We must have been born to be golfers. After all, we all came into this world crying. The swearing comes after we take up the game.

No other sport can dampen a crying towel more than golf. Like life, golf can be unfair. Golf's fun if you're playing for fun, but a game of sorrows if you play for a living, according to Gary Player. But sometimes, even playing for fun isn't fun. I ought to know. My game is a crying shame right now. My swing has been known to make grown men weep.

Fortunately, golf isn't only a crying game. There can be tears of joy. You can have a ball and bawl at the same time. My golf swing can be laughable, too. It all goes to show you that it's possible to enjoy a good cry.

The latest example came on Labor Day when Steve Stricker won the Deutsche Bank Championship, second leg of the FedEx Cup playoffs. He couldn't stop the tears from leaking out after scoring the seventh — and biggest — win of his career.

"His only failure," noted Associated Press golf writer Doug Ferguson, "was winning a PGA Tour event and trying to get through an interview without crying. This makes him 0-for-7."

Paul Azinger and Ben Crenshaw also get weepy at times. The LPGA's equivalent is Morgan Pressel, Kapalua's touring pro, who can't go through an interview without shedding a tear or two.

Golf is a game of heartbreak, and no one has experienced it more than Stricker, the tour's comeback player of the year not once but twice. He hopes there won't be a third time.

"I think I'm over that now," said Stricker, ranked No. 2 in the world behind Tiger Woods and No. 1 in the FedEx Cup points race after his third victory this year.

Stricker has always been one of the good guys in golf. No one is more self-effacing than the 42-year-old Wisconsin native. After his latest victory, which put him in Tiger's rarified company, Stricker deflected any comparison by saying, "We're taking up space in his world."

Local golf fans have gotten to know Stricker well. He has been a familiar face at Waialae Country Club since the first of his 10 appearances in 1994 as a tour rookie at the United Airlines Hawaiian Open. The best of his four top-10s at Waialae came in 1996 when he finished third, with his wife, Nikki, toting his golf bag. She stopped being his caddie the following year and isn't planning on any comeback of her own. "She's got a much bigger job now taking care of the two kids," Stricker said.

Golf's best sob story — the weepiest of the weepers, its crying fame — came when Tiger won the 2006 British Open at Royal Liverpool. He broke into tears after tapping in for par at the final hole and shared emotional embraces with his caddie, Steve Williams, and his wife Elin.

It was Woods' 11th major win but the first without his father Earl, who had died months before, there to celebrate it with him. Tiger had taken nine weeks to grieve for the man who inspired him to take up the game and missed the cut in his first event back, the U.S. Open, before going to the British Open.

"I just miss my dad so much. I wish he could have been here to witness this. And then, after the putt, all these emotions just poured out of me," Woods said. "Stevie (Williams) said to me as we were coming up the last fairway, 'this one is for dad.' "

The scene at the 18th green in the British Open three years ago was one of golf's most poignant and unforgettable moments. Tiger showed us that it was OK to cry.