I began working on this essay in the fall of 2018 after I discovered that Memphis-area PGA TOUR great Loren Roberts was in the process of coming back from a difficult bout with prostate cancer. It is a work in progress — for one thing, it’s far too long (you have been warned) — and will be updated and adjusted until, like Loren’s comeback, it is considered complete.

This is meant as an addition to this 2005 series chronicling Loren Roberts’ rise to PGA TOUR champion, on the occasion of his transition to a senior tour career that would include 13 victories, including four majors.

Loren Roberts cancer comeback: ‘Go out on my own terms’

It is one of the most compelling comeback stories in Memphis sports, one that also doubles as another farewell from a cherished local athlete, and for much of 2019, it has proceeded in public view at Shelby Farms Park.

And yet few if any of those who may have encountered Loren Roberts on his 4-mile power walk around the refurbished Hyde Lake recognize that the man wearing a cap promoting Memphis, offering a smile and a “good morning,” also happens to be one of the most accomplished professional athletes in the history of his adopted hometown.

Loren Roberts will tell you that this does not faze him one bit.

I’m just a golfer, Loren will tell you. And being a golfer, he’s not an anatomical anomaly like athletes in other sports, just a touch taller than average (6’3″) and moving with a little more pace than the other Memphis-area residents out for mid-morning exercise — mostly middle-aged folks like himself trying to extend their longevity.

Not unlike many of them, he moved here because of his career — in the 1990s, from the Memphis airport, Loren could get a nonstop flight on Northwest Airlines to almost every PGA TOUR stop. He and his wife, Kim, settled in Germantown, became members at Second Presbyterian Church in central Memphis and sent their girls, Alex and Addison, to 100+-year-old Hutchison School (they then went on to college at Alabama and Auburn, but that’s another story).

Though Loren has been oft-described over the years as gracious and humble, that misses something essential about this man who is the second-most accomplished golfer in the history of the Memphis area (trailing only his old friend and mentor Cary Middlecoff but well ahead of anyone else, including John Daly). There does exist a competitive ego and self-confident edge, simmering beneath the surface. Winning 21 tournaments on the PGA TOUR and Champions TOUR, including four senior major titles, requires a drive for winning fueled by high-octane self-esteem. Ask around the TOUR or Memphis’ golf community, and you’ll hear stories of Loren’s competitive fire — sometimes laced with locker-room language, artfully deployed.

One PG-rated example — at the 1996 Greater Milwaukee Open, with a huge global media contingent on hand for Tiger Woods professional debut, Loren charged on Sunday to birdie 4 of the final 6 holes and force a playoff with crowd favorite Jerry Kelly, a popular Wisconsinite. I once asked Loren it it was tough dealing with the pressure and chaos that day, and he just smiled and said: “When I made that birdie putt on the first playoff hole, it got pretty quiet.”

What Loren is not is arrogant, nor it seems much concerned with status. If someone did happen to stop and ask Loren why he is marching around the lake at Memphis’ iconic public park, Loren would just say he was just trying to stay in shape.

On one of those cold walks this past January, Loren would have sooner jumped in the lake than volunteer that he was preparing to go to Hawaii to begin his 15th season on the PGA Champions Tour — and 37th season overall as a TOUR professional golfer many consider among the best in the history of the game at the art of putting.

“I hate telling people I’m off to Hawaii, for goodness sake,” Loren told me a few days before his trip to the first PGA Champions Tour event.

Loren also would not have immediately volunteered this — that his golf season last year was derailed by an aggressive form of prostate cancer.

It forced him to reckon not only with the possible end of his career but also with his own mortality.

“I will tell you that I have faith, that I’m fortunate because I believe my faith in Christ means that I have another life — the main thing I want to come out of all this is to make it a wakeup call for all guys to get tested for prostate cancer,” Loren told me. “It’s a simple  blood test, a PSA, and you know, if you are a guy and you live long enough, odds are you are probably going to get prostate cancer and it can be managed if you catch it.

“But guys don’t want to talk about it. I am amazed at the number of guys, I bet at least 10 just in Memphis, people I consider friends, who out of nowhere have shared with me they had prostate cancer and I just never knew. Guys don’t talk about this stuff but we need to.”

Loren is now embarked upon a season that he admits will probably be his last as a fulltime competitive professional. The determination that made him one of most accomplished athletes in Memphis over the last three decades is now channeled into a desire to leave competitive golf on his own terms.

After a struggling during the winter opening of the 2019 season, Loren took a five-week break to prepare for the most important stretch of the Champions Tour season — there is much golf left to be played and, as a California native, Loren has always excelled in warmer weather.

He’s hoping to continue to regain strength and stamina, enough that perhaps one weekend this season the swing will catch a groove and allow him to conjure some magic with his old-school wand — a flanged putter with simple, thin leather grip that may one day find a place in the Golf Hall of Fame.

