This article originally appeared in the February issue of NCGA Golf Magazine
By Brian Murphy
This is a love story, about golf and life.
Bob Olds, one of the better senior amateurs Northern California has seen in the last 30 years, is 86 years old now and still plays about three times a week. The Brentwood resident mostly plays at Lone Tree in Antioch, his home track since he took up the game in 1960 after a youth spent playing baseball.
Of late, a heavy heart has plagued Olds. His beloved wife, Sandy, died in the fall of 2025 and Olds didn’t feel much like playing golf.
They’d been together since they met on a blind date in 1960. Lone Tree plays a role in that story. On a Friday night 66 years ago, Olds’ buddy Sparky Brandt had a dinner date at a woman’s home, but she wanted to bring a friend and told Sparky to bring a friend. Olds wanted to go cruising, but Sparky reminded Olds that he owed Sparky money from golf bets and those debts would be forgiven if he went to the dinner and met the friend.
“That’s how I met my wife,” Olds chuckles, all these years later. They married in 1962.
Sandy encouraged his wildly successful senior competitive career, pushed him to accomplishments like the 1996 NCGA Senior Player of the Year and his California Senior Amateur championship at age 65 in 2002. She caddied for him in the San Francisco City Championship, which he won in 2002. She didn’t take much guff, either.
Olds mishit a shot in The City and buried a wedge in the mud in frustration. Later, he asked for the wedge. It was still caked in mud. Olds told his wife she hadn’t done her job as a caddie to clean the club.
“If you act like an ass,” Sandy told her husband, “I’m not cleaning your clubs.”
He never buried a wedge around her again.
Olds is slowly getting back to playing, picking up the pieces after Sandy’s passing. His friends in Brentwood and at Lone Tree are seeing to it. They noticed Olds backing away from the game in the past few months and wouldn’t stand for it. After all, Bob Olds was seemingly born to play the game.
The accomplishments are lengthy and earned him a berth in the Antioch Sports Hall of Fame in 2023. The U.S. Senior Open in 1992, low amateur at the Northern California Open in 1995 and 2004, multiple career holes-in-one, on and on. At 76, he won the Sacramento City Super Senior championship. He is most proud of qualifying for the NCGA Senior Cup team from 1994 through 2012, and again in 2014. Perhaps Bob Olds is a tough out on the golf course.
“I remember when I was a senior at (Antioch) High School, I made second-team all-county in baseball and the sportswriter wrote that I was a ‘fierce competitor’,” Olds recalled. “I like to win, but I like to compete more than winning.”
That’s the Bob Olds that friends wanted to see return after grieving for Sandy. They’d urge him to play, and he said he didn’t feel like it. “I don’t want to,” he’d tell them.
“We didn’t ask,” his friends said. “Don’t make us come to the house and get you.”
In his head, Bob could hear Sandy’s voice.
“She was my biggest supporter, my biggest fan of playing golf,” Olds said. “She never said: ‘You’re playing too much.’ ”
Olds remembered a stretch of bad golf years ago. He moped around the house. Sandy stepped in.
“She said to me: ‘You never practice anymore, you used to practice, you don’t work on your game like you used to,’ ” Olds said. “I said: ‘OK, I’ll devote a day to practice.’ And I played better.
“That’s how she was. She was encouraging. She was my mental coach.”
Now his friends fill that role. He’s back to playing, back to chasing the best version of himself on the golf course. To think, he teased his brother when his brother said he was taking up the game of golf. But nine holes at Lone Tree all those years ago sparked a lifelong love.
“I’m a lucky guy,” Olds said. “My friends are taking care of me and not letting me feel sorry for himself.”
“I’m a lucky guy,” he repeated.
“And when I say that, it’s because No. 1, I met Sandy. And No. 2, I get to play golf.”
Olds is ready to play again this week. As you read this, he’s probably teeing it up. He chuckled about it.
“I was a golf bum when I met her,” Olds said of his lifelong loves, “and I’m a golf bum again.”