LYNNWOOD — In his younger years, someone suggested to Carl Tingelstad that he get serious about golf. It was, the acquaintance told him, a game for a lifetime.
Tingelstad took those words to heart.
The Lynnwood man, who turned 80 in May, has just begun his 75th year in golf. Tingelstad, who first held a club when he was 6, still plays and competes regularly, and he has compiled some impressive career statistics along the way.
Tingelstad shot his age twice last week, giving him a total of about 40 times for that notable golfing feat. He also has eight career holes-in-one.
He was good enough to finish first in the third division of this year’s Snohomish County Amateur tournament, winning by five strokes in a low-net competition for players with handicaps of 11.3 and higher. The next day he was off to another three-day tournament at Dungeness Golf and Country Club in Sequim.
He stays busy, happy and healthy on the golf course, and he has no plans to quit anytime soon.
“I’d like to play as long as I can,” he said. “You’ve got to keep the body moving and the head moving, and golf challenges both.”
The secret of his longevity? “Probably good DNA,” he said after a moment’s thought.
He grew up in North Bend and learned the game at Mount Si Golf Course, where his father also played and his mother worked in the restaurant. As a teenager he often played 36 holes a day, sometimes more, and he entered junior tournaments in the Seattle area.
He was a good player, but never an elite player and he knew it. Still, he loved the game and he continued to play during four years in the Navy, four years of college, and later after he started a career as a teacher and administrator in the Shoreline School District.
Golf was so important that he negotiated a deal with his wife-to-be Marlene “that I could play after we got married,” he said with a smile. “It was like a pre-nup.”
The agreement and the marriage have endured for 53 years.
The Tingelstads bought a home in Lynnwood in 1961, and he was soon playing regularly at Marysville’s Cedarcrest Golf Course, where he is still a member of the men’s club (he also belongs at men’s clubs at Mount Si, Nile Country Club in Mountlake Terrace and Snoqualmie Falls Golf Course in Fall City).
Tingelstad has been a double-digit handicapper most of his life, although he slipped into single digits a few times over the years. Today his handicap is 13.2.
“You’d always like to be better than you really are,” he admitted. “But those people who are really skilled, when they lose that, they have trouble accepting it.
“And I was never that good,” he added with self-effacing humor.
At his best, Tingelstad could drive the ball about 270 yards. These days he is not as long as he was, although he recently won a long-drive competition at a senior tournament with a blast of 241 yards.
The amazing thing is, Tingelstad has been virtually blind in his right eye since birth. He suffers from amblyopia, which leaves him with 20/400 vision corrected in that eye and causes problems with depth perception, meaning it’s more difficult for him to see the ball properly at address. But he’s never known anything different, so he compensates and just keeps playing.
Otherwise, his body has been good to him. Part of that he attributes to a daily half-hour regimen of stretching and weightlifting. Also, he walks whenever possible on the course, rather than use a golf cart.
Not surprisingly, considering his age, he has outlasted many of his onetime golfing companions.
“I had a lot of friends who are no longer around,” he said. “As you grow older, you lose the people that you know and you continue playing with younger people. … I know a lot of people at these clubs and I enjoy their company as long as they don’t mind having me along.”
Over the years, Tingelstad added, “golf has allowed me to do a lot of beneficial things that I probably never would have been able to do (otherwise), and I feel very fortunate to have had that opportunity. I probably would say I just count my blessings.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
