Most men aren't in their nineties. Some will get there. Statistically, though, the majority will be women.
Harold Westhoff turned 90 on Aug. 8. He still can shoot his age, plus or minus a couple strokes.
He's been able to hit that mark that since 1981 - when he was 72.
He plays up to three times a week. There's a gang of 25 that leaves town each week in cars and vans to sample distant courses. Last week, 12 of them did an overnighter near Pequot Lakes, playing Whitefish Golf Club the first day and Golden Eagle Golf Club the next.
He's the oldest in this vagabond cadre.
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"Not many are still playing golf in their nineties. I'm very grateful," he said.
And he's quite healthy. He has no secrets other than plenty of veggies and fruit, of course, along with fish oil and vitamin D.
He's has not avoided all the challenges of extended age. Like Arnold Palmer, he's had his battle with prostate cancer. He's also lost a kidney. Cataract surgery was so successful he plays without his glasses.
Westhoff is sharp conversationally and remains as erect and wiry as he must have been when he joined the Navy Reserve in 1942 while at the University of Minnesota. He would serve on a supply ship (1944-46) in the Pacific that reached North China at the end of the war.
He took a girl barely in her twenties from the country outside Albert Lea to be his wife. He and Ardy will have been married 60 years on December 17. She's 83 and plays golf three times a week: Ladies Day, Couples League and often on the weekend.
The couple moved to Willmar in 1966. Here, they raised a son and a daughter who became an electronics specialist, now with the FBI, and a registered nurse, respectively. Harold was controller and treasurer for 10 years at Farmers Produce (later Jennie-O) and then became an independent Certified Financial Planner.
He joined the Willmar Golf Club in 1967. The front nine was still new.
"We had pull carts in those days," he recalled. "As we went along we'd pick rocks and carry them away."
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His top years, score wise, were the early and mid 1970s. He won the club championship in 1974 and remembers losing in the match-play final three times, twice to Bruce Krupke.
Harold was born in St. Paul and lived in Richfield before the family spent eight years outside of Ogilvie, a village on the highway between Milaca and Mora. His mom died when he was a baby and his father, a creamery manager, remarried. The extended family grew to six girls and three boys. Five sisters are still living.
But it was at Detroit Lakes where the family moved in 1934 that Harold found a bit of paradise. Unlike the farm, the large house in town had running water and electricity. He got his first bike and had a paper route. The first summer he got work caddying at the golf club.
"You earned 50 cents a round and I'd do 18 in the morning and 18 in the afternoon," he said. "Sometimes, but not often, you might get a dime tip. It was the depression years."
The caddies sometimes got to play. "We'd maybe each have one club - wooden shafted -- and we'd share, tossing them back and fourth," said Harold.
The family moved again (his dad had a sales job in agriculture), this time to Sauk Centre where he graduated as a Mainstreeter in 1936. He started playing golf for real at the nine-hole Sauk Centre Country Club.
He believes the sport has contributed to his long life.
"I really do," he said. "It gives you something to look forward to. You get some exercise. It keeps you active."
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The Central Lakes Conference selected Tara Rudie, an eighth grader, as Performer of the Week in girls cross-country after she led Willmar at the Hutchinson Invitational with an 18th place finish in a time of 16:11.
n Michael Dunham, a sophomore playing football for Concordia College, is backing up senior Andrew Larson. In a 43-28 win over Valley City State, the ex-Cardinal ran for 21 yards in eight carries and completed 4 of 7 passes for 45 yards.
