Golf helped Lee get back on course

The 10th in a series profiling the 2015 inductees into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.

Stan Lee was at his lowest after his son Jason was killed in an automobile accident while returning home from deer hunting in 1997.

Lee was content as a successful businessman at the time, having already enjoyed his share of glory days on the golf course, including a five-year stint on the PGA Tour.

Something changed after his son's death. Lee began to feel again the competitive tug of the game he'd always loved.

"I started playing competitive again right after that in 1998, because in my life, I always turned to golf when I was at my lowest," said Lee, 62, who is the community bank president at First National Bank in Heber Springs and will be inducted Friday night into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock. "It was my way to recover and to get over whatever bothered me.

"I couldn't work. I quit working for five years. That's why I am working now. I'll work until I'm 97, but that's OK."

There is no question the game in which he'd had so much success played a significant part in helping Lee get his life back on course, and he didn't miss a beat following his return as he continued to win on state and national levels.

In 2013 Lee became the oldest man to win an Arkansas State Golf Association Match Play championship when at the age of 60 he defeated 19-year-old Drew Greenwood 4 and 3 for his fifth state match-play title. Then, after a crushing 7-and-5 loss to Greenwood in last year's quarterfinals, Lee said he'd played his final round of competitive golf. He simply felt that his body couldn't do what he needed it to do without it causing him embarrassment on the course.

That doesn't mean he has walked away from the game totally. It also doesn't mean that he is spending his weekends beating his buddies on the links. Instead he serves as a coach and mentor to 12 aspiring golfers who want to play in college, and he does it for free.

"I just do it because I love to do it," said Lee, who still holds the distinction of being the state's youngest match-play winner as well after his 1970 victory as a 17-year-old. "My greatest fulfillment in golf is what they're going to do the next 10 years in golf.

"It's a labor of love. I like working with young people, and I'm really going to enjoy what they do."

Lee said Red Apple Inn and Country Club professional Dave Bennett taught him and his brother, Louis, how to play golf and never charged them a penny.

"And he needed the money," Lee said. "He needed the money more than we did, but he wouldn't take it. So I have always had this on my heart to repay that."

Even so, Lee admits there is more to it than just repaying a favor.

"I think losing my son has a lot to do with this," he said. "I have a big hole in my heart, and being around young people makes me feel like I've still got him.

"You never get over it. Some days are better than others, but it doesn't hurt me to talk about it."

Lee realized just how much he missed golf after leaving the PGA Tour in 1998, where his best finish was second in the Greater New Orleans Open in 1977.

The 18-year gap away from competitive play helped stoke a new fire. He won the state stroke play in 2000 and 2001, then teamed with Louis to win the state four-ball championship in 2000 and 2006 before capping his 29th state title at the 2013 match play championship against the same player who would send him packing the following year.

"It was very painful to lose that day," Lee said of his 2014 matchup with Greenwood. "Drew played great, and I'm proud of him. He is a fine young man and a great player. That was an embarrassing day. It was like I had hung on too long, one too many.

"I hope with Drew that he saw the best and worst. It's easy to act good when you're winning. It's not easy to act good when you're losing, and I hope that he saw in me the day he beat me 7 and 5 that I acted right, that I acted classy. That I didn't look or act like a bad loser.

"I hoped he got that from me, because golf is always going to win."

Lee's greatest victory on the national level was a 4-and-3 victory over Sam Farlow of Birmingham, Ala., to win the 2007 U.S. Senior Amateur in Andover, Kan., but his best day on the course came four years later.

Lee looked like he was well on his way to winning the 2011 U.S. Senior Amateur but had to get by a familiar opponent in the quarterfinals -- his younger brother, Louis.

The two rode in the same cart during the round, gave each other putts of varied distances and had a wire-to-wire match that Louis ultimately won with a 25-foot birdie putt on the first playoff hole. His victory in 2007 might have been Stan Lee's greatest victory, but he said watching his brother win the 2011 championship meant more.

"That was the greatest day of golf in my life when he won," Lee said "I was caddying for him. I was there. I watched the whole thing. He had a 4-foot putt on the last hole, and I was so nervous I really thought I was going to throw up, but he made it.

"Two days earlier he had beat me in the quarterfinals and that really hurt. I wanted him to win, but I didn't want to lose. We were conflicted, both of us, the whole 18 holes. I was so happy for him, but it really hurt. ... I don't mean that the way it sounds. For somebody that is competitive, losing hurts. I don't care you lose to."

Louis agreed it was a special day for both of them.

"Neither of us could have dreamed that script," Louis said. "It was a special day in the lives of the Lee boys.

"He's accomplished a lot in his life, particularly in golf. Being inducted into the state hall of fame is the pinnacle, something he's worked hard for and well-deserved."

ASGA Executive Director Jay Fox said no single person has had a greater impact on amateur golf within the state than Stan Lee.

"He came on the scene in the early 1970s and started winning everything," Fox said. "He went off and played the Tour awhile, came back and dominated again. I don't think there is anything that you could say that Stan Lee hasn't done in amateur golf in Arkansas, and he's done it over five decades.

Lee said golf has opened doors in his life that he never thought he would have a chance to walk through.

"Every job I have had has been because of golf," said Lee, who still serves on the USGA's regional affairs committee. "Golf has given me everything I've got. I was able to go to places like Pebble Beach, Cypress Point. The first time I got to go to Hawaii was at a college golf tournament. I traveled from the northeast to the southwest, and from the southeast to the northwest. I got to see the country.

"Golf has given me so much that I feel like I am able to take some small pleasure that when I work with these young people I am giving some of that back. I hope to. I try to. I want them to know what the game of golf meant to me and helped get me where I am today."

Sports on 02/25/2015