By Harry King

MAUMELLE, Ark. — The choice between same-day opportunities to trumpet the quality of golf on the Nationwide Tour turned on a matter of miles.

The invites arrived within a day of each other and both included an attractive perk — golf at Hardscrabble Country Club after a media luncheon about the Fort Smith stop on the Nationwide or golf at Maumelle Country Club in the Ken Duke Charity Classic. Let’s see, travel 155 miles to Fort Smith and return home around 9 p.m. or drive 10 miles and be home for dinner.

The Nationwide is a great steppingstone to the PGA Tour, Duke said, and “teaches you to travel all over the world.”

In 2006, when Duke was the Nationwide Player of the Year, the Tour opened in Panama. During the following month, Duke played in Australia and New Zealand. From March through May of that year, he competed in Louisiana, California, Georgia, South Carolina, Arkansas, where he tied for 14th, and Virginia. Beginning in late July, there was a two-month stretch that included Kansas, Nebraska, New York, West Virginia, Ohio, Utah and Idaho in that order.

Travel encompasses more than transportation and lodging. Time management is a must, a skill that Brandt Snedeker learned on the Nationwide Tour and addressed at the 2008 Masters.

“The biggest thing for a professional golfer is … to figure out what to do off the golf course to get yourself ready for the next day,” said Snedeker, who graduated to the PGA Tour with Duke. “It’s very easy to get yourself into some bad habits and have too much fun and not take what you’re doing very seriously.”

Duke had other positive things to say about how the Nationwide prepared him for his well-documented success on the PGA Tour. You would think with $4 million in earnings the past two years, he would be the Poster Boy for Nationwide ‘06, but the tour is deep in talent every year and that was no exception.

Duke’s graduating class included Boo Weekley, a 2007 winner and the personality of the victorious U.S. team in the Ryder Cup; Snedeker, also a winner in 2007, and Johnson Wagner, a PGA Tour winner in ‘08.

In fact, 15 of the top 16 money winners on the Nationwide in 2006 had a top 10 finish on the PGA Tour in 2007.

Naturally, the Nationwide Tour was happy to provide quotes of praise from a variety of people involved in golf. Leave it to a former NBA player with the hitch-and-go swing to utter the best.

“They can all play,” said Charles Barkley. “People who want to compare this to the CBA (Continental Basketball Association) or some AAA baseball league aren’t paying attention.”

In Fort Smith on Monday, former Razorback Craig Lile was appreciative of an exemption to the Fort Smith Classic June 15-21. He was 27th on the Nationwide money list in 2006, made the cut in 15 PGA Tour events in 2007, and then played a limited number of Nationwide events in 2008.

His competition is guaranteed to include future PGA Tour winners and the price is right — $25 for a week-long pass and $10 for a daily ducat — for an up-close walk with them. Who knows? You might follow a future Masters champion like a few folks did when Zach Johnson played in Fort Smith in 2003.

As for Monday’s golf outings, rain washed out the day at Hardscrabble and the conditions were tolerable in Maumelle.

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Harry King is sports columnist for Stephens Media’s Arkansas News Bureau. His e-mail address is hking@arkansasnews.com.