Golden Archer

Oh, those golden years. To retire. To live off the hog, so to speak.

It’s not for everyone, because not everyone gets an opportunity to

cash in their chips at the end.

But professional golfers, if any good, can live differently, or,

as in the case of George Archer, prepare to give up work. If you can

call playing golf work.

At 6-foot-6, perhaps Archer has always seen retirement, but with

the myriad surgeries on his body under which Archer has endured, it’s

amazing he’s still here as a competitive player to talk about it.

Archer, you see, is the original Toshiba Senior Classic champion.

The guy who won first, in 1995, at Mesa Verde Country Club. In the

media tent on that Sunday, Archer was there with his wife, Donna,

insisting he was contemplating retirement at that time because of a

bad hip. It was so painful, he could barely swing a golf club, let

alone compete on the PGA Champions Tour.

Before he was diagnosed with a degenerative hip, Archer, now 63,

feared he might have cancer because of the area that was smarting.

Further, only one other player on the tour at that time (Bobby

Nichols) had ever undergone hip replacement surgery and he “wasn’t

doing very well” afterward on the golf course.

“So I figured, if they did the hip job, that would be the end of

me,” Archer said Tuesday afternoon.

Archer, however, went out and won the first Toshiba Classic,

carding a final-round 64 and winning by one stroke, then added the

Cadillac NFL Golf Classic, then underwent surgery for the umpteenth

time in his career.

These days, as Archer gears up for another Toshiba Senior Classic,

it isn’t so much about the scores and swings as it is the experience.

“I’ve had tons of surgeries,” said Archer, who has undergone seven

major surgeries, including his left wrist (1975), back (1979), left

shoulder (1987) and right hip replacement (1996).

“I’m looking at quality of life. I don’t want to have to reach

over for something in bed and cry out in pain.”

On Tuesday, Archer found out he needed surgery again. This time on

his right shoulder, where he has a partial torn rotator cuff. Last

fall, a health-food diet was tried to cure the shoulder pain, but it

didn’t go away and Archer will now have shoulder surgery at the same

hospital, Eisenhower in Palm Springs, where he had his hip

replacement surgery.

“I watch Jack Nicklaus on TV, he’s my age, and his swing is

nothing like it once was, so I knew I’m not swinging the club very

far,” Archer said. “I’m at the end of the road here.”

Archer, who lives in Palm Springs and Incline Village, Nev.,

recently purchased his dream retirement home in Oceanside, Ore.,

south of touristy Seaside and about 90 minutes from Portland. “The

house is about a four-hour drive to my daughter’s house (in

Washington), and we’ll go up there on weekends,” Archer said. “We’ll

get to see our grandchildren. We’re just close enough and just far

enough away. We don’t have to get phone calls asking us to baby-sit.”

An avid fisherman, Archer plans to live in Oregon from August

through November, when the fishing’s good, then return to the desert.

“It’s an older house (built in 1976) with a fabulous view (of the

Pacific Ocean),” Archer said. “It sits on a cliff 500 feet up from

the ocean ... there are views all over. I didn’t want the sand of

Seaside. I wanted the rocks and trees, which is what (Oceanside) has.

It gives you the feeling of Carmel a long time ago.”

Archer, who loves his Lake Tahoe summers, competes in the Toshiba

Senior Classic and Georgia Pacific Grand Champions for players 60 and

older. He and his wife have two daughters, Elizabeth and Marilyn, and

five grandchildren. Elizabeth, the first female caddie at the Masters

Tournament, is a Presbyterian minister who has earned a doctorate in

theology; Lynne teaches special education.

To this day, Archer says his biggest golf thrill was meeting his

wife on the golf course over 40 years ago. Some say those are the

kind of answers that keep marriages long.