In a recent round at Orange Tree Golf Club in Orlando, Florida, Al Pellegrini made the turn in 39 and groused about a missed putt on the sixth hole to David Damesworth, the director of golf, as he headed off to the second nine.
“He kind of collapsed on the back nine a little bit,” Damesworth said of Pellegrini’s 44 coming home to shoot 83.
“Collapsed” is a relative term in this case. Many of us would be happy with an 83 in our usual morning group, winning the front-nine pot with an 8-under net in the two-man better ball. Pellegrini, however, is 98 years old. Another 39 on the back and he could have beaten his age by 20 strokes instead of only 15.
“He pretty much shoots 10 or more below his age every day,” Damesworth said. “He’s at usually 88 or better, and he’s obviously 98. I’ve seen him shoot 79, 80. He played in the club championship and he won the net division. He was 97 at the time.
“He’s super intense, loves to compete, and he tries to get stronger and better every day. I think that’s something that we can all learn from, you know, at 98 years old. He’s just still trying to improve every day and stay physically active.”
What’s Pellegrini’s secret to keeping the inevitable maladies of old age at bay?
“Well, I quit smoking 57 years ago and started walking after I quit smoking, and I never stopped,” he said. “And also, I never drank in my lifetime. Now, I will say, I will have one shot of whiskey with ginger ale before I have dinner. And a fish oil pill every day.”
Freeze-framing 98 years
At the time of this interview before 10 a.m. on a weekday, Pellegrini had walked a mile-and-a-half and gone through all of his exercise routines and, he said, “taken two showers already.”
“After you’re done with me, I’ll probably come over (to the club) and hit a couple hundred balls for about an hour or two.”
For the past five years since joining Orange Tree, Pellegrini can be found at the club either playing golf or swimming just about every day. He’s a regular in the club’s morning golf group every Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday and sometimes Saturday. He swims a couple of times per day in his never-ending quest to stay active and fit.
It would surprise anyone who knows Pellegrini at Orange Tree that shortly before he joined the club, he couldn’t walk or even lift his hand off the bed. At age 93, he suffered an acute bout of Guillain-Barré syndrome, a neurological disorder, after what he attributes to a bad batch of flu vaccine.
“I was totally paralyzed. I could not lift my hand up 1 inch. My body was like I was dead,” he said.
Pellegrini was in the hospital for two months. He couldn’t stand with his physical therapists for more than five seconds. A friend came to see him and told folks back home, “Buddy, he’ll never make it.”
He didn’t start playing golf until he was 33, after one of his WWII veteran friends had been introduced to the game in Augusta, Georgia, and got hooked.
Pellegrini had similar thoughts, but with the help of his two female therapists, he worked hard to regain his strength.
“After two months I left that hospital and then I started slowly getting back into my routine,” he said. “You don’t know me, but I’m a very determined individual. These two girls worked on me every, every, every day.”
That determination always has been part of Pellegrini’s life. He was born south of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania steel mill and coal mine country. The local industry prompted a lot of young men from the region to become great athletes, including the likes of Stan Musial and Joe Montana.
Pellegrini’s chosen pursuit was baseball, which he played 12 to 18 hours a day and got good enough to make the Monessen High baseball team as a shortstop at 14. When he was 16, he signed a contract with the Pittsburgh Pirates.
“Unfortunately, I got hit in the eye with a ball and then had to go to war,” he said. “And then I come back from war and went down south and played Class A ball, and then I got married in ’45 and said, my baseball career’s over.”
He didn’t start playing golf until he was 33, after one of his WWII veteran friends had been introduced to the game in Augusta, Georgia, and got hooked. Pellegrini and his buddies laughed at first about playing golf because all members at the nearby Monongahela club were either doctors or attorneys. But then they tried it with some rented clubs on a public course and got hooked themselves.
“As we played, we liked it,” he said. “At that time I was bad. All four of us were former baseball players, and all we wanted to do was hit that ball; knew nothing about chipping and putting. As we got older and started playing for money, then we had to learn all the techniques. Fell in love with it.”
He got himself down as low as a 4 handicap. Once with his buddies up in Pennsylvania he got to the 18th tee when his friend asked him a fateful question. “Do you know what you are right now? You’re 6-under par,” he told him.
“I swear to God, I hit that ball and I didn’t even make a turn. I hit it way across the road out of bounds,” Pellegrini said with a laugh. “I wanted to make another par and shoot 6-under, and I ended up shooting 68.”
He first shot lower than his age when he was in his mid-70s. By the time he reached his 80s, it became a regular occurrence. Now it’s an every-round norm.
He also has had nine holes-in-one since he started playing. At age 95, he had two of those aces, including one in a big tournament with his son, Norm, at Isleworth. “I’ve got the flag and everything,” he said. Al and Norm won their flight even though Norm was the second-oldest guy in the field.
Pellegrini is the oldest guy in his retirement enclave HarborChase of Dr. Phillips. “He runs circles around those 85-year-olds there,” Damesworth said, marveling at Pellegrini’s tall (he peaked at 6 feet) and lean physique as well as his intense and sharp mind. “There’s guys 10, 20 years younger that have half his energy. He says, ‘Man, I just stay active. I swim. I play golf. I’ll take a nap. Then go to swim again. Come back and hit balls. I just stay active.’”
With continued good health, Pellegrini aims to be breaking 100 when he turns 100 in September 2024.
Pellegrini still makes a good turn through the ball and easily hits it past the 150-yard markers on the Orange Tree course he plays from about 5,200 yards.
“There’s guys 75 and 80, and I play the same tees they do,” he said. “I’m not lying when I tell you that I hit the ball off the tee past the 150-yard marker every time, practically. … I play Orange Tree, I play by Bay Hill, I play my son’s Isleworth … if you don’t hit the ball straight here at Orange Tree, you’re not gonna score. You’d better hit it straight, and I do. I swear to God. I shoot under my age every time I play; it’s because I hit the ball straight here.”
About the only real sign of age Pellegrini exhibits is a refusal to embrace technology such as cellphones and email. “Email is for kids,” he said.
With continued good health, Pellegrini aims to be breaking 100 when he turns 100 in September 2024. His last tip for reaching that milestone?
“I make sure I have a good breakfast every morning; to me, that’s the main meal,” he said. “You have a good breakfast, you can go a long way.”
Just a few months shy of 99, Pellegrini shows no signs of slowing down.