas has considerably less than his dad, Jay.

Heck, none other than Tiger Woods is long rumored to have had a hair transplant (he’s human after all!), prompting some publications to print before and after photos.

Looking at mug shots in the PGA Tour media guide, I count 21 baldies – not including  a surgically enhanced Woods – among 311 players listed in the publication.

That’s only 7 percent, compared to the 40-to-50 percent of the male population who are bald or balding. (Estimates vary, depending on age parameters, definition of baldness and what studies you believe. However, I did learn in my research that castration is the only cure for baldness and neither masturbation nor wearing hats causes hair loss.)

Curious whether the PGA Tour is an anomaly in golf as well as the population at large, I made the same mug-shot survey of the European Tour media guide. Among 204 players pictured (including about 72 duplicates from the PGA Tour), 13 are bald. That's 6 percent.

A study by scientists at the University of London linked air pollution to baldness, which might explain why there’s so much hair at the elite levels of pro golf. Unless you’re playing in Beijing or Los Angeles, golf course air tends to be pretty clean.

The topic of bald golfers caught the fancy of BBC Radio announcers during the Ryder Cup. They cited the aforementioned and scientifically debunked hat theory – really, don’t most guys wear hats because they’re bald? – and invited listeners to e-mail their theories as to why Weekley, Furyk and Cink have such shiny domes. Obviously, the radio guys were groping to fill air time.

For those of us with so many unproductive hair follicles, let’s hope my unscientific 93.5-percent-of-pro-golfers-have-a-full-head-of-hair statistic proves no correlation between baldness and golf skill. (Although it can be argued that Woods has performed at a higher level since his unsubstantiated replacement surgery.)

Even if it is true, who cares? Bald is beautiful, and my golf mantra always has been: It’s better to look good than to play well.

Best of all, bald guys never have to worry about “hat hair” at the 19^th hole.