Reflections: Cold Weather No Problem for 94-YearOld Frank Payne

Cold Weather No Problem for 94-Year-Old Frank Payne

Navy vet has shot has age and most played rounds at Sunflower Hills

by Alan Hoskins, Feature Writer

▲ Frank Payne, at age 94-year-old, can be found yearround at Sunflower Hills playing almost daily. This photo was taken in December 2020 when it was 28 degrees at our tee time and a brisk 34 degrees at the end of our 18 holes. (photo by Alan Hoskins.) T’was the week before Christmas, and all over the course, hardly a creature was stirring — except for Frank Payne dashing from one hole to the next. Temperatures hovering below freezing that week failed to deter Payne from his appointed rounds — six straight days at an amazing 94½ years of age.

On that Monday, it was 28 degrees at tee time; 34 at the end of 18 holes (I know, I was there). On Tuesday, it was 23 degrees when Payne started, 31 at finish time. And so, it continued the rest of the week. Weather warmed a little, but the first balls were hit in freezing cold weather.

“The first couple of days, it was pretty cool, but I just love the fresh air and the exercise,” says Payne. “Just dress warm. I had a bunch of buddies who watched TV and smoked cigars when it got cold, and they’re all gone now. Tell the ladies if they want their husbands to live a long life to get them out on the golf course.”

A legend at Sunflower Hills in western Wyandotte County, it’s safe to say Frank Payne has played more rounds and shot his age more times than anyone in the course’s 44-year history. He also swung the longest driver at one time.

“I added four inches to a regular driver and then another four inches,” says the 5’9” Payne (photo on left). “It comes right up to my nose. I could hit the ball a long way. For about 10 years, I could hit it with the best of them. A lot of guys tried it; no one could hit it.”

“Frank was always tinkering with his clubs trying to get more yardage,” says veteran Sunflower Hills head professional Jeff Johnson. “He was always trying to get that extra yardage. Now, he’s a classic senior golfer, not long off the tee but

right down the middle. And he’s always practicing his putting. But the thing about Frank, he never complains about anything. He said he went through World War II, so nothing scares him.”

A Navy veteran who now lives in Basehor, KS, Payne started playing Sunflower Hills not too long after it opened in 1977. For 26 years, he was a volunteer at the course, handling carts and other responsibilities. “I quit golf for four years so my wife and I could go on senior bus tours but then started again,” he says.

Playing almost exclusively on weekdays, he played about 150 rounds in 2020. For the last six years, he estimates he’s shot his age more than half the time. “I play the yellow (senior) tees now and usually shoot about 89 to 92. Sunflower is a pretty tough course. I’ve only broke 80 twice.”

Payne established himself in Sunflower folklore several years ago when a member of his foursome hit a tee shot close to the foursome ahead of him. “I didn’t hit the ball, but after the group ahead played out the hole, one of them came back to us,” remembers Payne. “The guy who hit it was a little scared, but I said I’d take care of it. The guy came back and said, ‘The next time that happens, we’re going to have it out.’ I said, ‘You drove all the way back here — let’s see what you got right now.’ He drove away, and later, he told someone he felt he should apologize but didn’t know if he wanted to mess with that one guy.” Probably a good idea. In the 1980s, Payne promoted fights at Memorial Hall and has two sons, Mark and Jeff, who are both in the Karate Hall of Fame in Dallas, TX.

Payne plays in two 9-month Sunflower Hills senior leagues, teaming with Greg Carbury on Mondays and Emmitt Hightower on Wednesdays, then exchanges barbs with Dale Moore, Bill Palmer, Dean Bundy, Wayne Johnson, and Dave Vaughn the rest of the week. “Every time I outdrive the long knockers, I go home and write it in a book,” confesses Payne. “I get tired of those guys telling me ‘Frank, that’s you back there.’”

Vaughn says, “He’s got a whole novel on me.”

An outstanding football and basketball player at the old Argentine High School in Kansas City, KS, Payne left after his junior ▲ 94-year-old Frank Payne (center) and golf buddies (from left) Dave Vaughn, Dale Moore, Dean Bundy, and Bill Palmer play golf almost daily at Sunflower Hills — as do I. I’m the shadow in the photo. It was about 34 degrees on this December day. (photo by Alan Hoskins.)

year to join the Navy. “I had to get my dad to sign papers to let me enlist,” he says. “I lost a brother-in-law and a cousin in Normandy and felt I wanted to help.”

That was in 1944. Assigned to the attack transport USS Saint Croix, Payne landed in Japan just five days after the end of WWII and spent several months shuttling troops and weapons in China and Indo-China. He finished that tour decommissioning the USS Cassin Young, the most decorated destroyer in WWII, now on display in Boston Harbor. “I got my GED in 1947 and then went back into the Navy as a gunner’s mate on the aircraft carrier USS Oriskany for one year. It was a new ship, and I thought I’d gone to heaven. I pitched for our softball team, including a big game against an Air Force team in Libya.”

His second tour took him on a shakedown cruise in the Mediterranean, a cruise that took him to ports in Turkey, Libya, Cypress, Crete, and France. His favorite port was Nice, France, where he barely missed meeting up with the rich and famous. “Another buddy and I were hitchhiking to Nice, and a couple of other guys got ahead of us and were picked up. We found out later it was Elizabeth Taylor and her first husband, Nicky Hilton.”

After getting out of the service, Payne worked 14 years as a foreman in the mechanical department at General Motors. He was persuaded by his former boss to join him at Bendix, now Honeywell. “After 29 years, they talked me into forming my own consulting company. I consulted six months in Albuquerque but wanted to come home. I stayed another year and then retired. I also promoted fights at Memorial Hall, including one for ESPN. They wanted me to have one a month, but they wouldn’t pay any money.”

Payne and his wife, Caroline, were married 50 years before she passed away in 2002. They had three sons, Mark (now deceased), Jeff, and Doug. “Mark and Jeff are in the Karate Hall of Fame,” he says proudly. “Black Belt magazine ranked Mark the fifth best in the world in kickboxing in the middleweight division and Jeff third in the lightweight division. They were best known in Texas and Oklahoma but fought all over the Midwest.”

In all his years at Sunflower Hills, Payne has never had a hole-in-one — and doesn’t want one. “I made a deal with the Lord that he wouldn’t take me until I made a holein-one,” he says. “One day, on No. 13, I hit one right at the hole, and Emmitt Hightower said, ‘Go in!’ I told him to shut-up! It was a Calloway ball, and they listen to you. It stopped four inches from the hole. If I ever get one, it’s a mis-hit.” 

Alan Hoskins, Golf Writer Lead Feature Writer since 2007