Golf is a sport they say you can play your entire life and Bob O’Toole is living proof of that.
O’Toole will turn 90 on Aug. 23 and he plans to play golf that day. The Webster resident said he’s played 18 holes at least four days a week during each of the 60 years he’s belonged to Pleasant Valley Country Club in Sutton.
“I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have golf,” O’Toole said during a recent lunch at PV.
Owner Jay Kunkel believes O’Toole is the oldest active member and longest full member at PV.
“Mr. O’Toole looks exactly the same since I’ve known him since I was a kid,” Kunkel said. “He hasn’t changed one bit.”
O’Toole has never shot his age, but he came within a shot a couple of years ago.
“I think I’m going to do it this year,” he said.
The 5-foot-6, 168-pounder has hit balls into a net in his basement during the past 10 winters or so.
“I’m trying to develop a better swing,” he said.
Kunkel, who purchased PV in December of 2022 with Michael O’Brien, is impressed with O’Toole’s dedication. He remembers O’Toole showing up at PV last year on a hot day to hit balls at the range even though he wasn’t scheduled to play golf that day.
“I said, ‘It’s 95 degrees,’ and he said, ‘I’ve got to get better,’” Kunkel recalled.
O’Toole’s handicap has been as low as a 9, but it’s a 26 now. He shoots in the middle to high 90s.
“Does he want to play better golf every time he plays?” PV head pro Paul Parajeckas said. “Yeah, but he’s blessed to be here. That’s what he says, ‘I’m blessed to be here.’ Make a bogey or a par, it doesn’t matter. He’s a gentleman. He’s enjoying it.”
O’Toole shot his best score at PV in the 1970s, a 2-over 74 which included a 3-under 32 on the back. He keeps that scorecard in a desk drawer at home.
So what’s it like to be almost 90 years old?
“I didn’t expect to make it this far, to tell you the truth,” he said.
When he was in his mid-70s, he told his wife Barbara that they only had a few years left so they moved out of their home and into a condo to make it easier on themselves. Fourteen years later, they’re still there. Barbara will turn 90 on Aug. 8. They have two children and two grandchildren.
O’Toole doesn’t play on Mother’s Day or the Fourth of July, but he does play on Father’s Day.
“They let me do what I want to do on Father’s Day,” he said.
O’Toole credits staying active with helping keep him healthy. He walked three miles each weekday inside the Auburn Mall for about seven years before COVID hit. Now he walks two miles a day in his neighborhood. He also lifts two four-pound barbells 100 times two or three times a week and he stretches while sitting his recliner.
“You can’t stay still,” he said. “You’ve got to keep moving all the time.”
He also has good genes. His father lived until 84 and his mother lived until 89.
He has no pain issues and he’s never broken a bone. He went to a hospital only once and it was for a minor medical issue eight years ago. The only medication he takes is a small amount for blood pressure.
O’Toole and his golfing buddies ride carts when they play.
“We’re so lazy we even take a cart to the ball washers,” he said.
Of course, he’s not really lazy. If that was the case, he’d stay home in his recliner.
O’Toole said he doesn’t get sore from playing golf.
“If it is from golf, I don’t admit it,” he said.
O’Toole retired at age 58 after a long career with Mechanics Bank, Peoples Bank, Bank of America and Flagship Bank during which he often brought customers to PV. So he’s been retired for 31 years and he’s spent a fair amount of that time on the golf course.
When O’Toole left home to go to work, he wore a shirt and tie. After work, he played golf so he wore golf clothes when he returned home. When his son Shawn was in the second or third grade, he was asked during show and tell what his father did for a living.
“He said, ‘My dad plays golf for the bank,’” O’Toole remembered his son saying.
O’Toole played golf in Florida for a few winters, but in recent winters he tenpin bowls at least twice a week with Barbara.
O’Toole tenpin bowled in the U.S. Marines. He was 17 when he enlisted and took part in boot camp at Parris Island in South Carolina. He received orders to report to Camp Pendleton in California for advanced infantry training and then to Korea. Fortunately for him, the Korean War ended just before he was scheduled to travel overseas.
“We lucked out,” he said.
He began playing golf in 1959 and played once a week for years. He remembers paying for his first golf bag with green stamps.
O’Toole carded two holes-in-one in the early 1980s, the first on the par-3 third hole at PV and the second on the par-3 17th hole during a member-guest at Mount Pleasant CC, now known as The Haven CC, in Boylston.
Unfortunately for O’Toole, his ace during the member-guest didn’t occur on the par-3 where a prize of a new car was offered.
“So I got a sign reading, ‘Congratulations,’’ he said, “and it cost me about $300 for drinks afterward.”
O’Toole has three sets of clubs in his basement and he has given away more than a dozen drivers and several putters. He’s the only one in his golfing group who uses yellow golf balls so when they find one, they give it to him.
Parajeckas is the fourth head pro at PV since O’Toole joined. Paul Harney, Bobby Molt and Gary Young were the first three and O’Toole has enjoyed being in the company of all of them.
O’Toole waited until he was 80 to move up from the white tees to the shorter blue senior tees, but the blues still play 6,001 yards. That’s as long as some other courses play from the whites.
He still drives the ball a far distance, about 200 yards, but his chipping and putting are his strengths. He and three friends putt for dollars for 20-30 minutes on the practice green before they play a round.
Dave Roncone, 78, of Worcester plays with O’Toole regularly.
“He’s pretty amazing,” Roncone said. “No one beats him. Why? He’s too good. From 100 yards in, he’s the best.”
O’Toole played against Frank Oftring and Bob Cousy in a member-guest at PV one year. On the second hole, O’Toole sank a long putt for a birdie to cancel out Cousy’s birdie on the hole. He still remembers Cousy remarking, “What do you have to do to win a hole around here?”
He also played with Carl Yastrzemski once at Mount Pleasant.
O’Toole marshalled at the PGA Tour events held at PV. Fred Couples and Curtis Strange were among the pros he played with in the pro-ams. In the 1987 Bank of Boston Classic pro-am, Couples was impressed with O’Toole’s wooden driver and asked if he could try it on the fifth tee. O’Toole still can’t get over how far Couples hit the ball with it.
Sandra Palmer played in several LPGA Tour events at PV and O’Toole grew to know her well.
O’Toole is pleased with what the new owners have done with PV.
“It keeps getting better,” he said. “Everything is beautiful.”
“The trophy just needed to be polished,” Kunkel said. “It’s always been a great course. The previous owners, every single one of them, took it up a notch and that’s all we’re trying to do.”
Superintendent Nate Henry’s maintenance staff was increased. The greens are aerified twice each year instead of once and the fairways are aerified each year.
Last year, about 150 trees were removed, including 50 to the left of the 12th hole to make way for more sunlight for the fairway and 40 were taken down between the 13th and 14th fairways.
Kunkel said PV has a full membership with a waiting list.
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—Contact Bill Doyle at bcdoyle15@charter.net.
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