Getting old is not for the faint of heart. That is certainly the case for golfers, as Father Time eventually saps us all of distance, touch and in some instances nerve.
And it is not so easy to walk 36 holes in a day anymore.
But while competing recently in a tournament at a newly opened club called Broomsedge outside Camden, South Carolina, as a member of a squad from the Outpost Club against a team from the Silver Club Golfing Society, I discovered there are actually some advantages to aging in this game. That’s because many tournaments these days are governed by a local rule giving graybeards such as myself the option to move up a set of tees if we meet specific criteria.
So, I strode, quite unabashedly, to the whites.
While I had heard of such dispensations, I never before availed myself of them because the numbers did not come close to adding up. But as Broomsedge head golf professional Trevor Murphy handed me my scorecard before the start of play, he told me that anyone whose age and handicap came to 75 or more could play from the white markers, which measured 6,326 yards, instead of the blues, which were a much meatier 6,619 yards.
Now, math has never been my strong suit, which probably makes sense given my chosen profession. But I was still able to calculate that as a 68-year-old with an 8 handicap, I was able to make a very different sort of cut. Barely.
And what a time I had after doing that! Most of my drives rolled out by the fairway bunkers that designers Mike Koprowski and Kyle Franz had dug out of the ground on the par-4s and par-5s, indicating I was most definitely playing from the proper markers. Just as enticing was the number of mid- to short irons I hit into greens designed to accept shots from those clubs. To be sure, I hit the odd 7-wood approach. But had I stayed on the blue tees, I would have been pulling hybrids and fairways from my bag all day long.
Perhaps best of all was the way I played throughout the two-round event and how that allowed me to help the OC best the Silver Club boys, who were led by Steve Scott, its founder and the man best known for taking Tiger Woods to 38 holes in the final of the 1996 U.S. Amateur.
I guess that getting older does have its benefits. Even in golf.
John Steinbreder
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Top: A still from the 1927 silent film 'Queer Ducks'
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