As a critical voice in the Grady Hospital crisis, Dr. John E. Maupin Jr. knows good medicine depends on steady funding.

To help keep both flowing to needy Atlantans, Maupin heads to the golf course —- where friendships with donors are made. His famous predecessors as president of the Morehouse School of Medicine, Drs. Louis Sullivan and David Satcher, dropped by Heritage Golf Club in Tucker recently to mingle at the school's fund-raising tournament. So did Maupin, who is not a former cabinet member or surgeon general but has something they do not: a career-best round of 75.

Maupin's golf skills allow him to work some money magic in a relaxed, outdoor setting, schmoozing with alumni and wealthy supporters. He knows their aid could help train doctors for underserved communities in Georgia and beyond.

A golfer isn't about to cut some big check between shots, but anyone who gets the Maupin treatment for 18 holes is more likely to back his cause. First, Maupin shows up having bought a $150 stack of mulligan tickets —- allowing 15 bad shots to be replayed. You can practically hear the exhaling of tension over the opening drive.

He shakes hands and never wavers the gaze of his green eyes. He doesn't need to preach good posture; his is regal-like the whole round. Golf paralleled his profession starting back in dental school and then in the Army Dental Corps. In all pursuits, he honed a firm, elegant grip, a zest for storytelling and a sense of humor.

He tells how, at the pre-tournament pairing party, "some of our doctors showed up in tuxedos because they had just come from Maya Angelou's birthday party. I introduced them as just having come from surgery. That's right, we are taking [medicine] to a whole new level, homey!"

As he plays, the link between golf and medicine becomes even more literal. So many physicians were on the course that even Dr. Otis Story, the fired Grady Hospital CEO, blended right in.

Doctors stood on nearly every hole dispensing health advice. On the No. 4 tee, Dr. Maupin encounters Dr. Gary Gibbons, a world-renowned cardiovascular researcher, and Dr. Lonnie Boaz, a Chattanooga gastroenterologist and MSM national alumni president. "How is your blood pressure?" Dr. Gibbons asks.

"Slightly elevated," Dr. Maupin replies. "I'm working on my diet and exercise." He proceeds to make another smooth swing, launching one of his best drives.

"With all these alumni around, I had to hit the ball!" he says.

Laughing at the strokes and jokes is Dr. William Lynn Weaver, chairman of the school's department of surgery. He wears a white golf cap with the title "Dr. Mulligan."

What's this, a surgeon advertising a second take on a messed-up procedure?

No, just a likable first impression, something Weaver knows well from his friend of 15 years. "He is the quintessential people person," he says of Dr. Maupin. "He's got the gift. I always call him a 'Clintonese' type. When he meets you, he talks to you; he never looks over people. He's loved at the institution, by the housekeepers up to all the [department] chairs."

As the round progresses, Dr. Maupin's team isn't scoring well at all, despite all the do-overs. It's not the shots they'll remember anyway. It's his stories of opportunities —- taken, or foolishly thrown away.

He tells how his great-grandfather, while still in slavery, married a Native American woman, and the pair and his slavemaster followed the Gold Rush, and the slave bought his freedom. Maupin's grandfather then became the first licensed African-American master plumber in California.

Way before that, the family took its name from a French plantation owner in Virginia, Count de Maupassant. One day the count became so angry, he tossed his lighted pipe. It landed in a shack full of gunpowder, "and he blew up half the plantation!" Maupin says.

In more modern times, Dr. Maupin's military service led to a golf round alongside the Potomac River. One one hole, he saw President Nixon's yacht sailing by. "My buddy Bobby hit his ball in the rough, and there went a Secret Service guy jogging by it, trying to keep up with the yacht!" he says. "I told Bobby, 'You hit that yacht, and I'll never get to major.' "

Name dropping aside, Dr. Maupin says he intends for his nationally acclaimed school to open wider local avenues for children's health. Children are a big reason this grandfather has been so vocal that Grady's closing would mean the end of his medical school. "Just like golf teaches young children what's expected of them, what we need to do in our communities is to set the expectations high for what they should eat, in their education, their exercise and in their lives."

The round over, Dr. Maupin works a crowded room of well-wishers, and a lucky raffle winner gets a trip to watch Tiger Woods play in a PGA Tour event. The golf tournament, along with a tennis event, raised $40,000 in sponsorships and in-kind donations.

In two days, Dr. Maupin would be back in the swing, this time at Birmingham's prestigious Shoal Creek, the PGA site once notorious for not allowing African-American members. Those doors are open now, and his green eyes shine at the potential for golf, and more.