What it’s like being the oldest golfer in the U.S. Amateur

SAN FRANCISCO — Someone always has to be the oldest player in the field. At this week’s U.S. Amateur Championship, that designation belongs to Greg Sanders.

“I wouldn’t say that I feel old,” Sanders, 61, said. “But I do feel like a fish out of water.”

It was a Mark Twain summer day in San Francisco, cool and foggy, and Sanders was fresh off his opening round of stroke play on the Ocean Course at the Olympic Club. That he’d failed to shoot his age did not surprise him — not with rough so long and greens so firm on a course that had him hitting long irons into par 4s. For a golfer of his vintage, Sanders knocks it plenty far. But for most of the day Monday, he’d struck his approaches from well behind his playing partners, Jake Olson, 20, and Anh Minh Nguyen, 18, both of whom are younger than his two sons.

“My outlook has been very realistic from the start,” Sanders said. “For a split second, I was thinking I shouldn’t even play in this because what are my chances? But my friends were saying, you gotta go, because it’s frickin the Olympic Club! And I was like, yeah, you’re right. I do.” 

Besides, he’d earned his way in fair and square by winning a big title in his adoptive state. A Missouri native, Sanders moved to Alaska after college and spent the next 37 years there, raising a family with his wife, Lisa, while working as a petroleum engineer. Anchorage, where he settled, was not exactly a golf hotbed, but that hardly mattered, as Sanders was not exactly a golf junkie. He’d grown up playing tennis and didn’t start getting serious about his swing until his 30s. By then, he’d fallen in with a small, tight-knit community of Anchorage golfers who played a tiny rota of area courses. There weren’t many options, or many months to practice. Golf season in Alaska lasts barely longer than the summer.

“Nowadays, we’ve got launch monitors and simulators and all of that,” Sanders said. “But early on we didn’t have any indoor practice facilities, so in April, I’d go out and hit wedges in the snow.”

It took another decade, Sanders said, before he felt his game could hold up in competition. It has now done that well enough for him to win the Alaska State Amateur 11 times. The most recent of those titles, at Anchorage Golf Course, just over a week ago, came with an exemption to the U.S. Amateur (prior to that, the strength of field in the event had not been recognized as up to snuff). For the first time, Sanders had punched his ticket to compete against the kids. (And when U.S. Senior Open champ Louis Brown, who was born two months before Sanders, withdrew from this week’s competition, Sanders became the grayest of the graybeards in the field).

Though he’d never set foot on the Olympic Club, he knew that the venue would be a challenge. Just getting to it proved difficult enough. From Anchorage, Sanders flew to Phoenix, where he and his wife now spend the cooler months, then winged to Tennessee to visit grandkids before hopping a flight west that wound up being delayed. He touched down in San Francisco too late for a Saturday practice round.

His first close-up look on Sunday was an Alaska moment. Sanders found himself staring at a bear.

“When you’ve got par-4s of 470 to 520 yards, it puts so much pressure on the driver,” he said. “Put it this way, it’s not senior golf.”

On Monday morning, Sanders got off to a Fountain of Youth start, blasting his opening drive as far as either of his partners. But a par on the first was followed by three straight bogeys, and then a triple-bogey on the 6th when he flared his tee shot right beyond out-of-bound stakes he didn’t know existed—a downside of missing his practice round. He finished with a 10-over-par 80, 14 shots off the pace set by first-round leader Charlie Forster of England.

The day had been a physical and mental test. Sanders has reached the age at which injuries crop up without explanation. His left foot was nagging him on Monday, as it has been off and on for the past six years, a stubborn problem with an unknown cause. At times, his mind worked against him, too.

“I feel like when I play a hole badly I just need to get out of the way, which is irritating, because I don’t want to think that way,” Sanders said. “Part of it is I’m just not used to playing with players this good and this young.”

For Tuesday’s second round of stroke play, Sanders will be up against the same field. The test, though, will be stouter, on the longer, harder-rated Lake Course. 

That’s the bad news. The good news is that a lot more golf awaits. Sanders is exempt into next week’s North & South Senior Amateur Championship in Pinehurst, followed by the U.S. Senior Amateur Championship at Oak Hills Country Club in San Antonio.

“That’s one I’m really looking forward to,” he said. “I’m won’t be a fish out of water there.”

Other Monday notables:

1st tee nerves: As the reigning club champion at the Olympic Club, Jacob Goode, 21, benefits from course knowledge. On Monday, though, he also contended with the added pressure of striking the opening shot of the championship in front of a large, partisan crowd. “It’s probably the most nervous I’ve ever been,” Goode said. Goode, a San Francisco native, is a recent graduate of the University of Washington, where he spent the past four years not playing on the golf team, because, as he puts it, “I wasn’t good enough.” The school now clearly thinks differently, as Goode will be heading back for a fifth year on campus, where he will play on a golf scholarship. He’ll do so with some polish to his resume, having recently captured the California State Amateur. In Monday’s opening round of stroke play, Goode shot a 3-over 73 and sits T103 heading into Tuesday’s second and final stroke-play round.

Royalty at Olympic: Royal Who says the USGA doesn’t have a sense of humor? Evidence appeared with today’s 12:46 p.m. tee time on the Ocean Course, which featured the following grouping: King/Tsar/Royalty. As in William King of Kansas, Pavel Tsar of Florida, and Keenan Royalty of North Carolina.

Supergroup: A day after the Outside Lands Music Festival wrapped up in nearby Golden Gate Park, a super group took the stage at the Olympic Club. It featured Jackson Koivun, Ben James and Ethan Fang, the rNo. 1, 2 and 3 ranked amateurs in the world, respectively, playing together on the Ocean Course. Koivun finished the day at 2-under; James at 2-over; and Fang at 3-over.

That name sounds familiar: This week’s big-time amateur championship has several pro connections in the form of Luke Poulter (son of Ryder Cup legend Ian), John Daly II (son of two-time major champion John), and Reed and Dean Greyserman (brothers of the PGA Tour’s Max Greyerman). On Monday, Poulter finished at even par; Daly II shot 4-over; and the Greyserman’s went 1-under and 7-over, respectively.