The Senior Circuit

They don’t play nearly as much as they used to and their length off the tee has decidedly declined. But the group of senior golfers from the North Shore profiled below are living proof that a person’s passion for the game can go a long way...and last a long time.

Bud Dasey – ‘The Sport of a Lifetime’

Gone are the days when Bud Dasey, armed with his stellar 5-handicap, was prowling the fairways and greens at Winthrop Country Club as a perennial challenger for a club championship. Yet the passion for the game that has existed within Dasey for nearly all of his 81 years on this earth still burns brightly.

“Golf is the sport of a lifetime,” explains Dasey, a native of Winthrop.

“You can play this game for your entire life and still be able to enjoy it and accomplish things at it even when you’re older. Sure you can play other sports too, but you can’t run or jump or skate forever. I guarantee when a person is all through playing those other games, they’ll still be playing this one.”

These days, Dasey is more inclined to try shooting his age, or at least playing a few holes here and there before retiring to the clubhouse. But in his prime, there were few better players in the area than the decorated World War II veteran who won a club championship in 1976 and reached the finals in two others.

“He was always right there, in contention for the title in his day,” says Winthrop CC’s Head Pro James Bruce. “He’s always been very active in our junior program, whether it was teaching kids the game, getting them signed up for tournaments or even just training caddies. He’ll still get out there and play sometimes, but for him now, it’s more about being an older, respected member who is looked upon as a link to the past.”

Dasey, who spent some of his formative years living in Brookline right next to The Country Club (and counted as a friend the late Francis Ouimet, whose most famous exploits came there) honed his skills as a teenager playing with several future New England club pros.

As he got older, in addition to owning and operating a small, airfreight trucking company called Air Cargo Transport at Logan Airport, he devoted himself to getting younger players interested in the game.

As the golf coach at Winthrop High School in the mid-80s, he used his knowledge of the game not just to teach golf, but also to get junior players to understand the game’s history. He also wrote a column in the 1980s for the Winthrop Transcript called “Around the Course with BD,” primarily as a way to get junior golfers some local coverage.

“I ran a program at the club on Monday nights for a long time for boys and girls ages 10 to 15,” says Dasey, who is still heavily involved in the Ouimet Scholarship Fund.

“We would start in March because I wanted the kids to know as much as possible about the game before they even picked up a club. I showed films, sent away to the PGA for their Tips for Teens package and tried to get the kids to understand the importance of respect and etiquette.”

Dasey still works in the airfreight business, handling customs papers for Horizon Air Freight, in addition to overseeing some superintendent duties for the health club at his condominium complex in Winthrop.

He is still active, doing some skiing in the winter at a club in North Conway, N.H., at which he is a member. He enjoys these aspects of his life, but not nearly as much as golf. It is in his blood, still. And it will be for the rest of his life.

“I do miss playing every day,” he says. “I have an honorary membership at Winthrop, which is pretty neat. I grew up here, I caddied here and I learned to play here. I still love the game and I always will.”

– Jeremy Gottlieb

Joe Manzo – The Gridiron Golfer

Hollywood history is littered with scenes from war movies where some grunt in a faraway land stares into a canned daily ration and bemoans his fate. Joe Manzo, a 30-year member of Andover’s Indian Ridge Country Club, was one of the few guys that ate well during World War II.

“I was a quartermaster stationed in British West Africa (now Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Gambia and Ghana) and I was responsible for supplying all U.S. infantry mess halls on the continent,” recalls Manzo, 89, a native of Medford. “Whenever there were steaks for the officer’s mess, there was a steak for me too. I ate good.”

Manzo ate his fair share of good post-war meals before he came anywhere near the game of golf. He was just an ex-jock looking for an outlet in the late 1950s when he met former NHL winger Bill Ezinicki, who had just retired to become the head pro at The International in Bolton. Ezinicki may have earned the nickname “Wild Bill” for his physical play on the ice, but he patiently taught Manzo the game. The pupil fell in love with golf. More to the point, he mastered it. Of course, Manzo, a three-sport standout at Medford High and ultimately a graduate of the St. John’s Preparatory School, wasn’t just your run-of-the-mill ex-jock.

A two-way tackle on Boston College’s 1940 Associated Press national championship team, Manzo, who went 6-foot-1 and 240 pounds in his playing days, was drafted by the Detroit Lions in 1941. His playing career was delayed by a less celebrated draft held by the U.S. Army, but Manzo spent a single pro season in Motown before his body told him to call it quits.

After enough lessons with Ezinicki, Manzo learned the ropes of round play at Stoneham’s Unicorn Golf Course. He broke 80 after his second season and played in Pro-Ams all over New England before joining the Andover Country Club, where it didn’t take long for him to become a scratch golfer.

“I think being an athlete definitely helped my game,” says Manzo, a widower since 1968, whose 86-year-old brother, Michael, lives in Centerville. “I see guys at the club who never played sports growing up, but who’ve been members for 40 years and they still carry 30 handicaps. They still don’t get the game and I think not having been an athlete has something to do with it.”

