One of the giants of the local golf scene might’ve stood 5½ feet tall — maybe in spikes! — but he cast a long shadow in a variety of directions.
Club pro, instructor, Florida PGA stalwart, college coach and, through the back half of the 20th Century, quite a golfer himself. He literally went back to the game’s roots in retirement.
Mike O’Sullivan died last week at 88. Don’t let the age fool you, this one was labeled surprising, given the spirited longevity of the man everyone knew as O’So. Kidney stones led to a quick chain of unfortunate events. A service is scheduled for 11 a.m., June 27 (Saturday) at Central Baptist Church in Daytona Beach.
“He did a lot of good. People thought a lot of him,” says Eric Meyers, longtime proprietor of the family-owned Riviera Country Club in Ormond Beach, O’Sullivan’s second home for most of his life, from childhood through retirement years when he joined the club’s grounds crew.
Mike learned golf from Bill Meyers, Eric’s dad, who bought Riviera in 1953 with his brother Bob and turned it into what it remains today — a consistent fixture of the area’s golf scene and one of the few (successful) family-operated courses in Florida.
Mike would later serve as Riviera’s head pro, lead instructor and co-owner before going across town to serve as head pro at Oceanside Country Club. He was already known as one of the area’s top players, as well as one of the best among statewide PGA of America competitors, when he thoroughly solidified that reputation in March of 1982.
Playing in a fivesome, of all things, Mike began a round on Oceanside’s back nine and opened with five birdies followed by an eagle. By day’s end, his scorecard totaled just 58 strokes on the par-71, historic beachside layout.
“He could flat play,” one of his partners that day, the late Tony Schoder, said years later. “Looking back on it, it seems like we must’ve been playing in a thirteensome, considering all the people who say they were there.”
“There was a stretch in the early-’80s when he was a plus-3 handicap,” Sean O’Sullivan says of his dad, who preceded him by a generation at Mainland High and coached him at Stetson, where Mike also started the women’s golf program in 1985.
“I never beat my father playing golf,” Sean says. “I remember playing in the Friday pro-am with him one day at Riviera. I fired a 73, he shot 65. I think that’s the closest I ever came to beating him, and it still wasn’t close. He was so consistent in all facets of the game.”
Mike would leave Oceanside to coach at Stetson University from the mid-1980s into the early-’90s, winning a men’s conference championship and conference Coach of the Year honors along the way.
He was an inaugural member of the North Florida PGA Hall of Fame (with his mentor, Bill Meyers, by the way), not just for his play and course-management, but for his service to the state PGA. He was the Florida PGA’s Professional of the Year in 1979 and a PGA of America member for over 60 years.
“We extend our heartfelt condolences to Mike’s family, friends, and all those whose lives he touched,” the North Florida PGA said in a statement this week. “As the North Florida PGA’s first President, Mike’s leadership helped lay the groundwork for the Section we know today.”
He remained an active Florida PGA member during his retirement years working on Charlie Schaeffer’s Riviera crew, mowing greens and fairways in the mornings and knocking off 18 holes in the afternoon.
“We’d still go to PGA Section meetings and raise hell, naturally,” Eric Meyers says.
Ah, raise hell, the one everlasting vice for a diminutive Irishman who quit drinking and smoking in his mid-30s.
“You’re saying he’d have an opinion on something? I didn’t realize that,” Eric says with a chuckle.
“He quit drinking and didn’t touch another drop, but figured, ‘I’ll just keep arguing with people.’ He had more fun doing that than anything, for sure. He’d take a different side of an argument just so he could argue something.”
But it was generally punctuated by a laugh and a promise to reconvene tomorrow for another go-round.
“We have some history here,” Eric says of Riviera, “and he’s a big part of it.”
— Email Ken Willis at ken.willis@news-jrnl.com
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Mike O’Sullivan, the pro’s pro, leaves a long trail on local golf scene
Reporting by Ken Willis, Daytona Beach News-Journal / The Daytona Beach News-Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Ken Willis, Daytona Beach News-Journal | USA TODAY Network