The plaque could read: Over four decades, this former catcher from northern California used the putter to earn the nickname ‘Boss of the Moss’ and get as much out of his modest natural talent as any professional athlete of his generation.

But this story, which I’m posting to my personal website, is not only about about golf, not only about one of the most significant figures in Memphis sports of the last 30 years.

It’s about how a man who embraced the Memphis area with grace and gusto and in the process brought honor to his profession. It is about a man deeply grateful for his life and health, and as he navigates these final few holes of his career, determined he won’t just sit idle on life’s 19th hole.

He knows he has something to offer, and has a deep sense of obligation to pay back as much as he can for his good fortune.

“C’mon, I have had an unbelievable life. This career? For me, it’s unbelievable,” is how Loren puts it, in a moment of reflection. “I mean, I was the bag room boy picking balls from the range at San Luis Obispo Country Club and here I’ve been on the TOUR for 37 years. Seriously — how could that be any better?”

‘Nine is better than 10’

My reacquaintance with Loren Roberts began when I happened upon the Senior British Open on TV last summer — it was late July, because it occurred on the day my daughter turned 13.

Onto the screen flashed a familiar image, and I recognized the whiplash golf swing belonging to the golfer whose career I had the privilege of chronicling as a sportswriter at the Memphis morning daily newspaper for several years. There was Loren Roberts, playing at one of golf’s most hallowed courses, the Old Course at St. Andrews — and he was a few strokes under par and not far removed the Top 10,.

It had been a few years since I last spoke with Loren. After I left journalism in 2015 to become a writer and editor at ALSAC, the fundraising and awareness organization for St. Jude, Loren had invited me to join him and George Lapides, the legendary Memphis media figure, on their regular lunches at some of George’s favorite Memphis-area dining spots.

Hearing that George was in failing health, Loren had taken it upon himself to find a way to deepen their connection.

Like others who grew up in Memphis listening to George set the sports agenda on a pioneering sports talk radio show, I admired George for his following and his influence on the Memphis sports scene. Lunches with one of the best people I ever covered and someone who helped me grow to love sports and Memphis — sign  me up.

And yet, as too-often occurs in this age of busyness and distractions, I never made it happen.

I was adjusting to a new job with heavy time demands, prioritizing quality moments with family (and two tween kids), and, alas, missed the opportunity.

After George died, in June of 2016, a cocktail of guilt, regret and inertia managed to block Loren from my mind for a while.

I had reached back out to Loren last spring, by text, to let him know about a near-tragic accident involving longtime former Memphis journalist and golf writer Bobby Hall (ladder + chainsaw + tree-trimming = maybe not such a great retirement activity).

Loren texted back that he’d reach out to Bobby (who is fine now but do yourself a favor — find Bobby and ask can he help you with some tree trimming).

So on that July day last summer when Loren popped up on TV at the Senior British, trying to work his way into contention, it made me smile — look at Loren still competing, still repping his adopted hometown.

To see how Loren had been playing in 2018, I googled “Loren Roberts” on my iPhone,

I was stunned by what popped up — a post by Golf Digest on Twitter, several weeks earlier:

“I want to leave (the game) on my terms.”

Loren Roberts returns to competition five months after prostate cancer diagnosis.

As I started reading the Golf Digest piece, there came the realization — when I had texted Loren earlier in the spring about Bobby Hall’s near-death experience, Loren was himself recuperating from his own harrowing confrontation with mortality.

The Golf Digest story, by well-regarded national golf writer Dave Shedloski, explained that when Loren received results from a prostate biopsy in late 2017, he scored a nine (of 10) on the Gleason index used to predict the aggressiveness of prostate cancer.

Loren told Shedloski, “My first thought was, ‘Well, nine is better than a 10.’ ”

At Loren’s first post-surgery tournament, at The Tradition in Birmingham (where in 2005 he won his first senior major), Loren had to withdraw — his core was weak and his putting and chipping, of all things, had gone haywire.

Going under for hours for prostate surgery, Loren told Golf Digest, “kind of erases the tape. I went out and I was yipping with the putter and chili-dipping wedges and everything else. It’s like I forgot how to do it.”

And yet, I was seeing Loren on TV, at the British Open at St. Andrews, competitive again on one of golf’s most important stages.

As I absorbed the news, chiding myself for being so oblivious asking Loren (with cancer!) to help someone else, my mind scanned back to 13 years earlier, to another hospital room.

It was shortly after my daughter was born.

After Loren turned 50 in 2005 and transitioned to the Champions Tour, I produced a mini-biography of him, chronicling the career of a man one of the series’ headlines referred to as “Mr. Memphis.”

Because my daughter arrived (three weeks early!) just days before Loren’s senior debut — at the 2005 Senior British — I can still remember finishing up the series on my laptop in my wife’s hospital room, in between Dad duties.

Thirteen years later, the shock of learning about Loren’s cancer sent me to my clip files to binge-read that five chapter mini-bio of Loren.

