Showing up as a single on a Sunday morning as a visitor to a private club, you never know what you’re going to get.
At the Amelia Island Club’s Long Point course last week, I got paired up with three older gentlemen members – Bill, Art and Dave. Any preconceived notions connecting their age with ability were dismissed when they each smashed it down the middle of the par-5 opener en route to easy pars that set the tone for the entire round.
Sharing the cart was Bill Rodgers, 79. Bill retired from a consumer credit reporting agency when he was 59. He spends roughly half his year in Highlands, North Carolina, and the other half at his condo in Fernandina Beach in the northeast corner of Florida. He bought a boat and got his captain’s license when he retired to tool around the Bahamas with his wife and the ice maker that made them a lot of friends every evening. When they got tired of that, he sold the boat and thought he might buy a small plane.
“You might want to learn how to fly first,” his wife suggested. Despite safely landing a plane during piloting lessons one day, Bill decided to leave the flying to others and stick to golf.
Most impressive, however, is the full turn Bill takes in his swing. He’s long and lean and shows no hint of slowing down. … he’s consistently almost as long as my best drives despite yielding nearly two decades of wear and tear.
With a nice new fitted set of Titleist GT woods and T350 irons that mirror my own, Bill was getting out for the first time in a while since recovering from a heart attack. The only relative concessions to age in his bag are a long putter and a mildly whippy shaft on his driver that he found online.
Most impressive, however, is the full turn Bill takes in his swing. He’s long and lean and shows no hint of slowing down. He doesn’t get it out there as far as Art, the real bomber of the trio, but he’s consistently almost as long as my best drives despite yielding nearly two decades of wear and tear.
“I work on it,” Bill says when asked how he still does it. He has a regular workout regimen once prescribed to him to keep his strength and flexibility, using small 5-pound weights (and nothing more than 8 pounds for curls) in various exercise reps he illustrates for me.
Other than one chunky wedge from the middle of the fairway on the 17th hole, Bill didn’t miss much. He made two birdies and missed a third from about 12 feet on the last hole that would have shot his age. He settled for 80 – four better than the score I was thrilled to post.
My new bucket list includes some 5-pound weights and the hope that when I grow up like Bill, my score and age won’t be so far apart.
Scott Michaux
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