Oct. 14, 2008 -- First off, let's stop the rumors before they start: Justin Timberlake and Kenny Perry are still friends. In fact, according to his MySpace page, Perry has no less than 99 friends and Timberlake -- at least at press time -- occupies a coveted spot in "Kenny Perry's Friend Space (Top 8)."

But Perry won't be with his buddy in Vegas this week for the PGA Tour's Justin Timberlake Shriners Hospital for Children Open. He'll be home in Franklin, Kentucky, precisely two time zones and approximately four jillion neon light years away from Sin City.

The most recent census counted Franklin's population at just a foursome shy of 8,000. The little town two exits north of Tennessee may not have a Timberlake, it does have a Country Creek. That's the name of the golf course Perry built a dozen years ago in and for his hometown. And what it may lack in Shriners -- the nearest fez is a 45-minute mini-motorcycle ride down Interstate 65 in Nashville -- Franklin makes up for in enshrinees.

Last Thursday night under a red-and-white striped tent adjacent to Country Creek's 18th hole, Perry was honored by a college he never attended alongside the man responsible for his matriculation in a school of a different sort. Lipscomb University in Nashville inducted both Perry and his friend and fellow Franklin resident Ronnie Ferguson into its Athletics Hall of Fame, each for meritorious service and Ferguson additionally for his on-course exploits for the school from 1959-62. What exploits, specifically? Ferguson told the crowd he earned a spot on the Bison golf team by raising his hand when they asked during a chapel service one day if anyone owned a set of clubs. His contributions to Lipscomb and Perry a quarter century later were far more significant.

Perry was an accomplished junior golfer growing up in Franklin and Paducah. He played collegiately at Western Kentucky from 1979-82 and in all four years earned a varsity letter. But it was the numbers that weren't adding up in his nascent pro career. By 1986, a couple of unsuccessful attempts at the PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament and a few fruitless years of slugging it out on the mini tours had exhausted most of his sponsorship dollars and nearly all of his hopes of one day making it big.

Having effectively been taken to the cleaners, Perry took one last shot: he asked to speak to the manager.

Ferguson, who owned an area dry cleaning and laundry business, was a leader at the same Franklin Church of Christ where Perry and his wife, Sandy, were (and remain) faithful members. He'd told Perry years before to let him know if he ever needed financial help. "Ever" happened in the summer of '86.

"He came into my office and said, 'Mr. Ferguson, did you mean what you said a few years ago?' I didn't know what he meant at first," Ferguson told me on the front porch of the Country Creek clubhouse. Perry explained he still believed he could make it on the PGA Tour but that he needed $5,000 to make a final run at Q-School that fall. Ferguson said he'd need to pray about it with his wife, Emily, and told Perry to come back the next day.

"When he came back, I told him we had decided not to loan him the money. Instead," Ferguson said, "we were going to give it to him. I believed he could not only make it but become a great role model for players coming up behind him." Ferguson told Perry he didn't want to be repaid, regardless of whether or not Perry graduated from Q-School. But if he did make it, he asked him to choose a percentage of his future Tour winnings and give it to Lipscomb, the alma mater of the Fergusons and Sandy Perry. This time, it was Perry who asked for a day to think about it. "He came back," Ferguson recalled, "and said, 'Would five percent be enough?' I said, 'Kenny, it doesn't matter what the percentage is, just give it.'"

One successful trip to the Qualifying Tournament, 12 Tour wins, and $26 million in career earnings later, Perry has given and then some. I'll save you a trip to your Start Menu calculator -- that's more than $1.3 million in Bison bucks. And counting. Perry's also proven Ferguson right in becoming one of the most respected players on Tour, one willing to share his faith in Christ with anyone who'll listen but unwilling to give a cold shoulder to those who won't.

Twenty-two years after their handshake deal, neither man will loosen his grip. Ferguson has never asked for his money back; Perry -- irrespective of the increasingly lopsided ledger -- keeps giving Lipscomb five. And that cash continues to pave the 50 mile-stretch of I-65 between the campus and the cleaners where the details of what would become a hall of fame partnership were ironed out. To date, their alternate shot-in-the-arm philanthropy has helped 26 Simpson County kids attend Lipscomb.

Kenny Perry and Ronnie Ferguson have turned their hometown into Send City, teaming up to make sure that -- unlike Vegas -- what happens in Franklin doesn't stay there.

Grant Boone is a husband, father, broadcaster, and journalist born in Tennessee and living in Texas. During his nearly 20 years in sports journalism, he's been heard on tape delay in pizza joints half-filled with fully-drunk beer league softball teams and around the world covering major sporting events for ESPN, Turner Sports, Golf Channel, and CBS Radio. To read past installments of Grant Me This, click here. You can contact Grant at pgagrant@hotmail.com.