Loren Roberts has traveled a long way – from San Luis Obispo (Calif.) and the Pacific Coast Highway, to Memphis and the Mississippi River.

So many quotes and moments that I’d long forgotten reminded me why it was no real surprise to see Loren persevering — at one of the game’s most important events of the year, no less (this was the first time St. Andrews had opened itself to the Senior British Open).

From a 17-year-old kid who struggled to break 90 to a licensed club professional at his hometown country club to the pinnacle of golf.

“I’m the last of a breed,” Roberts sometimes says.

“I’ve gone a long way by getting everything I have out of a little talent.”

Lunch with Loren (Part I)

After Loren had returned from Scotland — he drifted back into the field, finishing 50th — I sent him a text, offering belated support and encouragement on his journey back to good health.

Lunch? I asked.

Of course, Loren said yes. Of course he postponed an appointment to see his back specialist.

I didn’t know that I would be writing about Loren at all, so I didn’t record the conversation, didn’t prepare to take notes.

But it didn’t take five minutes with him at the Seasons 22 Grille for my old journalism instincts to to start popping.

I was not going to violate Loren’s privacy by pulling out a notebook, but I did start to take mental notes. And afterward, recorded voice notes.

I still had no intention of writing anything but I could not resist the old pull of chronicling something important, saving for posterity those telling details that added up to a story that I thought people — especially in the Memphis area — ought to know about.

I recorded them in no particular order, just rapid-fire spoke into the recorder as I tried to recount details of the conversation:

• Food arrives — Loren just wanted grilled cheese and tomato soup — and he asks to say a blessing. Not an evangelical prayer. Like a meditation. Gratitude — to be here at this moment and sharing a meal together.
• He prays rubbing a cross — it is smooth, like polished ivory.
• Golf legend Byron Nelson, a hero of Loren’s, gave it to him — Nelson had whittled it himself out of deer antlers.
• Treasured the relationship with Byron — when Loren won the 1999 Byron Nelson Classic, his father was there (only tournament his father saw him win in person).
• Prostate cancer diagnosed last winter — so hard to fathom. PSA to detect prostate cancer had always been low but then they started spiking.
• Could do surgery or alternative proton therapy — less aggressive, could spare tissue.
• Loren explains: “But the issue is you’ve got to take drugs to suppress hormones and I already hit it 40 yards shorter than other guys. I’d be hitting 220-yard drives. My career would be over.”
• Told his wife, Kim, that he’d do the radiation, if that’s what she wanted. They decided to go the surgery route.
• Scheduled surgery — for Feb. 14. How’s that for a Valentine’s Day, honey? I’m having my prostate removed.
• Loren not shy sharing details of side effects of prostate surgery for a man. Too many men don’t talk about it — needs more awareness.
• Oldest daughter Alex, traveled with Loren and Kim to Nashville for the surgery.
• Youngest daughter, Addison, moved back to Memphis to help with the recuperation.
• Recovering was more difficult than he imagined. Muscles in his core were shredded. Almost felt like he’d forgotten how to chip and even putt.
• Playing at The Tradition was probably too soon but it was important to be there for the senior tour’s first major. Where Loren won his first major.
• Senior British Open was always the goal — first time for the senior Open at St. Andrews. Took the whole family. Son in law caddied for him. Got access to Royal & Ancient’s famed members dining room — men had to wear coats and ties. “Well, I just love that old-fashioned stuff. Call me corny but I love it.”
• So many other senior tour players also with their families — their kids had grown up together and cherished the trip.
• Family photo with Kim and the his daughters on the Swilcan Bridge, the ancient stone arch that connects No. 1 and No. 18 fairways at St. Andrews.
• He won two Senior British Opens, but how can you top that?

Lunch with Loren, part 2

We promise to meet again, and when the time comes, Loren suggests one of the favorite places introduced to him by George — the Little Tea Shop, the Downtown Memphis diner famous for power brokers, Miss Sue’s hospitality and the sublime Lacy’s Special.

Except, on this day, the Little Tea Shop is closed so we detour to The Arcade, the historic diner on South Main where movies in need of a 1950s look and feel will shoot. We sit at the table across from the famed Elvis booth.

This time Loren has brought with him none other than Bobby Hall, the former golf writer at The CA who is now fully healed and back into rollicking storytelling form months after his own near-death experience pruning his trees.

The waitress has to return four times before we finally take a breath from the golf tales to look at the menu. We all meat-and-three it and the topic has turned to John Daly.

Bobby relays his own behind-the-scene account, which could make for a 30-for-30 all by itself.

Even the most casual of Memphis sports fans would be familiar with this tallest of Memphis golf tales — Long John Daly, who shortly after moving to Memphis from Dardanalle, Arkansas, transformed from a golf nobody to a sports folk hero after winning the 1991 PGA Championship at Crooked Stick.

Bobby was my predecessor on the golf beat at The CA, retiring in 2001, so he has a full archive of Daly stories.