Manzo’s desire to stay on the golf course is the stuff of legend. His medical file confirms it. In order to keep addressing the ball, he’s endured total replacements of each knee, four replacements of his right hip, one of his left hip and back surgery.

Has his physical decline forced him to alter his game?

“Oh, I have a much better short game because I can’t hit it long anymore,” says Manzo, who spent his professional life in the essential oils business, but who’s first job came loading freight trucks in the family wholesale food business on Boston’s North Market Street during the Great Depression. “That’s what I gotta do now: pitch, chip and putt. A lot of guys at the club consult me to get their short game in order.”

But make no mistake, this one-time pupil doesn’t mind doing a little coaching these days.

“Indian Ridge is like a home away from home for me,” he says. “I have great, great friends up there and get royal treatment from the staff. It’s what keeps me going.”

– Chad Konecky

The Rat Pack meets The Breakfast Club

When Dick Arsenault reflects on the many rounds he golfed all across the Asian sub-continent and Indonesia, his memories of playing in New Delhi are the fondest.

Where else on earth are the tee boxes built into centuries-old Mogul tombs? And surely, nowhere else but in New Delhi does a player need four caddies. That is, of course, to insure that each lie is quickly covered up with a red cloth, lest a jungle monkey or a vexing indigenous raptor known as a kite bird makes off with the ball.

“Don’t even get me started on that second cut of rough,” says Arsenault, a 73-year-old Pittsfield native. “If your ball went there in New Delhi, those caddies would just peer into the tall grass and say, ‘No. Snakes.’”

Arsenault, who spent 36 years abroad working in the American Express Company’s International Banking Department, may have the most colorful golf memories among his mates at the Ipswich Country Club. But he certainly doesn’t have a monopoly on good yarns when it comes to the company he keeps.

Since the club’s opening in 1989, an ever-growing group of seniors has convened three mornings a week to play competitive golf. Now 17 members strong, this club within the club features players like Arsenault, who hail from all walks of life. But every Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, they split into foursomes – making sure to distribute the wide-ranging handicaps as equitably as possible – then grip it and rip it for pocket money.

“It basically started with the idea that we should all have something to do to get out of the house,” explains Ken Fabrizio, 65, who served as principal of Saugus High for 17 years before retiring to live at the country club in 2002. “The diversity of the group is astonishing. We’ve got former attorneys, educators, medical professionals and retired captains of industry. Together they trade a wealth of information out there on the course. There’s never a dull moment. These are the things that keep it together. This group likes each other’s company so much, it’s getting to be a full-time job just being retired.”

Full-time and year-round. When winter shuts the door on the golf season, those among the group that don’t head for warmer climates get together for breakfast at the Agawam Diner in Rowley every Tuesday and lunch at the country club on Thursdays.

On the course, it’s all about low-stakes fun. With each fella throwing in a sawbuck, the guys play 18 holes of high-net, high-gross, best ball of three or best two of four. Whatever moves them. The network has become far more than just a bunch of golf buddies, but that doesn’t mean these guys don’t absolutely adore the game.

“Everybody is a great guy and everybody’s retired,” says Doug Ballantyne, a 73-year-old Chicago native and former GE engineer, who lived in Marblehead for 26 years before moving to the country club when it opened. “There are some big-bucks guys and some little-bucks guys. Some guys with 8 handicaps, some guys with 30 handicaps. We all get together and have fun. Nobody’s snooty or cliquey. We just play.”

According to Fabrizio, a big part of the group’s esprit-de-corps is a case of them all being at the same place at a similar time in their lives.

“Most of us first started playing with work colleagues who have all gone their separate ways now or children who have grown out of the scene,” says Fabrizio, a Lynn native, a 12-handicapper and a member at Ipswich CC since 1998. “This is a collection of friends who all know each other from belonging to the same golf atmosphere.”

“If you think about it, where else would a group of guys this diverse get together but the golf course?” notes Steve Carter, 39, now in his 14th year as the Ipswich Country Club’s PGA pro. “They have a heck of a time, they are a great connecting piece for new members and they truly exemplify the greatness of the game. Certainly, they’re one of the best groups of members at the club.”

Of course, Arsenault’s golf tales from the other side of the globe are also a pretty good draw. If you don’t start a round at first light in Singapore, for example, there’s no way you’ll finish it in the intense heat of mid-morning. In Japan, most courses boast memberships of 1,500, so you might as well grab lunch during your hour-long wait between playing the front nine and the back nine.

Even with all those worldly experiences in his rearview mirror, Arsenault says golfing with his senior-citizen pals at Ipswich CC simply never gets old.

“This is a great group of guys from all across the spectrum and I’d say 30 percent of us are really senior seniors,” says Arsenault, whose introduction to the game came as a Berkshire Hills Country Club caddy in the late 1940s. “When November comes, we’re very consistent about still getting together every week at the diner.”

And there’s no sign of this over-the-hill gang losing its mojo. In fact, about a dozen members of the group winter in southwest Florida and, as snowstorms belt Massachusetts, a number of them have started dining and golfing together around the Naples area.

