Mr. Ected
Footballguy
Apologize if this is a Honda, but it's a great story.
93-year-old golfer continues to shoot his age
By Jim Reeves
Special to the Star-Telegram
It’s entirely possible, if patently unfair, that one could tally up Sam Frankenfield Jr.’s love affair with golf simply by the numbers.
Sam probably wouldn’t mind. He’s a numbers guy himself.
So start with the number 803, even though by the time this newspaper hits your front porch or your computer screen, it could very likely be obsolete, already fading in Sam’s rearview mirror.
Still, we have to start somewhere, so that’s as good a place as any ...802 ...oops, make that 803, as of Tuesday.
When Sam sat down for this interview about a week ago, he’d stepped onto a golf course and shot a score either at or below his age 802 times over the last 20 years.
He added one more Tuesday morning.
Put in that context, 803 is a gargantuan number.
But then, relatively speaking, so is Sam’s age: 93. That absolutely does not lessen his accomplishment. In fact, as he grows older, it makes things even sweeter. How many amateur golfers out there have ever shot their age even once, much less 803 times? How many 90-year-olds are out there, still playing at all?
Sam, all 5-foot-6, 135 pounds of him, knew he’d done something a little special way back there 20 years ago when he was 73 and shot 72 one day out at Woodhaven Country Club in east Fort Worth.
Just for grins, he pulled out a spiral notebook and wrote down the date, the score, where he’d played and his age.
And then he tossed the scorecard into a cardboard box to keep for posterity.
The former home builder/general contractor has done the same every time it’s happened since. He has the spiral notebook and the weathered cardboard box full of 803 scorecards to prove it.
“I’m just that way, I guess,” Sam said about keeping records. “I just decided to see how many times I could actually do it.”
It’s happened a lot more often than even Sam might have imagined, so often, in fact, that he has become something of a living legend at Woodhaven, where he has been a member for about five decades.
As big as the number is — over the last month or so, he’s added to it with scores of 90, 91, 93, 87, 85, 93, 92 and 90, playing two, sometimes three, times a week — Sam doesn’t let it dwarf what he really gets out of golf.
“I love the game,” he said, “but I love the people I’ve met on the golf course even more. Golf is really about the relationships you make when you’re out here. That’s what really lasts in the long run, not the scores.”
One of those relationships is with former Texas Rangers president/general manager Eddie Robinson, now 90 himself. Robinson met Frankenfield when he looked at one of the homes Sam had built in the Woodhaven subdivision. Then the two hooked up in regular games at the club.
Robinson has become one of Sam’s regular playing partners and maybe his biggest fan. “He has the same approach to the game all the time,” Robinson said. “He has a grooved swing — not that it’s real pretty — but it’s grooved and he knows the result he’s going to get out of it.
“I’ve played with him a lot. His consistency with his swing is the main thing. If he could putt, he’d be shooting in the 70s. He doesn’t see all that well, so he has to get people to help him line up putts sometimes.
“We’re proud of him here at Woodhaven.”
Imagine what Sam might have accomplished if he could see.
Sam, who didn’t started playing the game regularly until his mid-30s, was a charter member of Woodhaven’s “Noon Game,” 50 years ago. It regularly attracts some of the club’s best golfers. He dropped out of the group 23 years ago because he didn’t feel like he could compete with them anymore.
“If you can’t make birdies and pars in that group, you can’t win,” he said.
When he turned 80, Sam made a concession to Father Time and moved up to the Senior Tees. He hits his drive 140-150 yards now, not the 240 he once could. But it rarely strays from the middle of the fairway.
In his younger years, Sam was easy to spot on the golf course; he often played in a pair of cowboy boots instead of golf shoes, paired up with his golf shirt and shorts.
“I just felt comfortable in them,” he explained.
Why change a good thing? He has made six holes-in-one in his golfing career.
After living most of his life in Fort Worth and Arlington, Sam now lives on a 226-acre ranch, one of two he owns and still operates himself with wife Juanita — they’ll celebrate 70 years of marriage in October — in northern Wise County.
If anything, all that golf has only strengthened their marriage. “It’s kind of a relief because it gets him out of house,” Juanita said with a chuckle. “He has to be doing something all the time.”
Sam, also an outdoorsman who enjoys hunting and fishing on his two ranches, still finds his way to Woodhaven about three times a week to play golf.
Every now and then he finds himself wondering how long he’ll keep playing and whether he should give up the game he first discovered when he and his kid brother used to dive for balls at the pond at Meadowbrook Golf Course in east Fort Worth as kids.
“Sometimes I think about giving it up when I have those bad days,” he admitted. “When you can’t drive it, can’t putt it ...you know.
“But I always come back.”
And the numbers just keep on growing ...803 and counting.
Of course, Sam was planning on playing again soon, so don’t write that number in stone.
It’s a constantly moving target, you see.
Jim Reeves, a retired Star-Telegram sports columnist, is now a freelance journalist. He can be reached at revo1964@hotmail.com.
Sam’s clubs
Driver: TaylorMade JetSpeed, 10.5 degree loft.
Fairway woods: Cleveland 10.5 degree driver for long fairway shots; TaylorMade 3-wood.
Irons: Cleveland hybrids.Wedge: Cobra pitching wedge.
Putter: Odyssey Dual Force “Rossie II”
Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/sports/golf/article30558915.html#storylink=cpy