If that PGA is most remembered for how Daly’s howitzer drives and a never-lay-up assault changed pro golf forever, Bobby reveals how his own seasoned reporting instincts made him sense Daly would be disrupting the golf ecosystem in other ways.

To wit: at that tournament, Bobby was the reporter who discovered there were two women claiming to be Daly’s primary love interest.

The next year, in 1992, Loren and Kim decided to move to Memphis, where their close friends Frank and Carla Brown lived.

At first, he was barely noticed, certainly compared to Daly — except for those who knew golf, like Dr. Cary Middlecoff, the Memphis golf legend who once said of Loren: “We’ve got a kid back home (in Tennessee) who is just a beautiful putter. He’ll just break your heart on the greens, he’s so pure. If he ever gets to believing in himself, he could really be something to watch.”

It’s hard not to consider how these contrasting characters, chose at about the same time to migrate to Memphis.

In Loren Roberts, arguably golf’s best putter in the era before technology corrected even the shakiest of strokes, Memphis found a man deeply respected for his competitive accomplishments and admirable behavior — consistent, reliable, considerate, disciplined and devoted to his wife and daughters.

In John Daly, arguably golf’s best driver before technology allowed almost anyone to grip-it-and-rip-it, Memphis found a charismatic yet enigmatic figure, much-beloved for his powerful game but too often devolving into a pathetic caricature — self-indulgent, inconsiderate, undisciplined, gullible and unreliable.

While John Daly may always be memorable for the spectacles created (good and bad, including 49 withdrawals and nine disqualifications), in his career, it is Loren Roberts with credentials and clout that place his career just shy of Hall of Fame consideration.

Consider that Loren Roberts won eight times on the regular PGA TOUR, to Daly’s five victories.

And if two of Daly’s were majors, he only ever finished top 10 at a major one other time. For Loren, there were eight finishes in the top 10 of a major, the most notable being that 1994 U.S. Open playoff at Oakmont (considered the most demanding of all major championship courses) where officials gifted the South African Ernie Els with a ruling so outrageously favorable it essentially stole the tournament from Loren (that’s not Loren’s interpretation, but it’s conventional wisdom in golf). Sometimes forgotten is Loren’s third-place Masters finish in 2000, where he only the second player in history to birdie all four Augusta National par threes in one Masters round. But for two bad swings that week leading to water-logged double-bogeys, Loren might have won (he finished four strokes back of Vijay Singh).

And yet, if John Daly were sitting at the Arcade for lunch, there would be cell phones out snapping photos and strangers seeking autographs.

Our lunch continues undisturbed, and Loren wouldn’t have it any other way.

As we leave, Loren commands his companions, both of us former journalists, to leave our wallets in our pockets. Even though Bobby Hall and I are no longer covered by a code of journalistic ethics, we do insist on leaving the tip.

Collaborating with Loren

One morning not long after, as I walked through the Old Forest at Overton Park, adjacent to round the 112-year old golf course — I began to lament over how in Memphis, this crucial chapter of the Loren Roberts’ story would not receive a full telling.

It was understandable why Loren’s career had fallen from the local sports news agenda, because so much else was happening in Memphis sports — Tiger football becoming relevant, the Grizzlies adding a potential new superstar, Penny Hardaway as the new Tiger basketball coach spiking interest (and, it seemed, the mandatory inclusion of “Penny” in every local sports headline).

On this Friday before 9/01 day, even professional soccer was drawing interest, driven in part by superstar U.S goalkeeper Tim Howard — like Loren, another professional athlete transplant to the Memphis area.

And so I called Loren and proposed this — let me finish write about his comeback. Why not add a final chapter to that Loren Roberts bio that I filed 13 years ago from Baptist Women’s Hospital, with my baby daughter in the bassinet beside me?

For me, more than anything, I saw an opportunity to perhaps gain a deeper understanding about sports and life and competition through the prism of someone who has meant a great deal to the sports community in my hometown.

Loren agreed, with the same stipulation he gave the Golf Digest writer — we need to make sure men are getting screened for prostate cancer.

That article brought up several prominent golfers who have had to deal with prostate cancer, among them two-time U.S. Open winner Andy North and Arnold Palmer. The lake at Shelby Farms Park where Loren takes his regular power walks is named for the Memphis philanthropist, AutoZone founder Pitt Hyde, who survived prostate cancer in the late 1990s

About 165,000 new cases of prostate cancer are diagnosed each year in the U.S., leading to nearly 30,000 deaths. It is the second leading cause of cancer death in American men, behind only lung cancer.

Loren is passionate about this issue now, and so too are those who care about him, as it became apparent in interviews with people closest to Loren.

In talking to four people about Loren — his wife Kim, daughters Alex and Addison and longtime PGA TOUR friend Tom Lehman — I was reminded of how much the story of someone’s cancer journey involves the support of loved ones.

