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Counting envy as one of the seven deadly sins, then there must be many a sinner who knows Reginald Clark.

The truth is, it's hard not to envy him. Check that. It's impossible not to envy him.

Here's a man, after all, who has been married 45 years. He grew a successful business then passed it on to his two sons. Other than some circulation issues in one of his legs, his health is good. He lives on heaven's doorstep, which is also known as Floyd County. He'll be 72 in January.

That, friends, is more than enough to envy, but there's more. He plays golf every single day of the week.

Really, one of the few things that Clark has to worry about is the impending onset of Daylight Savings Time. Why? That's going to severely impact the chances of his playing his usual 36 holes four days a week. After all, it's tough driving from Auburn Hills Golf Club in Riner, where he plays the first 18 every morning, to Great Oaks Country Club in Floyd, where he plays the four-days-a-week second round -- and get it all in before dark.

What the heck, though. Winter doesn't stop him from breaking out the clubs. He'll play when it's cold. Up to a point.

"If it gets down in the 30s and the wind is blowing, then I won't play," he said.

Clark doesn't just go out there and whack it idly around, either.

"He's real consistent," said Auburn Hills pro Jeff Gandee. "He'll go and shoot between 70 and 75 every time. I've never been around anybody like him."

Most golfers would be firing buttons 10 yards off their chest at those kinds of results. To Clark, it constitutes a slump.

"I was playing better three years ago," he said. "I was shooting some low scores then."

Knowing that he was shooting his age when he was in his 60s probably serves as little comfort to the guys in his regular group at Auburn Hills who he took a little bit of money off the other day. The 72 he shot held up just fine.

This gentleman knows how to have fun on the links, to be sure. He works at it.

"Every day, he's out here by 8, 8:30, hits a bucket of ball, works on his putting, then go plays," Gandee said. "He doesn't hit it real far any more, but he hits it straight. Same swing every time. He's amazing."

One part of the game that doesn't seem to amaze Clark at all is high level competition. About a month ago, he won the Virginia State Golf Association Super Senior (age 70 and older) championship at the Homestead Cascades Course in Hot Springs. He's come close before, but that's the first time he'd won a statewide tournament. The top seed, Clark required two extra holes to best Don Lashinger of Williamsburg. A 7-foot birdie putt on the second hole, the par-5 16th, put the issue to rest.

The only part of the whole deal that made Clark nervous was his tee shot on the first playoff hole. A par-3, he'd parred it routinely during the week (counting qualifying, the tournament lasted five days) but kept dropping his first shot short. To start the playoff, he chose to use more club than he needed, in this case his driver, but to ease up on it in order to plop it on the green. He called it "a finesse shot."

"It worked out perfectly," he said.

Added to his Super Senior crown in the Southwest Open at Draper Valley in August, it would seem as though he's having quite a year. Even so, he still thinks he was playing better a couple of seasons ago.

Nobody can say he doesn't have a frame of reference.

"I've been playing golf 61 years," he said.

Completely self-taught, he picked up the game as a caddie at Linville Country Club near his boyhood home on a farm in the mountains of western North Carolina. Later, he taught his sons David and Bobby how to play. That was before he turned the family Christmas tree and nursery stock business over to them. As it turned out, the guys inherited their father's business sense as well. Bobby, a golfer of high repute in this area and beyond, inherited his father's feel for the game.

"He's the best player in the family," Clark said.

Among the "hundreds" of others Clark helped learn to play over the years is his wife Mary. She still plays, occasionally with him, which can get tense sometimes.

"I've stopped giving her advice," he said. "If it goes wrong, she blames me."

After 45 years, they're still married, though. What's not to envy about that?