PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. – Kevin Hall laughs at those who don’t know. Not a mean-spirited laugh. Hardly. Hall is about as vicious as Paula Abdul, but he does enjoy seeing the confusion in the gallery when they finally figure it out.

“I don’t act like a deaf person,” said Hall, who is playing in his third career PGA TOUR event this week at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. “I talk, I laugh, I can read lips, whatever. But when they see me signing, then I see their eyes going ‘Oh, what’s he doing? What’s this?’ And then their faces, they look like idiots and my dad has to explain that I’m deaf. Their reaction is sort of priceless. I love it.”

But who can blame the fans for their confusion? Hall refuses to be labeled. Meningitis may have nearly killed him when he was two and taken his hearing not long after, but he and his family refused to let it stop him one bit. He bowled, played soccer, basketball and baseball. In fact, he was good enough at baseball to cause arguments among the parents who felt the coach was playing him too much and ignoring the other players. He led Ohio State to the Big Ten Championship and became the first Buckeye to earn medalist honors since 1998.

“I tell people all the time ‘You see the glory, but I know the story,’” said Percy Hall, Kevin’s dad.

That story includes Kevin in the hospital for 30 days, including 10 of them with a 103 fever. It includes doctors refusing to say just how close Kevin came to dying but instead offering such prognosises like he may be brain damaged or left in a vegetative state. It includes the detail the disease burned out the nerve fibers in Kevin’s ears taking away his hearing when he was just 2 years and 3 months old.

“He was a sick little kid,” Percy Hall said. “He had to learn to walk all over again, start all over. It was the most devastating thing to happen to me in my life but I learned you’re not always responsible for what happens, but you are responsible for how you respond.”

And that response was to treat Kevin as though he were, for lack of a better word, normal. Percy learned the alphabet in sign language overnight. Percy and Jackie, Kevin’s mom, would put letters with their sign language equivalent around the house so Kevin would learn. They taught him to count by rolling a bowling ball back and forth and after each roll, they would teach Kevin the number.

Those notions that the doctors shared with Percy and Jackie that Kevin might not read or live a full life were being shattered by the day.

“When I became deaf, my mom and dad made a promise that they would raise me like a normal person and they never broke that promise,” Kevin said. “ They taught me bowling, let me learn golf and I played sports in other schools where deaf and hearing children went to school together.

“I’ve gone to a university where ordinary persons go, Ohio State, and now they’re allowing me to pursue my dreams,” Kevin said. “These people work hard and they gave me an idea of how to live my life. They inspire me.”

Kind of like Kevin inspires others. A group from the California School of the Deaf is coming to watch Kevin play Thursday and meet him after the round. And there’s a reason tournaments like to invite Kevin and it’s not because his letter is on nice stationary.

“When I write them, I tell them I’m deaf and I tell them I’m black and then I tell them that I don’t want them to look at me as different. I want them to look at me as a person who wants a chance to play the best players in the world. I don’t want them to see me as deaf or handicapped,” Kevin said. “But that will probably never happen. People will always see me as deaf and black. It’s a great story and it will always be my story.

“The positive thing about it is I can use my story to inspire other people, to help them see that they can do what they want to help them pursue their dreams,” Kevin said. “If I can help one person that would make me happy.”

But for now, Kevin prepares to play a round on what he calls the top golf course he’s ever played on in his life. Having not played a competitive round since November’s Q-school, where he led after the first stage before stumbling in stage two, he’s keeping the expectations low and plans on simply enjoying the experience.

Hall’s strengths are his short game and he gets in trouble when he tries to muscle it out there too much. He just wants to get his game to improve little by little. Do that, and he might make his first cut.

“The thing I learned (from the other two tournaments) is not to be stupid and to stop being a hero. Just play my own game, play within myself, don’t play anyone else’s game and play the course,” Kevin said. “K-I-S-S. Keep it simple, stupid. That’s what my dad always says.”

So far, the Hall family plans have done pretty well. Just ask the fans in the gallery.