Taken together, their descriptions provide deeper insights into those core ingredients that have made Loren such a significant figure in his sport and his adopted city.

From initial suspicion to diagnosis to surgery may have only covered a few months, but, as families dealing with cancer understand all too well, the uncertainty and looming dire possibilities made the days long — excruciatingly so.

KIM ROBERTS: “It was scary to hear that word, ‘cancer,’ and you do get choked up about it. The unknown is scary. Loren is a listmaker and so had to change his lists. It’s like cancer for anybody — you’ve got to change your gameplan. You know, a list is kind of like control, these things that I can actually do or achieve, so when you have something in your life come up that you don’t have control over — you have no control over those cancer cells. You just think, ‘God, whatever you put in front of me, we’ve got to take whatever comes our way.'”

ALEX ROBERTS: “I know if you look at the timeline, it’s like a whirlwind, but at the time it felt really slow, like time … moved … so … SLOW. I remember over the holidays, offices were closed, and we had to wait like four extra days and when you are in that situation, it feels like years. We internalized that, and we had to really lean on each other.”

Throughout the journey, there were varying degrees of comfort with how much to share, but ultimately they found that it was important to invite their wide circle of friends.

KIM ROBERTS: “Loren, he has a public life but he tries to keep some things private so it was probably harder for him to share more than it was for me. One thing that breaks my heart as a wife in this whole experience — whereas women lay out everything and give you every single detail possible, men when it comes to the prostate and cancer, men will suffer quietly. And that breaks my heart.”

TOM LEHMAN: “My wife knows Kim very well and so you hear her fears and how scared she was and everything. I just tried to be a sounding board. Loren is pretty tough and likes to downplay things. Kim is a little bit more willing to share openly her fear, and a lot of times she would say, Loren is really afraid. And I would think, ‘That’s funny, because it didn’t really seem like that when we talked.’ So I’d call back and we’d have another conversation — it’s a tough, tough deal.”

ALEX ROBERTS: “He handled the whole thing with great humility.  We were kind of scared and neurotic and he is like the rock of our family, he’s the leader. He was definitely the strong one but strong in a different way than I had ever seen before — he let himself be vulnerable and allowed us to step up and help him.”

Channeling their anxiety into advocacy helped make the ordeal more bearable.

KIM ROBERTS: “I’m a true believer in that if you’re going to struggle through this, you might as well just share with others your experience. Like with awareness — I tell people, ‘Hey, if you haven’t had your PSA checked, you need to check.’ ”  

ALEX ROBERTS: “Advocacy was really important. I would run into people, like see a friend at Kroger, and share and say, ‘So tell your Dad to get his prostate checked!’ That’s kind of how we dealt with it … we told a lot of players, get checked. I know for a fact we heard from wives, as soon as they got home, they got checked.”

Although the family believes Loren may have returned too soon last May to play in the season’s first major, The Tradition in Birmingham, they are grateful for making the family trip to Scotland for the British Open at St. Andrews. Alex’s husband, Rob, caddied for Loren.

ALEX ROBERTS: “He was saying, ‘I really want to play well for Rob.’ I think it gave my dad extra purpose. The memory that sticks out most, it was Sunday, final round, it’s raining sideways, and there I see my Dad and Rob on 18, and they walk across the Swilcan Bridge together. Thinking about everything, all that led up to that moment, it took my breath away.”

TOM LEHMAN: “That one was extra special for a lot of reasons. It’s a lot of people’s favorite place in the world if you’re a golfer. So many of the golfers brought families with them. The Roberts and our families, we’ve shared houses together there before, so it was so nice to share another week together at such an amazing place.”

KIM ROBERTS: “I probably look at it a little different. I have total gratitude from where we were that Valentine’s Day for surgery to being at St. Andrews at the British Open in July. But we have to keep on telling ourselves — it has been a struggle for Loren. It’s harder to get as motivated now, it just is. You know, I don’t think I’ve had that ‘aha moment.’ I just think, every day is an aha moment for us. We don’t have to be at St. Andrews to realize how fortunate we are.’ “

Unlike athletes in other sports, golfers can delay retirement from competition until they are in their late 50s or even mid-60s. Loren’s cancer accelerated the process of confronting the end of his competitive career.

TOM LEHMAN: “With Loren, you know, he’s never had length off the tee, but has more than made up for it with a great short game and more than that, a really gritty, competitive nature. But as you get older and your game isn’t quite what it used to be, you are constantly thinking about, well, when is enough going to be enough? And then you have a health setback like Loren, and feeling like you are getting pushed out sooner than you want to. But I think Loren, getting this whole cancer thing behind him, if everything falls into place, he can have a good year or two and go out on his own terms and feel good about it.”  

KIM ROBERTS:  “The cancer, it definitely put him at a crossroads. That desire, when you have to fight health-wise, sometimes it’s not as important. It’s hard to answer that question because who ever knows when you should retire? Especially when it’s something you’ve done basically all your life.”

