Bob Walls was getting set to tee off on the first hole at his home course last week when his partners interrupted his pre-shot routine.
"Get back here, man," James King said. "We're playing blues today," Dawn Dozier added.
Walls wasn't having it. "When you're over 100, you can hit from anywhere you want," he told them.
Then, with a silky smooth swing from the forward white tees, he thwacked the ball down the right side of the fairway just short of the green on the 180-yard hole.
Not bad for a 103-year-old. Actually, pretty incredible.
"I don't feel 103"
Industry figures do not track how many centenarians play golf, but there are undoubtedly few, if any, who play as well and as often as Walls.
Walls is fit and trim and looks 30 years younger. He credits good genes, both of his parents lived into their late 90s, along with staying active. The notion that he's a freak of nature doesn't register with him.
"I don't feel 103. I don't act 103," he said. "To me it's no big deal."
Born in 1923, Walls moved to Omaha in his twenties and spent most of his working years owning and operating a janitorial service. He retired at 74 and, with friends' encouragement, took up golf. A local professional taught him how to play, and the two became close friends. Walls honours his memory by volunteering seven days a week at the course, which was renamed after him following his death in 2008.
Seven days a week
Walls spends five or six hours riding around in his open-top cart with a bucket of seed-and-sand mix on the passenger side. He fills divots and repairs ball marks, picks up trash and fishes other golfers' errant shots out of the lagoon with his ball retriever.
Always strapped to the back of the cart is his golf bag, because he never knows when the mood will strike to stop and play a hole or work on his game.
Outside the clubhouse are a couple of training devices Walls made to help young players get a feel for the swing arc. He has worked with kids in a junior programme and gives lessons to adults. The course holds an annual tournament in his name to raise money for equipment for neighbourhood kids.
When he gets home from the course each day, he often watches hours of training videos.
"When I visited him for his 101st birthday, I wasn't even in the door and the first thing he said to me was that he was breaking down his whole game, changing this, changing that," Dozier said. "He's always working on his game."
Still winning
Walls has still got plenty of game. He regularly shoots in the low 30s on the par-three course. In fact, the other day he shot 31 to win a match against the course manager, Mike Rice.
"The first time I beat him, and I haven't beaten him very often, I had to have a hole-in-one to do it," Rice said. "Who'd ever have thought a 103-year-old gentleman could knock a ball 180 yards consistently every day and have enough energy and strength to do it?"
Walls spends the winter elsewhere and is on a course or practice range every day there, too.
"Golf is the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning," he said.