Bob Borup invested much of his life into Everett Golf and Country Club, beginning as a teenage caddy more than 50 years ago and continuing even after his retirement as the head professional in 2006.
This week, many Everett G&CC members have been remembering Borup, sadly and yet fondly, following his death from complications of cancer on Monday. He was 69.
Few of the club’s current members can recall a time when Borup was not around. As a youngster he used to sneak through the fence to play a few holes, and he was soon hired to work a variety of jobs. Later he spent 12 years as an assistant pro and then 29 years as the head pro, and even after he retired he was showing up for golf and a weekly bridge game.
“We’ve all talked about the club without Bob Borup and how it just won’t ever be quite the same,” said Bob Lee, a longtime club member and one of Borup’s good friends. “We’ll miss him, but we won’t forget him.”
“He cared an awful lot about Everett (G&CC) and he cared an awful lot about the members here,” said Brent Webber, who replaced Borup as head pro in 2006. “He came to work every day and he always looked forward to coming to work.”
It would be hard to find many people with more of a history in Everett golf than Borup. He honed his game while working at Everett G&CC back in the 1950s and became a top player. Good enough, in fact, to help Everett High School win the state golf championship in 1959, his senior year, when he was also the state medalist.
Bob Trosvig was a classmate and fellow member of the 1959 golf team, but he also knew Borup when they were younger boys. In grade school “he was called Big Bob Borup because he was the biggest kid in the class,” Trosvig said. “He was like an adult at 10 or 11, and he played golf with the older kids because he could hit the ball farther than the older kids. He was just a prodigy as a youngster.”
But as good as he was as a player, Borup set aside his own golf ambitions when he started working at Everett G&CC.
“He knew his job first and foremost was to take care of the (members) and, frankly, it was at the expense of his own golf game,” Lee said. “But he always made it a point to make sure the members were well taken care of.
“I don’t think anybody ever spent more hours at Everett (G&CC) than Bob did. And I don’t think anybody ever cared more about Everett (G&CC) than Bob did. He was truly passionate about the club.”
Similarly, Borup was always good about helping others who wanted to start their own careers in golf.
“He was the first pro I ever worked for,” Webber said. “I was 20-year-old kid figuring out that this was the profession I wanted to go into, and he got me going in the right direction.”
As a young man Borup married his wife Vicky, who was a widow with three daughters. He was technically a stepfather, “but we never thought of him as our stepfather,” said Allison Holberg of Everett, one of his daughters. “And I never introduced him as our stepfather. He was our father.
“He loved golf, and Everett Golf and Country Club was his life besides his family. It was basically his home away from home. It was everything to him. But I never felt like I was a golf professional’s orphan. (Golf and the club) just became a part of our family life and it was a lot of fun.”
He was, she added, “the most wonderful man and the most wonderful father.”
There will be a rosary at 7 p.m. Monday and a mass at 1 p.m. Tuesday, both at St. Mary Magdalen Parish, 8517 7th Ave. SE, Everett. There will be a reception at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday at Everett G&CC.
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