By John Johnston
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Long driver Rob Duncan competes in hitting the golf ball for distance. His top...378 yards. (Michael E. Keating/The Cincinnati Enquirer)

Everybody has a story worth telling. That's the theory, anyway. To test it, Tempo is throwing darts at the phone book. When a dart hits a name, a reporter dials the phone number and asks if someone in the home will be interviewed. Stories appear weekly.

The competitor in him won't let Rob Duncan forget those 6 inches in Fort Wayne.

Half a foot. That's how close the 33-year-old Addyston man came to earning a berth in the 2001 Re/Max World Long Drive Championship.

For some of us, "long drive" conjures up images of cross-country trips in a crowded minivan. For Duncan, it's about hitting golf balls as far as humanly possible.

Which is what he was doing three years ago in Fort Wayne. In his first year of competition, he'd made it to the Indiana regional finals. But he was paired with another competitor who hit a ball 6 inches further, and Duncan was left to ponder what might have been.

Although there's some money to be made in long-drive competitions, Duncan hasn't pocketed any. Besides, that's not what motivates him.

"The thing I enjoy the most - I like the competition. That's the only reason I keep doing it. I love to compete."

He's been competing most of his life.

Ask his wife, Kathryn, who has known him since she was 16.

"Sometimes he can be kind of a pain to live with," she says, "because he's good at everything he does."

When he bowled, she says, his team was always among the league leaders. When he threw darts, his team was league champ. He enjoyed similar success in softball. He also fished competitively for several years, and his successes include a tournament in which he and a friend won $10,000.

He looks tired this cold winter day. Duncan hasn't slept since coming off his third-shift job as a Hamilton County highway maintenance supervisor. He wears jeans, a camouflage hat and shirt, and a closely trimmed beard.

At Taylor High, he was good enough to earn all-city honors in both golf and baseball. But his first love was baseball. He was a pitcher.

His senior year, he earned a spot in an all-star game at Riverfront Stadium. He threw two no-hit innings. He was with buddies later that day when his parents tracked him down and said an Atlanta Braves scout had seen him pitch and wanted to sign him to a contract.

Duncan walked away from two full-ride college scholarships to play rookie league ball in Florida that year. A starter, he finished the season with a glittering 0.95 earned run average. The next year he was promoted to a Single-A club - three levels below the major leagues - in Sumter, S.C. His teammates included future big-leaguers Mark Wohlers, Steve Avery, Mike Stanton and Tony Tarasco.

In a game midway through the season, Duncan threw a breaking ball and felt a twinge in his lower back. On the next throw he collapsed. That was his last pitch as a pro ballplayer.

No regrets, he says now.

He came home to Cincinnati, where he met Kathryn. They have two children, Cody, 13, and Kayla, 7.

An uncle suggested he hit at a long drive competition in Rising Sun, Ind.

"Nah, I've seen it on TV," Duncan said. "I don't hit the ball like those guys."

But the uncle kept prodding, and Duncan beat about 30 others at the event. It was, he soon learned, the first step toward qualifying for the Re/Max World Long Drive Championship in Mesquite, Nev. He found he could increase his chances of making it there by qualifying in any number of district competitions.

Three years later, he's still aiming for the worlds.

He's hit balls in Johnstown, Pa., and New Jersey and Chicago and Ypsilanti, Mich., where he blasted his longest qualifying drive, 378 yards. (In comparison, last year at the world finals, the winning drive was 402 yards.)

His sponsors - Terry Industries, Hinson Roofing & Sheet Metal and JMA Consultants - help lessen the financial burden, but cover only a portion of his expenses.

"Everybody has to have an outlet," says Kathryn Duncan, who works in retail and juggles their children's schedules. She has been able to accompany her husband to just one competition.

"The only thing I can do is support him, because he's always been there to support me."

Meanwhile, Duncan is looking forward to spring, when he can send balls sailing again. "I don't feel that I'm outmatched," he says. That's the competitor talking.

E-mail jjohnston@enquirer.com