In Pinehurst, N.C., and in Maine at the Lake Kezar Country Club, John Derr was a legend in his own time.

The fabled writer and broadcaster died eight days ago at age 97. Derr was a club treasure at Lake Kezar, where he played golf almost every day when he was healthy in a foursome with his wife Peggy, plus Lillian and Fred Banfield. People who knew him from the club were asked this week to tell a John Derr Lake Kezar story.

Club manager Bill Bissett probably put it best when he replied: “He was an institution here. We spent most of our time listening to him, rather than developing stories about him.”

Derr, a longtime summer resident of Lovell, was a part of the ownership group at Lake Kezar, and his shares in what is known as the most affordable club in New England, will be inherited by his daughter, Cricket Gentry.

“John loved that course,” said Bradley Smith, who also lives in Lovell and was a friend of Derr for more than 20 years.

“We talked just about every day for 15-18 years,” Smith said.

It was he who persuaded Derr to be a speaker a decade ago at a Maine State Golf Association scholarship dinner at Martindale. Reports are that Derr had a captive audience at that dinner, because he could speak about a variety subjects, in addition to golf.

“The scholarship recipients were mesmerized,” Derr’s Cape Elizabeth friend and fellow broadcaster Les Fleishers said. “To them, it was almost a fairy tale.”

Derr had to have been a special man to be counted among the friends of Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan, Sam Snead and Byron Nelson, but he was also close to famous people like Bing Crosby, Mahatma Ghandi, the late President Dwight Eisenhower, Dr. Billy Graham, Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, Grace Kelly and Dinah Shor. He wrote a widely acclaimed book: “A Place at my Table,” and has been inducted into four halls of fame. In 2007, he became the first journalist recipient of the Masters Major Achievement Award, and starting in 1935, he covered 62 Masters tournaments.

In 1956, CBS obtained the rights from Augusta National to televise the Masters, and Derr was the voice of the 15th hole. From that point on, he became a golf household name until 1982. His passing, however, did leave one matter of unfinished business.

“We were planning to record a radio series on golf history, and that was scheduled to start this week,” Fleisher said sadly.

Other than that, Derr lived a complete and fulfilling life.

No worming out of this one

This writer played in the Maine State Golf Association Senior Four-Ball Championship at Poland Spring on Tuesday. On the back nine more than once my ball wound up on a dead worm. I played it without touching the ball, but curiosity prompted me to ask Randy Hodsdon, the MSGA ‘s rules guru, about this. His response was concise.

“The Rules of Golf tell us that worms are loose impediments. When your ball comes to rest on top of a worm or any loose impediment, Rule 23 tells us that a loose impediment may be removed, but a penalty of one stroke will be applied if the ball moves. It’s not likely we would attempt to move the loose impediment in this case, as a penalty would be a certainty. So we just have to play it as it lies!”

Summed up: If you have worms in your golf game, you do not need to see a physician, but you do need to ignore them.

USGA promotion

On July 29, the United States Golf Association will conduct a “Play 9 Day,” in an attempt to promote golf.

Play 9 is has been created to encourage folks who find playing 18 holes to be too time consuming. Plus the USGA sees this as a great way to introduce new golfers to the game.

There is a Play 9 website — www.usga.org/play9 — and information may be obtained by calling 908-325-1807 or by emailing tjaronski@usga.org.

Round after round

Another busy week is on tap for the MSGA tournament schedule. Tomorrow there is a Senior Tour event at Old Marsh. Tuesday there is a Maine Amateur qualifier at Fox Ridge and Thursday there is another Maine Am qualifier at Penobscot Valley. Then there is the annual upstate special on the weekend, commonly referred to as the “County Tour” — Friday at Presque Isle, Saturday at Aroostook Valley and Sunday at Houlton, all of which is in Aroostook County.

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