At least down there they don’t have to worry about a flamingo flying away with their Titleist.

– Chad Konecky

Norma Yeaton – Lifetime memories

In 1921, Norma Yeaton got her hands on her first golf club.

“It was a putter,” remembers Yeaton, now 90 years old and one of the most celebrated female golfers in North Shore history. “My father gave it to me. I used to putt around in the back yard all the time.”

And so it began a golfing life still going strong 85 years later.

Yeaton, a lifetime member of Beverly Golf and Tennis (co-founded by her father Jack and originally known as the United Shoe Golf Club), knows the game probably as well as anyone.

“I’m not playing as much as I once did,” says Yeaton, who, at press time, had yet to play a round this season mainly due to the weather and some on-and-off fatigue. “I realized that I only played about six times last year and was pretty tired when I got through. But golf is still my favorite thing. I miss playing. I watch it on TV as much as I can.”

In 1931, Yeaton turned 15, making her eligible for membership at the United Shoe GC. Just two years later, she captured her first ladies club championship and after losing in the finals the following year, she went on to win a staggering 20 in a row. Her domination at the club championships along with her 1933 WGAM junior title, are the highlights of a sparkling resume.

When she wasn’t dominating United Shoe, the course, Yeaton went to work for United Shoe, the company - now a subsidiary of Black and Decker - as an executive secretary. She stayed at USM for 48 years, retiring in 1981. But she never left Beverly Golf and Tennis, the only club she has ever belonged.

“Because my father was the president I was able to get out every once in a while before I joined,” says Yeaton. “But I was a member there every year from when I turned 15 through last year.”

Given her history at Beverly G&T, she will likely be welcome there as long as she’d like.

“I’m still active,” she says. “I’m on my feet. I drive, I do other things. It hasn’t been the best year for golf but I might try to play at some point [this] season, even if it’s just to chip and putt. I’ll do it because I love the game.”

– Jeremy Gottlieb

Don Baker – Passion Play

Don Baker’s business is real estate. But as far as his passion is concerned all you have to do is simply mention the word “golf” to this 65-year-old Lynn native and it’s quite obvious what gets his heart pumping.

“I’m a golf addict, no doubt about it,” says the namesake of Don Baker Real Estate. “Golf is such a wonderful sport because it is so much like real life. You get out of it what you put into it.”

Baker, a long-time resident of Nahant and a Kernwood Country Club member, has certainly invested quite a bit of time, energy and money into the game of golf over the years. And he has the stories to back it up.

He caddied as a young boy at Kernwood CC, Tedesco Country Club and Salem Country Club. He was a regular on the bag of North Shore golfing legend Bill Flynn, whom he considers a mentor, and even had one-day stints looping for Margaret Curtis and Francis Ouimet. His love for the game followed him through high school, when he was on the Lynn English High golf team before graduating in 1958, and into his early adult years. The 1962 Salem State College graduate is also a previous member of Thomson Country Club.

For the last decade or so Baker, a former school teacher and father of four and grandfather of three, has financially backed an annual scholarship in the name of former Gannon Golf Club Head Pro Tony Sessa to a deserving Lynn student from the Gannon Golf Club Youth Program. He also awards four $1,000 scholarships a year to graduating Lynn English students who are heading to college for teaching.

“I was never a great player,” admits the two-time Ouimet Scholarship winner (1958 and 1960). “I think I had my handicap down to a 12 or so at one point. I’m a 17 now. But you don’t have to be a great player to enjoy the game.”

Baker is living proof of that. In fact, some of his fondest memories are as a spectator, not as a player. In 1970 he went to Minnesota to watch fellow Lynner Paul Barkhouse play in the U.S. Open at Hazeltine National Golf Club and ended up meeting Lee Trevino.

“What a tremendous guy,” Baker says fondly.

A few years later, thanks to a press credential he scoffed up from the Lynn Sunday Post, he was at Muirfield Golf Club in Scotland to see his new pal, Trevino, win the 1972 British Open. He went back across the pond the following year to attend the Open at Royal Troon. He also played in the Secret Service Golf Tournament in 2002 down in Houston and met and had lunch with President George H.W. Bush.

But, perhaps, nothing can top Baker’s histrionics at the 1989 Masters. John McCarthy of Lynn asked Baker if he would sub for him as a marshall at Augusta, but the only catch was that he had to pose as McCarthy while doing so.

“When I got there a few people gave me a strange look because they knew I didn’t look anything like John,” Baker explained.

Nonetheless, Baker worked the entire tournament at the 11th hole, one of the best spectator spots on the course. His friends back home could see him on TV all weekend.

“I was in heaven,” he says excitedly “[Nick] Faldo won in a playoff. All the great ones were there. To be honest, I was in complete awe.”

When the tournament was over on Sunday night, Baker fessed up. The folks at Augusta were none too pleased about Baker’s little white lie and politely asked him to leave the premises.

“The next year all the marshalls had to have a picture ID and social security card with them,” Baker says with a laugh. “Martha Burk has nothing on me. At least I actually affected what those people do down there.

– Gary Trask