At the Club with Loren, Part 1

On a Saturday in early autumn, I meet Loren before one of his regular local games at Spring Creek Ranch, the Jack Nicklaus-designed golfing nirvana about 10 miles from Memphis, on the very eastern edge of county.

He responds warmly to all who greet him, usually calling Loren by one of two nicknames — “Pro” to honor his continuing status as TOUR pro or, more often, “Boss,” referring to his nickname, “Boss of the Moss,” for how he conquered greens with his putter.

Peek in his bag — with sponsor “BARBASOL” lettered down the side, another old-school touch — and you can see the classic putter, a slim flange-style blade with a narrow leather grip burnished from thousands of hours of practice. It is game technology not far removed from what he would have wielded learning from an old California pro named Olin Dutra, a U.S. Open champion who pioneered the smooth pendulum putting that replaced old jab-style putting.

Scott Felix, a nationally-renowned club-fitter based at Spring Creek Ranch, has long tried to coax Loren into testing his stroke on high-performance putter-fitting technology — high-speed cameras that capture things like angle and dynamic impact data to tailor the perfect putter for a player’s head loft, aim, face contact, ball skid distance and ball speed.

Felix once told me: “Loren just says, ‘Scott, I know what I do, I know why I do it — I don’t need all of that.'”

That plays out this September Saturday on the practice green, where the purity of Loren’s putting stroke comes through in the very sound it makes. Veteran sportswriters come to understand that one way to recognize an elite athlete is to listen — the sizzle of a fastball with movement, a baseball bat’s sweet spot delivering a tight thwomp-crack, the pop of a net from a basketball loaded with velocity and backspin, the accelerating buzz of a tightly spiraled football.

As one putt after another thrums off Loren’s putter face, the on-key vibrato is so pure it lingers like a call to meditation — before the thunk of the ball dropping into a hole 20 feet away.

thu-RUMMMM … THUNK

thu-RUMMMM … THUNK

thu-RUMMMM … THUNK

“You hear that?” one of Loren’s playing partners says. “Sounds good to my ear.”

I’m listening to this and remembering that the last time I visited Spring Creek Ranch was five years earlier, while reporting a long feature on the great Memphis soul songwriter David Porter. He was playing with his old Stax colleague Steve Cropper, fulfilling a charity silent auction (Golf with Memphis Soul Legends), and they regaled their playing partners with the creation stories for soul standards like “Soul Man” and “Hold On I’m Coming.”

Porter said something that day that seems to fit this moment, as I observe arguably the purest putter in the the history of the game: “When you are playing and on your game, man, it’s like music — there’s a rhythm, there’s a groove, there’s a flow.”

Not that Loren seems much impressed with himself. He nods at a young golfer walking past, a teenage girl, and points out to me that it is Rachel Heck, the Memphis prodigy who has been winning Tennessee state women’s titles since she was 14 and will play golf at Stanford.

“I saw her hitting on the range not long ago,” Loren said. “It’s amazing to watch, let me tell you. I wish I had that swing. Same thing, over and over and over.

“Like Iron Byron.”

I take note of this moment, this intersection of Memphis golf past and Memphis golf future.

Iron Byron was the name given the golf-swing robot built in the 1960s, the “Byron” referring to Byron Nelson, the man who came to be a friend and mentor to Loren after he won the old Byron Nelson Classic near Dallas.

The same Byron Nelson whose most enduring golf achievement, a dominating PGA TOUR win streak, came to an end at the Memphis TOUR stop, in 1946.

The same Byron Nelson who once whittled a cross out of deer antlers and gave to Loren to take back to Memphis after winning his namesake tournament.

As Loren joins his regular Saturday group — two groups of four on the tee box — I’m reminded of one Loren story that has become something of legend in Memphis. When he first moved to Memphis, Loren befriended a group of older men at his club, Tournament Players Club of Southwind.

They would go out in an eightsome, the seven older golfers playing best ball to Loren, all going from the tips.

As the story goes, Loren never lost.

“I am fortunate,” Loren says. “I’ve met a lot of incredible people playing golf, and what I love so much is that fellowship. No matter your level, if you can play, we can go out and we can get to know one another.

“We can have an experience together.”

At the Club with Loren, Part 2

One Sunday in September, I meet Loren at the grill at Southwind before his late-afternoon practice session.

On the big-screen TV, the PGA TOUR’s young guns are competing in the FedEx Cup playoffs, and one of the contenders was in trouble.

As Loren watches, hearing him analyze the situation brings to mind the fact that his old Memphis mentor, Dr. Cary Middlecoff, became one of golf’s first great TV broadcasters following his Hall of Fame career.

“You hear people talking technique and swing angle and all this kind of stuff vs. how to play,” Loren is saying. “I see a lot of guys that can really it it, but after they stand up there and bust that drive, there’s not enough thought about what’s going to be next? You’ve got to look at the course and decide, OK, what shot do I need to play to give me the best chance and making something happen?”

