Forever young

Golfers are introduced to the game in all sorts of unexpected ways, but the path 83-year-old Cheryl Rogers took is one of the more unusual you will hear. It gives new credence to the saying “golf is a game for life.”

Rogers was a competitive tennis player in her youth, growing up on a farm in Visalia, California, just south of Fresno. Her life has been full. She graduated with a master’s in elementary education and teaching from Fresno State, and had a three-decade career in education as both a kindergarten teacher and working in the textbook publishing industry. Rogers then went on to manage the Casa Palmero hotel at Pebble Beach for 24 years. She married, had one daughter and eventually a granddaughter, who is now 21 years old.

For almost the entirety of her well-lived journey, Rogers never played golf — even though California is a golf destination, and her position at Casa Palmero meant she could have played certain Monterey Peninsula courses for free. Nobody in her family played golf, and she was just neve...