Harry Root Jr. is 92, he says.

I don’t believe it. Looks younger, oh, like 72. Acts younger. Laughs a lot. And, if not laughing at some lousy joke you made about his age, he’s smiling big because he does it so well and so naturally. Harry Root’s smile is big, corner to corner, showing all of his very good teeth.

Saw Harry Root and his beautiful nurse, Michele, recently when they were having lunch at the golf club of his lifetime, Palma Ceia in Tampa’s heart.

He was the golf champion of the golf, City of Tampa in Florida, 20 times, and of his club much more than that.

He was probably the city’s most often golf champ of any kind, but, strictly as an amateur. His business was importing boatloads of tropical fruit from south of us, mostly bananas. His nickname, naturally: Banana Root.

Some called him worse because he beat them so badly, and so often. He never won, he said, the State of Florida amateur but was runnerup almost two dozen times. He was simply great on the narrow courses, tops from the traps, after he’d take those long, sinewy fingers around the club for the blast. Gosh, but he was good. Gosh, but he was steady. Gosh, but he was unflappable. Gosh, could he handle adversity.

He could smile away trouble, and he still does, but this trouble now not a bad chip, legs gone lousy because of “peripheral neuropy, “ he said. “Insidious stuff. Can’t shake it. Tried. Can’t. Just can’t. Can’t stand.”. . . but, beginning to give me the Harry Root smile, passed on to his boys, Tommy and Harry, active still at the Tampa Palma Ceia Country Club.  Bad, unsteady, almost strengthless legs. And for an active man and top golfer…….well……

“Gosh, I miss that great game,” Harry said. “Such an outlet it was. Forces control. . . self-control, with the club and with the mind

“My best at Palma Ceia? Sixty five (65),” on the dangerously tight, fully-trapped, heavily treed course in the middle of the City of Tampa. It was built long ago on a Donald Ross design. It’s narrowness, out of bounds to the right often offered, small greens and traps made the par-70 tough, genuinely tough course where Harry Root was a founder of Ladies Professional Association with Didrikson, her wrestling husband, George, Patty Berg, Louise Suggs and a few others. But Harry was the LPGA’s daddy and Palma Ceia an early home.

I know, I was there when it was done, as a pal of Patty Berg. They all gave Root so much praise and control and fully trusted him. He, and his friends made it work at the start.  Then The Babe and George Zaharias bought a public course—and modest home on it. But, Zaharias contracted cancer and tied on a tee on the course still named for her. Patty Berg died last year near the Fort Myers she loved so.

Root and I are around, to talk and remember.

“How could I forget such moment?” Root asked out loud?

“Won’t. Can’t. Golf has meant so much to me. I owe the sport, the people in it and The Lord plenty,” he said, picking up a luncheon knife off a napkin, and gripping the handle like he was about to hole out yet another sand shot.

“Everybody ought to play golf, good or bad. Greatest humbler of them, all, like taking a seven on the 18th at Palma Ceia for a 71 . . .” or, 81. . . . or 9l . . . even a 101. 

Thank you, Harry Root, for being Harry Root.