If he wanted, Loren could have curtailed his competitive career and become one of the TOUR’s game strategy gurus, dispensing advice for whatever retainer fee he wanted to ask. He does not shy away from the fact that his unorthodox body — long torso, short arms — made him consistently one of the shortest-hitting players on TOUR, and thus forced him to develop a keener competitive mindset and sharper strategic approach than most players.

As Loren and I talk, I notice two young men who have just come in from playing, observing us from the bar. One of them starts walking our way, and he looks familiar — a tall slim African-American golfer who appears to be in his 30s.

“Mr. Roberts,” he says, “I just wanted to say hello.”

It takes me a beat before I realize that this is Dennis Midgett, who was a student manager for the University of Memphis basketball team when I covered the Tigers. He had been an integral part of the support staff under three different coaches — Tic Price, Johnny Jones and finally John Calipari.

Midgett explains that, growing up, he learned golf through the Mid-South Junior Golf Association, an organization founded by Charles Hudson, the pro for many years at Pine Hill, a Memphis city course in a predominantly black neighborhood near Soulsville.

Roberts supported Hudson and the MSJGA to such an extent, Midgett reminds Loren, that a street near Pine Hill is named “Loren Roberts Way” in his honor.

Midgett recalls the summer of 1997 when Tiger Woods and his father accepted MSJGA’s invite to host a clinic at Pine Hill — and tells Loren he made an impression on more kids than he knows.

Loren remembers that day, too. It was four months after Woods won the 1997 Masters, and one year after Woods’ professional debut — at that 1996 Greater Milwaukee Open tournament that Roberts won in a playoff.

“There were so many kids, from all over town,” Roberts says. “It was awesome to be there.”

As Midgett leaves, he tells Loren: “I saw you over here and said, ‘I’ve got to come over and speak to this man.’ Thank you for all you’ve done for Memphis.”

Walking Shelby Farms with Loren

When I join Loren for one of his regular walks around the lake at Shelby Farms one day in March, a strong north wind adds more chill to the unseasonably cold morning.

Loren is bundled in a golf pullover and wears a black cap with an unfamiliar “M” on the front — the company it belonged to no longer exists but Loren likes wearing it because of the way”MEMPHIS” is stitched on the side.

Not many people are out at this time of day, but for those who do encounter us, Loren always offers a smile and calls out a friendly greeting.

It is five days after the final tournament of the Champions Tour’s winter season, played on courses in the West and in Florida. Although you wouldn’t know it from Loren’s demeanor on this morning walk, the 2019 season started with a struggle — Loren did not finish under par at any of his first five tournaments.

“I just wish we could get some good weather and I can get in more practice time,” Loren says.

The morning walk follows his strength workout, and earlier in the week, Loren had traveled to Columbus, Georgia, to see a specialist popular with TOUR players.

He prescribed a plan for Loren that involves a strict anti-inflammatory diet — no salt and no sugar, among other prohibitions.

“It’s kind of like a purge,” Loren says.

In what is likely his final full season as a TOUR professional, Loren is willing to do whatever it takes to put himself into position to really competing again, one more time.

During the winter events, in Florida and California, that meant enduring some of the toughest rounds of his career.

“I don’t ever remember shooting an 80 and I’ve done that a couple times,” Loren says.

And even as he recalls the frustration of grinding over too many putts to save par and too few chances to make birdie, Loren stops to visit with a woman and her dog, a large lab mix who has been wading in the water, despite the morning chill.

There have been good moments.

At one of the Champions TOUR’s most popular events, in Tucson, Arizona, Loren finished perhaps his strongest round of the early season by holing out from a bunker on 18 to finish with a birdie and entered the weekend in the top 15.

The moment was featured for a time on the front page of the Champions Tour website, and Loren’s exultant reaction was a mix of celebration and catharsis.

While those kinds of moments have been rare so far this season, Loren nonetheless finds positives.

In Tucson, he explains how meaningful it felt to play at a tournament dedicated to raising awareness for a less-discussed form of cancer — the tournament sponsor, Cologuard, which features a product that screens for colon cancer.

Many colon cancer survivors attended the tournament and wore the same kind of blue shirts to identify themselves and show solidarity with one another.

“I’d love to see something similar for prostate cancer,” Loren says

As we reach the far north end of the lake and turn, the wind now at our backs, Loren talks about his plan for the meat of the Champions Tour season, with major championships in Birmingham and New York in May followed by the U.S. Open in June in at Notre Dame and then the Senior British Open in July.

With the new diet and exercise regimen, his plan involves a five-week break, with a return at the more relaxed Bass Pro Shops Legends of Golf — two-man teams compete on courses near Branson, Missouri, designed more for spectacular views than exacting shot-making.

Loren had agreed to partner in the Ozarks with Hal Sutton, a former major winner with some Memphis connections, including at age 27 in 1985 winning Memphis’ PGA TOUR event, then known as the Danny Thomas Memphis Classic.

