Love links
Left: Rosemary and Mel Soles.
Above: Mel (in orange) gives
customized instruction.
GOLFISAGAMEoftraps,doglegsandblown
shots. One might say the same about marriage.
Mel Soles beat par on both counts.
The South African, a professional golfer,
was on a ski vacation in Austria when he met
a beautiful Canadian named Rosemary.
Three days later he proposed. She moved to
South Africa, then to Toronto.
Mel quit the PGA Tour and started teaching the game, eventually landing a position in
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, working with
his former coach/mentor Phil Ritson. Not
sure it would work out, Rosemary stayed
behind in Canada, keeping her job as a para-
legal at a law firm.
“I could see Myrtle Beach was a golf
haven,” he recalls, “and a golf school would do
very well here. I told Rosemary to come on
down. We’ve been here ever since.
“At first, she came in and answered the
phones,” Mel says. “I worked for the salary.”
Mel eventually bought out Ritson, and
BOYKIN POWERS
Rosemary, his partner in life, became his partner in business as well.
“Even though she wasn’t a big golfer at
the time, she could talk the talk,” says Mel.
The Phil Ritson–Mel Sole Golf School (www.
ritson-sole.com) is consistently ranked among
the top 25 golf schools by Golf magazine, and
has additional locations in North Carolina,
New York, Georgia, Missouri and Mexico.
Mel advises starting students not to worry
about the score, but just enjoy themselves.
Probably good advice in marriage as well.
For Mel and Rosemary Sole, combining
marriage and business equaled a hole-in-one.—Steve Fisher
For goodness Zakle
WITH MONEY TIGHT these days, people need favors.
Costco member Eric Stamos of St. Peters, Missouri,
and his business partners have created a solution.
“[People are] limited by their networks. So the
impetus was to level
the playing field,” says
Stamos. “With Zakle
(
www.zakle.com), anyone can have a worldwide network with
which to trade favors.”
As a Zakle member,
you can do another
member a favor, for
which you gain a num-
A Spanish member hosts an
ber of points. One point
American as a Zakle “favor.”
is roughly equivalent to
one U.S. dollar. The more favors you grant, the more
points you accumulate. When you need a favor, you use
your points to get the favor from a member suited for
the task.
“You can get members to house you and show you
around if you’re visiting places like San Francisco, Dubai
or India,” Stamos says, adding that Zakle currently has
more than 25,000 members in more than 30 countries.
“You can get someone to edit your résumé, teach you
how to swim, give you a Reiki treatment, call you to
encourage you to stick to your diet, just have conversation with you, and on and on.”
Membership is free, with a nominal optional fee for
verification. And Zakle is rolling out its own stimulus
plan, granting 500 points to members in the U.S. who
have lost their job so they can get help with résumés,
haircuts, babysitters, etc.—SF
Arthritis “spokes”-man
CALL IT A JOINT VENTURE. After
successfully completing an eight-day,
520-mile bike ride along the California
Coast to raise money for the Arthritis
MIGUEL GONZALEZ PEREZ
Foundation in 2003, Costco
member Pete Staylor, the now-
55-year-old grandfather of five,
has put his mettle to the pedal
five years running, with a sixth
ride planned for October 2009
(
www.californiacoastclassic.org).
“It started as sort of a life-defining moment prior to turning 50 and wanting to make a
difference in my life as well as Pete Staylor
[the lives of] others’, ” says Staylor, who
is particularly empathetic toward arthritis sufferers, as he is afflicted with
osteoarthritis. “Both of my knees have
been operated on and I have had 42
BOB PATTERSON
Synvisc injections to relieve some of the
symptoms affiliated with the disease. He adds, “I purchase all of my ‘pain-
Running is out of the question, walking free’ glucosamine and chondroitin at
is painful; however, riding my bicycle Costco, and this too helps me ride.”
has multiple benefits.” —T. Foster Jones
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Costco or Costco members in some way), you can send it to “The
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