The venerable foursome: Tim Willibey, Gary Roche, Dennis Dyer, and Dick Conlin. With advancing age some find it hard to walk far or climb hills, so they now play on a totally flat course in Dundee. | Courtesy of Mike Sinelli
For many people, golf is a true passion. It is something they do whenever the weather is nice, and the passion never seems to wane. A golfer who at forty was bombing 290-yard drives from the blue tees may be pounding 170-yard drives from the red tees at eighty, with no change in focus or exuberance. In fact, the eighty-year-olds are probably playing a lot more golf than they did at forty.
One of my favorite pieces of golf memorabilia is a blue button that I occasionally wear on my golf shirt that says “Golf Is My Life.” For thirty years, four of us orchestrated a small golf tournament for twenty-four players. We picked sites around the country and played thirty-six holes a day for three straight days.
One of the participants, Forrest, struck up a conversation with a gentleman sitting next to him on an airplane. Turns out the fellow passenger was also a golfer, so the conversation naturally gravitated to golf.
Forrest commented that his traveling companion was really into the game. The man responded immediately, with great sincerity: “Golf is my life!”
Forrest made buttons for all twenty-four of us.
For many years, when I go back to my roots in Ann Arbor, I have been invited to play with a great group of golf enthusiasts. If the weather is good, they are trying to make it to the golf course.
This foursome played in a formal league for years, every Tuesday night all summer. They formed another Saturday league that teed off just before or after sunrise. In addition, they had a recurring holiday tournament that consisted of thirty-six holes on every legal holiday during the warm-weather months.
Every game includes an elaborate betting scheme. In fact, one of my Michigan friends says that he really doesn’t like to play golf, but he can’t resist the small-stakes gambling.
Only one or two people actually know how to administer the bets. Money goes to the low gross scores, the low net scores, the fewest putts, the most greens hit. We may play bingle-bangle-bungle, Wolf, Vegas, Nassau, greenies, sandies, closest to the pin, and skins. Everyone lingers around the nineteenth hole while the bets are tallied. You can order a beer, another beer, a cheeseburger, and another beer while the tabulation is in progress. Finally, the settlement and distribution is completed. If you have a really bad day, you could lose $75.
The Ann Arbor guys developed a facet of betting that I have not seen anywhere else: if you play with them regularly, you can buy insurance that will significantly lessen the impact of a bad day on the course. You put up $20 or $30 at the beginning of the season, and, if you have a bad day, insurance may pay for half your losses.
Now many of these golfers are seventy-five to eighty-five years old, and the natural aging process has really diminished their ability to play the game. One has pulmonary and heart conditions that prevent him from climbing even small hills. The second has diminished cardio capacity and can’t walk much more than twenty-five yards at a time. The third has Parkinson’s disease, and the fourth has progressive macular degeneration.
There are a lot of joint challenges—hips, knees, shoulders, and backs. All of us over seventy-five are having some form of cognitive issues.
The foursome withdrew from league play when they could no longer keep the pace, but the fire is still there. They are finding a way to get to the course for nine holes at least once a week.
Geologically, Ann Arbor is an interesting place. There are a lot of hills, so most of the golf courses here are on pretty, rolling terrain. So the foursome drives thirty miles south to Dundee, where they found a course that is totally flat. No hill challenges for the cardio impaired.
Two of the four can no longer drive a car. Another is an Uber driver, and the fourth can drive but is suffering macular degeneration. To verify the cognitive impairment, the selected driver is Gary, the one experiencing macular degeneration—not Dennis, who is the Uber driver.
On a recent Thursday Dundee outing, several challenges arose. A couple of guys lost clubs. They arrived at the third tee and found that they only had three players, because Dick drove off in the cart after playing the second hole, leaving one of the cardio-impaired players on the green; he had to go back to retrieve the walking-challenged competitor.
All in all, it was still a great day of golf. But when he got home, Dennis noticed that he no longer had his wallet.
He called Gary and asked him to check his car, thinking it was probably in the back seat someplace. While Gary was running through the car, Dennis rechecked his golf bag and found the wallet in one of the eight zipper pockets.
Gary returned to the phone and said: “I couldn’t find your wallet. I don’t think you lost it in the car. I did find Dick’s wallet, however. I’ll drop it off at his place.”
These guys are still at it, perfect proof that golf is an undying passion. As with all golfers, if the weather is great, this venerable foursome is thinking: “We should be playing golf!”
For more of Mike Sinelli’s writings, reminiscences, and ridiculousness, visit
sinellimakesyoulaugh.com.