Sutton, a few years younger than Loren, never achieved the success Roberts attained on the senior circuit, leaving it at age 55 after a heart attack in 2014. Sutton these days runs a golf academy in rural Texas in great demand, and last year after attending the funeral of longtime PGA TOUR pro Bruce Lietzke, who died of a brain cancer, Sutton decided he needed to make one more go of it.

In a Golf Digest article written by Austin-based golf writer Kevin Robbins (another former colleague from The Commercial Appeal), Sutton is quoted saying: “I want to quit the game correctly.”

Only, Loren is not quite ready to use that “q” word. He sees the break, the new routine and the unconventional format — with lots of par-3s — as an opportunity to generate momentum.

“That’s the plan — assuming both of us are healthy,” Loren says with a laugh.

In the sports realm, “healthy” usually means uninjured, but as Loren speaks it, as we finish our walk and talk a bit more near our vehicles, it carries a double meaning.

His prostate cancer ordeal last year makes Loren cherish his health as something that goes beyond how well he might compete on a golf course.

And there’s news he’s proud to share — his oldest daughter, Alex, is expecting and the due date is August, a few weeks after the British Open.

“I’m fortunate. I know this is probably my last season,” Loren tells me, looking out at the path that meanders around the lake. “What I’m trying to figure out now, is what’s next? I’m not yet ready to get put out to pasture.”

It reminds me of something Loren said in a previous conversation: “My thing isn’t being known as some sort of a great player and that sort of thing. That’s great but that’s not my goal — my goal is to be known as someone who was a gentleman and gave back. I believe I’ve got a lot more to do in that department so we’ll see how this thing breaks down.

“I do think there’s a lot more to do, you know, when my playing days are done.”

Something that Kim Roberts told me, back in the fall, sums up this moment for me. She was obviously speaking for herself, but as Loren Roberts transitions into whatever is next, she expressed something many others in the Memphis area feel about having Loren Roberts.

“The game of golf has been good to us, but it’s not, for me, what makes Loren Roberts the man he is — so I’d like to have him around a little longer, that’s how I feel,” Kim said. “Because prostate cancer, I know sometimes people can have a nonchalant attitude, but there’s screening each year, there’s blood tests. Who knows?

“I’ve come to peace with Loren the golfer and moving on from that. I still want a husband — I’m interested in having a husband for the next however long. I can get kind of teary about it, but that’s where I am.”

Postscript: In contention in Branson

As I write this, on the final Saturday in April, I’ve just gotten off the phone with Loren, who returned my call from Branson.

Thanks in part to the new diet and exercise regimen, Loren is playing his best golf of the year, and is tied for fifth going into Sunday’s final round of the Bass Pro Legends of Golf Classic, just five shots off the lead.

Only, his partner is not Hal Sutton — it is Shaun Micheel, the Memphis-area TOUR pro famous for his 2003 PGA Championship victory. Shaun turned 50 this year and made his Champions Tour debut the previous week.

When an injury forced Sutton to drop out, and the Legends tournament organizers told Loren he could choose anyone he wanted to join the field.

“They said that I could pick who I wanted, so I thought, let’s get Shaun in, give him a chance to win some money and pick up some points and really get going out here,” Loren explained.

And they are clicking in the format, with Loren landing the ball in the fairways and greens to give Shaun license to play more aggressively.

“We are kind of ham and egg it out there pretty well together,” Loren said.

As people at the tournament have asked how 63-year-old Loren Roberts connected with the Champions Tour rookie, Loren adopts an exaggerated Memphis accent.

“I’ve been saying, ‘It’s a Memphis thaaang,’” Loren said.

When they tee off Sunday, just before noon, the group directly behind them will include none other than John Daly, who in tandem with Michael Allen is also tied for fifth. Not far ahead of them on the course will also be another Memphis-area connection — Justin Timberlake is among those playing in the celebrities and legends component (he’s paired with Gary Player and Mark Wahlberg).

High winds on Saturday led to bogeys on 1 and 18, putting them five shots back of the first-place team of Scott Hoch/Tom Pernice Jr. but still only two shots out of second.

It would take the golf gods smiling on the seasoned pro and the TOUR “rookie,” but as both Shaun and Loren’s careers can attest, stranger things have happened.

Which is why I am finally wrapping up this already much-too-long essay and hitting publish.

If only a few dozen people take notice and send some positive vibes across the Mississippi River toward the Ozarks, perhaps it’ll give Loren and Shaun that extra bit of golf karma needed to make for another unforgettable day in Memphis golf lore.

For Loren, who is nearing the one-year anniversary of his return from prostate surgery, just getting the chance to contend again in the final round feels like progress.

“So far this week, I feel like I’m hanging in there pretty good,” Loren said. “Let’s see if we can do it three days in a row now. I’d like to just go for it, see what happens.”