THREE RIVERS AREA — In May 2007, Stan Lee of Tumbling Shoals told an old friend he was going to win the U.S. Senior Amateur Championship that fall.
He turned 55, the minimum age to play, on Sept. 1, 2007, the eve of the tournament. Lo and behold, he won it.
Three years later, after having back surgery and rehabilitation, Lee made the same bold prediction, and he came oh-so-close to fulfilling it again. He reached Round 16 of the 56th Senior Amateur, played in October at Lake Nona Golf and Country Club in Orlando, Fla.
Even by his standards, he had a stellar season on the Arkansas State Golf Association senior tour.
Lee won all six of the senior tournaments that he entered:
• The Eagle Hill Senior Stroke Play, where he shot 69-69-138 to win by nine strokes;
• The ASGA Senior Match Play Championship at Cooper’s Hawk in Melbourne, where he beat Randy Woodard of Jonesboro, 6 and 5; John Vinson of Batesville, 7 and 6; defending champion Oscar Taylor of Hot Springs Village, 3 and 2; and Bev Hargraves of Helena, 2-up;
• The Fourth of July Classic at War Memorial Park in Little Rock, where he carded 62-66-62-190, 2-under-par;
• The Maumelle Classic, where he shot 70-70-67-207 to win by seven strokes;
• The Cooper’s Hawk Senior Stroke in Melbourne, where he won by eight strokes (68-65-133); and
• The ASGA Senior Stroke at the Country Club of Arkansas, where he shot 70-70-74-214 to win by five.
Counting the 175 he got for his Round-of-16 finish in the Senior Amateur, Lee earned 1,095 points to easily repeat as the ASGA’s Senior Player of the Year. He finished 343 points ahead of runner-up Ken Golden of Clarksville.
“I am playing well,” Lee said during his run. “I’m healthy for the first time in maybe 20 years. I had back surgery last year, and it took me a year to get over that, but I’m perfectly healthy now. I don’t have any excuses.”
Jay Fox, executive director of the ASGA, has followed Lee for most of his career.
“The cream always rises to the top,” Fox said in introducing Lee as the ASGA’s 2009 Senior Player of the Year at the ASGA Hall of Fame dinner. “Stan Lee is known far and wide around the Mid-South and will go down in history as one of the best amateur golfers in Arkansas.”
With his ’07 Senior Am win, Lee became the youngest winner in the event’s history at 55 years, five days, a record that will likely stand for years. He also earned exempt status to the Senior Am for 10 years.
“And that will be beyond my usefulness,” he said, chuckling.
He also got to play in the U.S. Senior Open in ’08, when he made the cut. In the ’08 Senior Am, he lost in the first round in sudden death. In ’09, he reached the Round of 16, where he fell on the final hole.
“I struggled both years, especially in ’08, when I could hardly play,” he said. “In ’09, I’d had surgery (in February), and it’s amazing how long it takes as we get older to get over something like that.”
Lee had ruptured a disk years ago and had surgery then. This was a follow-up to that procedure to remove scar tissue and bone spurs.
“As far as back operations go, this was pretty simple, and I’m fortunate because it worked,” he said. “I’m good to go now.”
Lee, a 1999 inductee into the Arkansas Golf Hall of Fame, is one of the state’s most accomplished golfers. A two-time All-American at LSU in 1973 and ’74, he played five years on the PGA Tour, with his best finish a second at the New Orleans Open in 1977.
But he chose to quit the Tour in 1980, and the experience bothered him for 27 years until his Senior Am triumph.
“I felt like a failure because I couldn’t make it on the Tour,” he said then. “Physically, I should have, but I wasn’t very mature. There was a little bit of anger I’ve carried around. But I knew if I won a USGA event, that would make it all right.”
Lee had regained his amateur status in the mid-1980s. Along the way, he added to the state amateur titles he’d won in 1970 (match play), ’71 (stroke and match), ’72 (match), ’73 (stroke) and ’74 (match), with ASGA Stroke Play titles in 2000 and ’01, ASGA Senior Match Play in 2008 and ’10, and ASGA Senior Stroke Play in 2009 and ’10.
He also has six ASGA Four-ball titles (1990, ’91,’93, ’96, 2000 and ’06), all with his brother Louis. Altogether, Lee has won 25 state titles, including six high school championships (three individual, three team) and one state junior championship.
He has won golf tournaments in Arkansas in six decades.
A few years ago, Lee toyed with the idea of playing on the Champions Tour but regained his amateur status officially in 2005.
Unlike many golfers as they grow older, Lee’s game has continued to improve.
“Mentally, my game has evolved,” he said. “Physically, I’m not as good as I was at 30, 35, but I know how to play now. I don’t make boneheaded mental errors that I see young players make.
“I understand how to maximize my game. If I play like a 75, I can get a 71. If I play like a 69, I can get a 65.”
Not surprisingly, he credits his experience.
“It’s like Tom Watson,” he said. “He’s learned his swing. Ironically, it didn’t happen until I was around 50 years old. As I got older, I realized I couldn’t hit the ball harder and farther, and that’s when I became a better player. I realized I had to manipulate it. I wish I’d known that when I was 20. All I wanted to do then was hit it as hard as I could.”
“I appreciate it now, and I really savor every time I get to play,” Lee said. “I don’t get mad; I don’t get upset.
“We all have a finite amount of time here, and when you’re doing something like golf, it’s a hobby, and you need to savor every second you’ve got.
“And I do.”