CEOs who play exceptional golf often struggle to keep their companies' stock out of the sand trap.

Golf Digest magazine has released its biennial rankings of the top CEO golfers, and a USA Today analysis finds that two-thirds of the best 12 have seen their stock perform worse than the Standard & Poor's 500 index in 2006.

That includes the nation's best CEO golfer, Jim Crane of EGL, a shipping logistics company that ranks No. 599 on the Fortune 1,000. The 52-year-old Crane boasts a 0.8 handicap index. A handicap is an estimate of what a golfer shoots above par on his or her best days, so on Crane's best days, he can be expected to shoot nearly even par.

EGL stock has fallen 20 percent versus a 4 percent rise in the S&P 500. However, EGL rose 26 percent in 2005 versus the 3 percent gain in the S&P.

Crane, who carries an extra set of clubs aboard his personal plane, said he was reluctant to make the list because he fears that people will think he's playing too much golf. He says he plays only on the weekends and hits a few balls in the evening. The stock, he says, is down due to investor fear that a slowing economy will hurt shipping. He jokes that the only influence he has on the economy is the greens fees he pays.

"There is no correlation whatsoever" between his golf and company performance, Crane says.

Trying to draw conclusions from CEO golf scores makes for entertaining reading, but they have nothing to do with each other, agrees Intuit CEO Steve Bennett, who moved from 17th to ninth by improving his handicap to 4.4 from 6.1. Intuit stock is up 18 percent this year after a 21 percent jump in 2005.

Bennett says he plays 100 rounds a year, all on weekends and vacations, and always for pleasure. "For me, golf is an oasis from work," he says.

Close behind EGL's Crane is Jerry Jurgensen, who is the No. 2 CEO golfer a second straight time even though he improved his handicap from 2.5 in 2004 to 0.9. Shares of his Nationwide financial services company are up 6 percent in 2006 after a 15 percent rise in '05. But only two other CEOs from the best 12 golfers, in addition to Bennett and Jurgensen, have beaten the S&P 500 this year. Only one other has beaten it in both '05 and '06: Barry Davis, CEO of Crosstex Energy, a natural gas supplier up 41 percent in 2006.

Golf Digest's CEO rankings of the best 200 CEO golfers comes out every two years. Patricia Russo, of Lucent Technologies, was for the third time the only woman to crack the top 200. But while her handicap improved to 12.9 in 2006 from 13.2 in 2004, Lucent stock is down 15 percent in 2006 after a 29 percent drop in 2005.

In a note, Russo said she has played little golf this year as she prepares for Lucent's merger with Alcatel. Russo will become CEO of Alcatel when the merger is completed by the end of this year.

But Alcatel is a French-based company not on the Fortune 1,000, which means the 2008 list will likely be all-male. Russo, who can drive the ball 230 yards and ranks No. 44, is the only serious female golfer among Fortune 1,000 CEOs capable of being anywhere near the top 200, says Golf Digest contributing editor Lisa Furlong.

The most-improved golfer from the last ranking in 2004 is Terry Lundgren, CEO of Federated Department Stores. His handicap improved to 10.9 from 18.0 in 2004 to move him to 91st place from a tie for 178th. Federated stock rose 15 percent in 2005 and another 18 percent so far in 2006.

Jerry Tarde, chairman and editor-in-chief of Golf Digest, defended CEOs and their golf. "I think we want our leaders to relax and recharge," Tarde says. "Can you overdo it and play too much? Of course. But I've never seen a CEO play too much."