On The Tee: Jackson Brown Senior Group Keeps Longevity In Play At Downriver
The old-timers who began teeing off with the “Jackson Brown Group” some 20 years ago will tell you the competitive spirit isn’t tempered any by age.
Longevity might govern the coals, but the fires still burn.
“Bring your sticks and your money if you want to come play with us,” says Bill Verstelle, 68, one of the original members of this group of senior golfers which continues to play three times a week at Downriver.
“According to the rules, we hit it where it lies,” he says, meaning it. “We don’t play for a lot of money, just quarters and a skins pot. But it’s enough to make you pay attention.”
The average age of these gentlemen is around 72, and the oldest is 81. Although some of the original members have passed away and others have quit for health reasons, the club remains about 25 members strong.
Nobody in the group is sure just how the Jackson Brown name came about two decades ago - some reckon it was simply a convenient name for the group to use when making its tee times.
On a Wednesday morning in early July, about 16 of these seniors were milling about Downriver’s first tee amidst a squadron of golf carts.
The good-natured ribbing that began before anyone ever hit a ball is the product of 20 years of friendship - among men whose backgrounds are as varied as the club selection in Chi Chi Rodriguez’s bag.
Bill Lockie, for instance, is a retired Spokane police officer. Keith Campbell was a lawyer in town, Jack Crabb a Cheney justice of the peace, Jake Kott and Lyle Moore both Air Force fighter pilots.
“We’ve got every form of endeavor here man did to make a living,” Lockie said, after launching a Maxfli about 200 yards onto the dog-leg left, smack dab in the gut of the fairway. “We’ve got one thing in common - golf.”
It isn’t just golf that binds members of the Jackson Brown group. They all belong to the same north Spokane Kiwanis club. In the winter, they bowl together. A couple times a year, the men and their wives gather for a festive social function.
But the atmosphere on the links seems to nurture the relationships between these men like no other setting. Beneath the Downriver pines, there is a clubby feeling akin to those who almost to a man came of age during the Depression, served in World War II or Korea - and now can’t imagine a better way to enjoy the fruits of their toils than on the golf course.
“I think it’s the camaraderie here,” says Lyle Moore, one of the retired Air Force colonels. “You know their families. You know where they came from. You like to play with strangers, but it’s just not the same.”
Mac McGuire is 76 years old, but he hits the ball straighter and stronger than most teenagers. It isn’t surprising to learn the retired Chrysler salesman has been playing golf for 50 years.
“My theory was, when I was working, I might as well forget about work for four hours because it was the only thing I could do to get through a round,” McGuire said.
Now, no longer faced with the pressures of work, McGuire is free to concentrate on the game out of simple love.
Two years ago, McGuire lost his wife, Norma. Pausing on the fifth green, he says it was his friends in the Jackson Brown group who helped him navigate the rough times.
“They canceled their golf game to come to the funeral,” he said, his sense of humor laced perceptibly with sad remembrance. “After that happened, they took care of me, getting me back into the mainstream swing of things.”
If there isn’t a group of youngsters in front of them to slow down the Jackson Brown group, Bill Lockie says they can play 18 holes in three and a half hours. Horsing around is kept to a bare minimum - especially when there’s a little bit of cash at stake.
“We’re only playing for a few quarters, but sometimes you’d think there were hundreds of dollars at stake,” said Lockie, no slouch on the course. He shot his age - 75 - three times last year, and at Downriver on two occasions he has made a hole-in-one, the first time in 1957 on No. 6 and the second in 1962 on No. 2.
Despite that golf’s spotlight is typically trained on younger professional players like Greg Norman or Tiger Woods, Lockie says the game is even more meaningful to senior players like those in the Jackson Brown group.
With aging often accompanied by loneliness, golf helps provide these men with companionship - and the chance to exercise joints whose willingness to move increases the deeper the men venture into a round.
“A lot of us have aches and pains,” says Jack Crabb, who started golfing with the Jackson Brown group just three years ago - when he realized he was losing too much money to the group of younger players he had been hitting with. “I have trouble getting up in the morning.
“But it’s no trouble to get me out here to shoot 18.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo