There was a time when Don Dean didn’t think much of golf, knew nothing about the game other than it looked a little odd.
He didn’t pick up a club until his late 40s when some soldier friends finally convinced him to join them for a round at Underwood Golf Course at Fort Bliss, where he was stationed.
That was more than a half-century ago.
“It was the mid-1960s. I’ve been hitting it around ever since then,” the 89-year-old Dean said from his East El Paso home. “I grew up in South Texas, I played a lot of sports, but I didn’t play any golf at all. I thought it was sort of a silly game, but my buddies kept asking me, ‘Let’s go play some golf.’ I finally did.”
What he quickly learned was that he was good at golf.
Very good.
Almost immediately after picking up a club, he was shooting in the 80s. He went on to win a pair of city senior championships in 2000 and 2001, numerous Underwood club titles, and until a few years ago, when he was in his mid-80s, had a five handicap.
He had his most recent hole-in-one six years ago (No. 5 on Underwood’s Sunrise course) and despite being treated for Parkinson’s Syndrome symptoms that include a small tremor in one of his hands, he regularly shoots under his age.
“I was a pretty good baseball player,” said Dean, who played baseball for Prairie View A&M before joining the Army in 1952. “A guy told me when I first started out, ‘You swing that club like a baseball bat.’ I picked it up quickly. Early on, I started out shooting in the 80s pretty quickly.
“My baseball skills helped me with my golf skills.”
That was in the mid-1960s, and he’s the last of that group of friends still playing golf. He’s found another set of friends. Dean says, “Call me grandpa, especially when I beat them.
“All the guys I’m playing with are much younger than I am. One of the guys is 47 years old, I can beat him sometimes. Not all the time, not like I used to, but sometimes.”
One of those friends, Julian Grubbs, disputes the calling him grandpa part, but not the winning part.
“We’ve been playing together 25 years, so it’s crept up on me, but I haven’t beaten him in several years,” said Grubbs, who is 73. “He’s amazing. I want to be like him when I grow up. We have so much fun on the golf course. Sometimes it’s hard to hit the ball we’re having so much fun.”
For his part, Dean, who retired from the military in 1982, is outrunning age. He’s still sharp, in good health, in the 21st year of marriage to his second wife, Julia. On a good day, he shoots in the mid-80s — he was shooting in the mid-70s five years ago — and he gets out to Underwood twice a week.
“I encourage him,” said Julia, who, like the rest of his family that includes four children born in the 1950s, doesn’t play herself. “It helps with his health, not just physically but getting out there and interacting with his friends. It keeps him going.”
There have been a few concessions. For one, his friends finally let him hit from the forward tees.
“They wouldn’t let me hit from those until I was 85 years old,” said Dean, a native of Port Lavaca in South Texas. “‘You beat us too badly.’ So I couldn’t shoot the forward tees until I was 85.”
Dean quit traveling out of town for tournaments a few years ago and no longer plays tournaments, though he acknowledges some small bills may change hands in their Wednesday games. He didn’t golf this past Wednesday, though, when rain was in the area.
“I’m a fair-weather golfer,” he said. “I used to go out when it was cold, but not anymore.”
El Paso is a good place to play fair-weather golf, one of the reasons he’s been here since 1958. Dean imagines he’ll be back on the course Saturday.
“It’s fun to get out there and play golf right now, just get off the couch, get out of the house, go out and relax, have some fun with my buddies,” Dean said. “It’s a good thing to be able to do that right now.
“I’m still out there trying to hit it around.”
Bret Bloomquist can be reached at 915-546-6359; bbloomquist@elpasotimes.com; @Bretbloomquist on Twitter.