Links With Locals: Teeing it up with the old guys

As yours truly is fast approaching the so-called golden years, an option presented itself this past week as a way to fill some of those idle hours down the road.

Not surprisingly, it is with golf.

On Monday morning, I was one of 92 golfers to tee it up at Lake Carroll Golf Course near Lanark in the North Senior Golf Association. Golfers from 23 courses throughout northern Illinois, eastern Iowa and southern Wisconsin are participating this year, and the season goes from the middle of March until the snow starts flying in November.

Players are paired together by ability. On Monday, we played threesomes as a way to get around the course a little quicker and beat the heat.

Entry fee is $30 a week, with $20 of that going to the host course and $10 going toward prize money; nobody is getting rich off the game. On Monday, the top 19 teams got some money back, in addition to one blind draw winner and four hole-prize winners (two longest putts and two closest to the pins).

This is the 33rd year this senior circuit has been in operation, and it has grown to the point where on most weeks, 80 to 100 golfers give it a go. A signup sheet is at each course and must be completed by noon Friday. That list is then forwarded to the host course, who then has someone put the pairings together for that Monday’s round.

“The great thing about it is we don’t care how good you are or how bad you think you are,” said Don Groharing, a golfer at Sand Burr Run in Thomson and a committee member. “We’re going to play you with a different player every time, a different group, and you meet a lot of great guys. A lot of our members are folks that only play once a week, and this is their once a week.

“They’ve been playing with us for 25, 30 years and don’t miss this for rain or shine. It’s just a great group of guys that use this as an excuse when the wife kicks them out of the house on Mondays.”

Two longtime members, Bill Burkardt and Forrest Clark, were honored with plaques before Monday’s round.

There is also a website, www.nsgolf2012.com, that has the schedule, winners each week, photos and rules.

This week, there was a three-way tie for low score with 8-under-par 64s. Those groups were Ben Keag, Rob Dueth and Ed Hanson, who won a scorecard playoff for first place; Dan Zellers, Butch Burgett and Jim Moorehead, who finished second; and John Klausen, Jim Hoff and Rich Buckley, who took third.

I teed it up with Steve Bieser, a Dixon resident who plays at Shady Oaks near Amboy, and Dave Heilmann of Elvira, Iowa, who is a member at Fulton Country Club.

Bieser grew up in Walton, where his father, Bill, operated a grain elevator. A 1967 Newman High School graduate, Steve worked at Raynor Garage Doors in Dixon for 25 years before retiring in 2014. He was an export administrator, in which he mostly dealt with international customers.

Bieser is a regular in the popular Tuesday Night Men’s League at Shady Oaks, and also an avid Chicago White Sox and Chicago Bears fan.

Heilmann grew up in Dunkerton, Iowa, near Waterloo, and graduated from the University of Iowa in 1970. He was a pharmacist for 37 years, starting for a small company, Schlegel Drugs, in the Quad Cities, and later managed Walgreen stores in Rock Falls and Sterling before retiring in 2017.

As one might suspect, Heilmann is a huge Iowa Hawkeyes fan, and also roots for the Bears and Cubs. When not teeing it up at Fulton Country Club, Heilmann likes to play pickleball in DeWitt, close to his home in Elvira.

The three of us combined for a 6-under-par 66, which put us in sixth place.