Hung Soo Ahn continues to amaze me.

Not only because he's the best golfer of Korean ancestry to come out of Hawai'i. Oh, Michelle Wie's not bad, either, but she has 30-some-odd trophies to win before catching up with Ahn, who celebrated his 79th birthday Monday.

What's amazing about Ahn, a member of the Hawai'i Golf Hall of Fame, is that shooting his age won't be a problem anytime soon. The day after his birthday he went out with his regular Ala Wai gang and shot a 73, but dismissed his 3-over-par score by saying, "Ala Wai not that hard."

"(But) as you get older, the handicap goes up," says Ahn, who plays twice a week just for fun. But don't give him any strokes. He plays to an 8-handicap and, "thanks to today's equipment," he's hitting his drives longer, around 270 yards, than he did in his prime. "Before you played with persimmon (woods). Now, it's all high tech. Equipmentwise, you can't beat it nowadays," he said. Which makes you wonder how Ahn and his peers would have done using today's equipment.

In Ahn's case, there's no question he still would be winning tournaments, no matter what clubs are in his bag. If there's any golfer locally who knew how to win, it was Ahn, who seemingly wouldn't let go of a championship trophy once it's in his grasp.

He won the inaugural Korean Invitational Tournament in 1951 while in basic training at Schofield Barracks, held the KIT trophy six of the first seven years and won it for the 16th time in 1994 at age 64. No wonder, they told him to keep the perpetual trophy. But it wasn't only in that event that he went whole hog.

In 1958, Ahn won the inaugural Waialae Men's Invitational, a major 72-hole event that eventually evolved into the Hawai'i Amateur Stroke Play Championship, and kept that trophy three of the first four years of that event. And when the inaugural Mayor's Cup was held in 1981 at Ala Wai, guess who won? Ahn went on to win the Mayor's Cup three of the first five years.

In local four-ball competition, nobody was better than Jack Omuro and Ed Nakagaki, who teamed to win the Francis I'i Brown Four-Ball Championship seven times. But the match-play twosome of Ahn and Wendell Kop came close, winning the Brown Four-Ball twice (denying Omuro and Nakagaki their eighth title in 1973), and the Ted Makalena Four-Ball and the Hawai'i Public Links Association Four-Ball four times.

Ahn also won the Brown Four-Ball twice (1967 and '68) with Omuro as his partner, the 1967 Hawai'i State Amateur, 1966 Oahu Men's Invitational and the State Hole-in-One Tournament twice (1971 and '78). The Pa'ia, Maui, native has two aces, the first at Waiehu when he was attending Baldwin High School.

However, it's for a tournament he didn't win that Ahn will be remembered — the 1962 U.S. Men's Amateur Public Links in Tonawanda, N.Y, just north of Buffalo. He lost, 2 and 1, in the 36-hole final to Dick Sikes, who was the defending champion. It was the first time since 1934 when Arthur Armstrong lost in the final at Pittsburgh that a player from Hawai'i advanced to the championship match. It was a big deal then, according to Ahn. Four Hawai'i golfers have since gone on to win that national title — Charles Barenaba (1974), brother Randy Barenaba (1975), Guy Yamamoto (1994) and Casey Watabu (2006).

Still, as Ahn was advancing during the week, the other players who represented Hawai'i — Allan Yamamoto, Billy Arakawa, Masa Kaya and James Masuyama — didn't stick around. "They all lost their match," said Ahn, who played Yamamoto in the first round. "Guess where they went? They all went to New York (City) and left me and Tommy Ching (the team captain) back in Buffalo." Ahn still laughs about it.

Among his 14 national public links appearances — the most of any local player followed by Kop and Jay Kurisu with 12 — Ahn also remembers the one in which he didn't have to travel because it was held in Hawai'i for the first time. Ala Wai, then a par-72 course before it was redone and not for the better in 1989 to accommodate a driving range, hosted the 1960 USGA event. "We all wanted to play," said Ahn, who won medalist honors in the local qualifier. He lost in the quarterfinals to eventual champion Verne Callison.

What's also amazing about Ahn is that he has played wearing a back brace for nearly 50 years, yes, including that 1962 Publinx when the buddies left him to visit the Big Apple.

"It keeps everything in place when I swing," says Ahn, who credits not smoking or drinking for his longevity.

Well, he did smoke for two years when he was in the Army stationed in West Germany. But not a drop of booze. Now, that really amazes me.

UPCOMING BIRTHDAYS

Aug. 1 — Jim Seki (1980).

Aug. 3 — John Ramelb (1959).

Aug. 4 — Nick Mason (1982).

Aug. 5 — Casey Nakama (1958), Reynold Lee (1971).