NAPLES, Fla. (WINK) \u2014 At 98 and 97 years old, Pat Hoover and Paul Donald are still teeing off several times a week at Vi at Bentley Village.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love playing the game. I really do,\u201d Donald said.<\/p>\n
Golf has been part of Hoover\u2019s life for nearly nine decades. Her father introduced her to the sport when she was a child, and she later became a club champion at Bentley Village.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve played golf since I was nine years old,\u201d Hoover said. \u201cSo, just to not play would be very hard for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Donald picked up the game around age 35 and continued playing as his job moved him around the country. His rounds have included some of golf\u2019s most famous courses, including St. Andrews in Scotland.<\/p>\n
But for Hoover and Donald, golf is now about far more than what appears on the scorecard. It keeps them active and gives them another reason to spend time with friends.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that\u2019s the best part of the game, really,\u201d Donald said. \u201cGood camaraderie, good chance to be with them and joke with them and ride them a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both golfers also exercise away from the course. Donald works out at the fitness center and plays bocce, while Hoover said she has continued exercising so she can keep golfing.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Donald and Mrs. Hoover are incredibly inspirational,\u201d said head golf professional Stan Geer. \u201cThey\u2019re out there three, four times a week, every week. Just don\u2019t ever stop.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Both Hoover and Donald say they don\u2019t plan to stop anytime soon.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know how much longer I\u2019ll be able to do it, but I\u2019m going to play as long as I can,\u201d Hoover said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI plan to play at least the next three years,\u201d he said, a plan that would put him back on the course at 100.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NAPLES, Fla. (WINK) \u2014 At 98 and 97 years old, Pat Hoover and Paul Donald are still teeing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":765687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[27563,19625,427,3,99],"class_list":["post-765686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-collaborator_gen_stories","tag-collier","tag-golf","tag-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=765686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/765687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=765686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=765686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=765686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}