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By Lauren Deason
PGATOUR.com Editorial Coordinator

When Andy Bean travels to Hawaii each year, there's one must-do on his list of activities. And it doesn't involve hula-dancing, visiting one of the beautiful beaches or a luau.

Since 1996, Bean and fellow pros, including Paul Azinger, Phil Blackmar and Brad Bryant, have put on a golf clinic for the servicemen and servicewomen stationed at the Hickam Air Force Base.

On Tuesday, Bean and Bryant took time away from their preparation for this week's Turtle Bay Championship to pay their annual visit to the Mamala Bay Golf Course. The two played nine holes with a group of people who work on the base, then put on a clinic for those who came out to watch.

And, while it's exciting for those stationed at the base to meet the famous golf professionals, the admiration and appreciation isn't one-sided. Bean was grateful for the privilege to meet with everyone ? from the generals, colonels, lieutenants and privates to those who run the golf shop and tend to the course.

"Most of the time they want to talk about golf and we want to know what they do," Bean said. "They say 'thank you' but really it is 'thank you' to them. We are just coming out, playing golf and doing what we do. I think the main thing is you hope you help them out a little bit and help them have a good time. I know Brad Bryant has the same feeling."

During the clinic, Bryant and Bean served as judges for a longest drive competition. The prize? The person who hit the ball the furthest got to keep the driver. Needless to say, the stakes were high and the competition was fierce. But that didn't stop the group from having fun.

As Bean tells it, there were basically two guys in the running for the driver. One had just returned from Iraq in December after a six-month tour, while the other was the head of surgery on the base. According to Bean, the doctor really wanted to win the contest, but it wasn't meant to be.

"I looked at [the doctor] and said 'I'm sorry, but Patrick has got you, man. And his drives go straight, too,'" Bean said, with a laugh. "Here's a guy who had just got back in December and he was out there at the clinic. Shoot, he was as happy as he could be."

Bean continued to chuckle as he recalled the eventual contest winner's words of advice to a participant who used the prized driver after him. "One of guys teed it up really high, so he went to help him tee it up. He told him that he needed to tee it down a bit to catch it really solid, but, really, he just didn't want a mark on his driver. I loved it."

It's not just the servicemen who aspire to be like Bean and Bryant. It works the other way around, too, as one of Bean's dreams is to fly a jet and land on a carrier. He nearly got the opportunity to ride in a jet years ago, in Tampa before Operation Desert Storm, but understood when his chance had to be postponed. Still, one day Bean hopes to get up in an F-15.

"I told one of the admirals, if you let me land on deck, I'd land on a carrier with somebody," said Bean. But he understands it is one thing to make golf balls fly, but it is considerably harder to fly a plane. To use a golf analogy, Bean says, "that guy, he is a scratch handicap, he can't make any double bogeys and still be landing on carriers. Those guys are the ones who don't make any mistakes."

Bean, an 11-time winner on the PGA TOUR, won his first Champions Tour event at the 2006 Greater Hickory Classic at Rock Barn. On the island, he won the 1980 Hawaiian Open on the PGA TOUR and, most recently, he tied for 19th at last week's MasterCard Championship at Hualalai.

Through his successful golf career, Bean has been able to reach out to others, like those he has met over the years at Hickam Air Force Base, and is grateful for the opportunity.

"They are out in other countries protecting us and we really appreciate it," he said. "We are out dodging raindrops on the golf course and they are dodging bullets. If we can't do something to help them then there is something the matter. That is why we enjoy it so much.

"I think everything went well [on Tuesday] and we even snuck in a little bit of fishing, so that was kind of the exclamation point."

Did he catch anything?

"Of course," Bean said with a laugh. The golf course borders the bay, and an avid fisherman, he relished the chance to cast a line on Tuesday. But that's not what brings him back each year.

"We always look forward to going back [to the base]," Bean said. "I already told them we'd be glad to do it again next year."