In Fifth Decade, Littler’s Career Is Both Long and on the Money

Please allow me to engage in an exercise in what I’ll call subjective trivia.

The idea is to identify the San Diegan who enjoyed the longest and most successful career in professional sports. One name that comes to mind, of course, is Ted Williams. He’s not even close to my candidate.

A clue?

My candidate is still enjoying his long and successful career.

His name is Gene Littler and you can find him this weekend playing in the Senior PGA Tour portion of the MONY Tournament of Champions at La Costa. Littler, 59 and going on forever, begins his fifth decade as a professional golfer with this tournament.

Indeed, when it comes to San Diego sports, this guy is a walking historical marker. His white cap should have one of those plaques on it. You know, “Gene Littler, born in San Diego, July 21, 1930, winner of 25 PGA Tour events, the 1961 U.S. Open, and eight senior events.”

What’s more, anyone familiar with the Tournament of Champions realizes Littler is not here for sentimental reasons. Proof of that is that Arnold Palmer isn’t here. Littler is here because he still wins. He qualified by winning the Aetna tournament in Naples, Fla., last February.

In the year in which he turned 59, he was among the leaders on the 50-and-up tour in driving accuracy, putting and, most important, scoring. None of these revelations will surprise anyone who followed him when he was 29, 39 or 49.

You see, Littler’s approach to the game has not changed at all.

“Basically,” he said, “I’m attempting to play the same as I did 20 years ago. I’ve obviously lost some distance off the tee from 40 years ago, but not over the last 20. At least I don’t think so.”

Gene is still a machine on a golf course, though mechanic might be a better word. He approaches the game as meticulously as he works on one of his antique cars, always realizing that all the parts have to be in the right places for anything to work.

As Bruce Devlin said a couple of years ago: “If you put a composite together of all the swings that people think are great, you’re going to end up with Littler’s swing. It’s that simple.”

It’s simple to see and say, but not simple to do.

Gene Littler has been doing it since he won his first PGA tournament while still an amateur at the age of 23. The event was the San Diego Open. That’s what it was called then, but a lot has changed since 1954.

But not Littler. Not much, anyway.

“The nerves aren’t quite as good,” he said, “not that they’re bad. The eyesight’s not quite as good. The body doesn’t function like it used to. There are probably some other things. Add them up and it probably amounts to a stroke or two.”

And so he keeps rolling along after what figured to be the decade in which his skills took their sharpest decline.

“Really,” he said, “I haven’t felt this good in 25 years.”

A great deal of the credit goes to a stretching program for his back, which had pained him, by his reckoning, every time he had swung a club for 10 years.

“A guy here in San Diego, Pete Egoscue, put me on the program,” Littler said. “Physically, I feel as though I can still do it. At the moment, I’m not.”

Littler had just finished shooting the first 36 holes in 145. He was three over par and five shots off the seniors lead. That’s not bad for a fellow who wasn’t quite putting it together. But we’re talking different standards for different people.

The thing about Littler is that it is hard to imagine anything as inconvenient and mundane as age taking him out of the sport he has played for almost half a century. He came back from a cancerous tumor in 1972 to win five more times on the regular tour and from a broken arm in 1984 to win six more senior events. The only thing age has going for it is its persistence.

However, I have news for age.

Gene Littler is about to get younger.

On his next birthday, he will qualify for the 60-and-up super seniors.

A couple of fans near the 18th green were talking about that Friday.

“I’ll tell you what,” one said, “he’ll really be tough there.”

“I’ll tell you what,” said the other. “He’s already tough enough where he’s at.”

Always has been.

And this is the beginning of his fifth decade.

Sorry, Ted, but Gene Littler gets my vote.