AUBURN — Bobby Myers missed the cut by four strokes Thursday at the Maine Amateur. He took the news well.

"I've always felt that playing golf is like reaching for something four feet away with three-foot arms. You keep trying."

Actually, his arms are much longer. Myers is a massive man at 6-foot-2 and maybe 260 pounds. His hands are catcher's mitts. His calves looked like they could support an elephant. He carried his putter like a twig.

Fans smiled when he approached the greens at Martindale Country Club. Maybe it was the outsized hiking boots. Maybe it was the whispers that his nickname was Carl, as in Bill Murray's character in "Caddyshack." Myers does work maintenance at Nonesuch River Golf Course in Scarborough.

"That's not my nickname," said Myers when I made the mistake of asking. "I didn't wear these boots as a joke, either. With all this rain, they kept my feet dry. I don't like playing golf in wet socks."

His two-round score of 159 beat his older brother, Rocky, by two strokes. That was one reason to smile.

"We have very intense brotherly competitions. If he beat me, I couldn't have gone to his house."

Rocky Myers is the former baseball coach at Gorham High. My other mistake was asking Bobby if he was Rocky's brother.

"Everyone asks that. I say Rocky is my brother." The younger of the Myers brothers smiled.

His score put him in the middle of the field of 126 golfers. "I have friends who, when they pick up the newspaper to see how I did, start at the bottom. It (ticks) me off."

Now his friends will have to keep reading up to get to his name.

Qualifying for the Maine Amateur or making the cut when he does qualify has been, in his words, hit or miss over the last 20 years.

He made the cut in his first Maine Amateur, the year Sean Gorgone won. Myers didn't pinpoint the year, but Gorgone won four times – in 1987 and '88, then in 1990 and '91.

Myers' strength is hitting long off the tee, he said. His weakness is his short game. Although he did drop a 40-foot putt on the 10th green for birdie, he said. He called to a television crew waiting for Mark Plummer's group to approach the green. Did they get his birdie putt for the nightly news?

"For me, that was a 1 in 100 chance to make that putt and I did. That's why I play."

Myers played soccer, basketball and baseball at Telstar High in Bethel. His father was an electrician at the Bethel Country Club, and Rocky and Bobby got time on the course. By the time Bobby Myers headed off to the University of Maine at Farmington, golf was crowding out the other sports.

"You can always get better playing golf. Look, I'm never going to win this thing. There are about 15 who can and I'm not one. But if it wasn't for me and everyone else like me out here playing, you wouldn't have this tournament."

If he could turn back the clock, he would still never be Ryan Gay, the precocious teenager from Pittston who won this tournament last year. "I can hit a golf ball but I don't have the mind to win," said Myers, tapping his head.

Ask him for a personal highlight and he reveals his heart. This spring he caddied for his 15-year-old nephew, Bradley Myers, at a Maine Amateur qualifier in Brunswick. The weather turned bad but young Myers followed a 45 on the front nine with a 36 on the back. He qualified by one stroke.

Ask Bobby Myers for the name of his favorite PGA Tour golfer. John Daly, he says. Once you get to know Myers, that's no surprise.

"It's because he's (Daly) a real person. He doesn't hold anything back. He doesn't care who you are, he'll talk to you. He'd not only sit here, talk and have a beer with us, he'd buy the beer."

Ouch. That's been part of Daly's problems.

But you understand where Myers is coming from. Passion for competition, no matter the skill level, is also passion for living.

Myers won't be back at Martindale...