RIVER VALLEY and OZARK AREA — In May 2007, Stan Lee of Tumbling Shoals told an old friend he was going to win the United States 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 back surgery and rehabilitation, he’s made the same bold prediction, so this old friend will pay close attention to the 56th Senior Amateur, to be played Oct. 2-7 at Lake Nona Golf and Country Club in Orlando, Fla.
Meanwhile, Lee is having a stellar season on the Arkansas State Golf Association senior tour.
At press time, Lee had won all three senior tournaments he’d played:
◊The Eagle Hill 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; and
◊The Fourth of July Classic at War Memorial Park in Little Rock, where he carded 62-66-62 - 190, 2-under-par.
He led the race for the ASGA’s Senior Player of the Year Award - an honor he also won last year - with 460 points, 100 ahead of Ken Golden of Clarksville.
“I am playing well,” he said. “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.”
So does he stand by the prediction he made at the ASGA’s Hall of Fame dinner last November?
“Absolutely,” he said. “That’s really why I play during the year - to prepare for that.”
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, the ASGA’s 2009 Senior Player of the Year, at the ASGA Hall of Fame dinner in November. “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, 5 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 United States Senior Open in ’08, where 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.”
He 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.”
He 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 (2008 and ’10) and ASGA Senior Stroke (2009).
He also has six ASGA Fourball titles (1990, ’91, ’93, ’96, 2000 and ’06), all with his brother Louis. Altogether, he has won 24 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, his 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 75, I can get a 71. If I play like a 69, I can get a 65.”
Not surprisingly, he credits 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 washit it as hard as I could.”
Between now and the Senior Am in October, Lee said, he will be busy practicing and playing five more Arkansas senior events.
“I appreciate it now, and I really savor every time I get toplay,” he 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.”
River Valley Ozark, Pages 65 on 07/29/2010