Jerry King, director of instruction at the Kapalua Golf Academy, drives around Maui in a car with the personal license plate GLF4LF (Golf for Life). And a Scandinavian sports medicine journal recently published a Stockholm research study of some 500,000 golfers showing that playing golf helps you live longer.

You don't have to tell that to Francis Sing, who's 90 years old today. As part of his birthday celebration, he'll be teeing it up Saturday at Barbers Point Golf Course with friends and family members, including his youngest son, David, a University of Hawai'i-Hilo professor who's flying in from the Big Island.

Sing's only regret is that he didn't take up the game of golf until he was 70.

"If I took it up earlier, I might have been pretty good in golf," said Sing, a 1938 McKinley High School graduate who was a basketball all-star and a running back on the Tigers' football team that won the Interscholastic League of Honolulu championship.

"We had a grand slam that year. We also won the baseball championship," said Sing, well aware that the address of his lower Nu'uanu home of nearly 40 years is, significantly, 1938. His McKinley basketball teammate, the late Jimmy Koo, was best man when he married Elizabeth Wong in 1940. She passed away four years ago.

Sing shoots in the 100s, but enjoys golf, especially being outdoors and the walking.

"I can't hit it far, about 150 yards, but it goes straight," Sing says of his drives. "But I can chip and putt pretty good." He still uses the "Par-Rite" putter he bought for $4.96 at a Kmart in Milpitas, Calif., during a vacation decades ago.

David Sing still marvels at his dad's golf game and his competitive spirit. "You can beat any 70-year-old," he told his dad after one of their rounds earlier this year.

Sing has been blessed with natural ability and good hand-eye coordination. He also played tennis a lot in his younger days and still bowls competitively once a week in the Sunshine League at Leeward Bowl in Pearl City, driving there himself. His career best score is a 279 — "a lot of times." No 300 game or its golf equivalent, a hole-in-one, as yet. Not that Sing isn't trying. And he would love to break a 100 and shoot his age.

Interestingly, Sing once could have had an opportunity to take up golf when he was a youngster growing up near Palama Settlement. One of his Waipa Lane neighbors was Bill Gee, the late Honolulu Star-Bulletin associate sports editor, who was an avid golfer.

"Bill Gee was my coach in basketball. He was my mentor. He was like my brother, then like my father," Sing said. He remembers Gee digging holes in the Palama Settlement field and betting guys in putting contests. Gee taught him well in basketball, but the subject of golf never came up, although Sing would often see his mentor going off with some friends to play golf.

Basketball was Sing's first love then. After high school, he played for Gee's Palama Settlement basketball team in the local senior league before World War II disrupted life in the Islands. He then worked at Pearl Harbor Shipyard as a pipe fitter and led Shop 56 to the Federal League championship. Sing also played for Art Kim's Hawai'i All-Stars against the Harlem Globetrotters at the old Civic Auditorium. Among his teammates were Ah Chew Goo and Given Goo (no relation).

Even though they were the "Washington Generals" of their time — that is, the Trotters' fall-guy opponents — the Hawai'i team pulled a few tricks of its own. Sing remembers one game when teammates hoisted Given Goo on their shoulders so that he could dunk a shot. Abe Saperstein was furious that his team was upstaged by a bunch of locals. But it was a stunt that the Trotters would later add to their repertoire. Sing, who barnstormed with Kim's team throughout the Mainland, recalled the Trotter greats he played against — Goose Tatum, Ted Strong and Babe Pressley.

While Gee taught him everything about basketball, Sing had no interest in golf. But he encouraged David to pursue the game. "My other two sons (Tom and Arnie) are canoe paddlers. They like the ocean." David got good at it — he plays to a 10-handicap — and soon his love of golf rubbed off on his father.

"I started watching (golf) on TV. Then I went to Fort Shafter with my brother (Robert). I like golf because it's a challenge," Sing said. Playing basketball came easy for him, he said. But not golf.

Golf, however, provided him an opportunity to still use his natural skills, even if they've been eroded by the passage of time.

That hasn't prevented Sing from still being competitive even if golf and bowling are just recreational sports for him these days. His mentor, Bill Gee, would have been proud. So are Sing's three sons and six grandchildren.

"I just love that," said King when told about the 90-year-old Sing. "I have guys 91 and 86 who are still taking lessons."

It's surely GLF4LF.