Jim Wilson
| Special to the Telegram & Gazette
Joe Carr has been a golf pro for more than 60 years and he’s been part-owner and operator of Bedrock Golf Club in Rutland for more than 30.
But at age 86, he’s finally considering stepping away from it all.
“Being honest,” he said this month at Bedrock, “I’m looking forward to retirement.”
Carr said that the 2026 golf season could be his last working at Bedrock, but he’s not sure.
“I’m just tired,” he said.
Carr has battled skin cancer for much of his life and he’s being tested for prostate cancer. Instead of radiation, he’s receiving medical infusions every three weeks that work well, but tire him out. Last spring, he was especially fatigued.
Nevertheless, when Bedrock is open, Carr usually works seven days a week, anywhere from five to 10 hours a day. He runs men’s and women’s leagues nearly every day as well as outings on Saturdays.
Carr admits that leaving Bedrock would be difficult.
“I really enjoy working here at the club,” he said. “I often thought, ‘What would I do if I wasn’t working there?’ And I don’t really know what I would do.”
A lifelong bachelor, he lives in Spencer, five miles from the club. Asked if working at Bedrock has kept him alive, Carr replied, “Probably.”
Carr said the golfers make Bedrock fun.
Carr and his sister, Mary Gale, were both born on Jan. 15, 12 years apart. Carr is the oldest of six siblings and Gale, 74, is the youngest. Carr won the Mass. Amateur in 1962 and Gale won the Mass. Women’s Amateur in 1996.
The five surviving siblings own Bedrock.
Gale said she thinks it’s “fabulous” that her brother still shows up for work every day at age 86.
“It’s good for him and it’s good for us,” she said.
“Some days are really long, some are short, but it does give him a goal,” Gale said. “None of us want to retire and sit on a couch. That does nothing for anyone. You’ve got to keep moving and this keeps him moving. So it’s good.”
Gale keeps the books at Bedrock. Asked what it was like working with his sister, Carr replied, “Oh, you mean my boss?”
Another sister, Patricia Murray, is in charge of food at the club.
“I don’t know if I would be working here still if they weren’t here,” Carr said.
Carr admitted he never expected to still be working at Bedrock at age 86.
“I never thought that far ahead,” he said, “ but if you had stopped and asked me, I would have said, ‘Nah, by 86 I’ll probably be dead and buried.’ But I’m not.”
Carr remembers Paul Harney urging him to turn pro after he won the 1962 Mass. Amateur. He went on to play sporadically on the PGA Tour from 1963 until he became the head pro at Holden Hills CC in 1971. After he turned 50 in 1989, he played on and off for five or six years on PGA Tour Champions. On both tours he played as a Monday qualifier. If he didn’t play well enough on Monday, he didn’t get to play the rest of the week.
“Then you hop in a car and drive to the next spot,” he said.
In 1969, he won the Monday qualifier for the Bob Hope Desert Classic, but still didn’t get in the tournament because it was oversubscribed with exempt players. Fortunately for him, an alternative event for non-qualifiers called the Hope of Tomorrow debuted that year and he played in that and won it.
Carr played in three PGA Championships, one U.S. Open and three U.S. Senior Opens. He also played on the European Senior Tour.
Carr won several events in New England, including the 1974 New Hampshire Open, the 1979 Rhode Island Open, the 1975 and 1982 NEPGA Championships, and five NEPGA Senior Championships.
In addition, he won the NEPGA Pro-Lady four times, including once with Mary, and he captured the 1985 NEPGA Pro-Pro Stroke Play with Mary’s husband, Jack. Carr was honored as 1978 NEPGA Player of the Year and he was inducted in the NEPGA Hall of Fame in 2004.
Bedrock’s regulars know about Carr’s golfing career, but he doesn’t brag about it.
“I forgot about it all already,” he said.
“They’ve got to be grateful that he’s been here and continues to try to make this place better,” Gale said. “His dedication has to be recognized and I think most people would say that they admire him very much for all that he’s done, especially at his age.”
Carr said he played only two rounds of golf this summer after playing half a dozen rounds in Florida last winter.
“I just kinda lost interest in playing,” he said, “because I remember how I used to be able to play and now I can’t play that way. So I just don’t play.”
Carr hopes to play more this winter in Florida if his treatments end. He owns a condo in Lake Worth, Fla., with his brother John in the same building as the condo that Mary and her husband, Jack, own.
Carr hasn’t given a paid golf lesson in several years, but he still provides what he calls “helpful hints.”
Tim “Hack” McDonnell opened Bedrock with Carr in 1992, but he left the club a few years ago.
When Carr and McDonnell bought the unfinished Bedrock Golf Club in 1990, several dug-up boulders hadn’t been removed from the eighth fairway yet. Carr told McDonnell that the place looked like “Bedrock,” home of the animated Flintstones TV show. The name stuck.
The new owners finished the par-5 sixth hole and lengthened the par-4 ninth hole. The course opened on Memorial Day of 1992.
McDonnell will never forget caddying for Carr in the 1996 U.S. Senior Open at Canterbury Golf Club outside of Cleveland. McDonnell drove to the tournament with Carr’s brother John and Carr flew there.
Carr shot a 7-over 79 in the opening round. Then he had the last tee time of the second round, at 3:15 p.m.
McDonnell said it was so late, “Boy scouts were picking up trash behind us on each hole.”
“We had a big gallery that day,” Carr jokingly said of the boy scouts.
At the range before Carr’s round, golf legend Arnold Palmer said hello to him. Palmer informed Carr that he expected to make the cut because he shot 5 over during the first two rounds and the projected cut was 6 over. Carr told Palmer that he shot 7 over and Palmer urged him to shoot a low score in the second to make the cut.
McDonnell remembers Carr saying that he hoped to shoot 2-under in the second round so he could be paired with Palmer in the third round.
Carr holed out for eagle on the sixth hole, birdied four consecutive holes on the back nine and went on to finish the day at 6-under 66 to get to 1-over for two rounds to easily make the cut.
“We’re walking off the green on 18 and he says, ‘Sorry Hack, we’re not playing with Arnold tomorrow,’” McDonnell recalled.
Carr finished 28th in the tournament.
“It was a good paycheck for me,” McDonnell said. “I usually got one shirt for caddying, but he made the cut so I got two.”
“I gave him a bonus,” Carr joked.
McDonnell caddied for Carr at several tournaments.
“He was into it,” Carr said. “He loved doing it.”
Carr played in the Bermuda Goodwill tournament for 52 consecutive Decembers through 2023, many with McDonnell and two other amateurs.
“The people down there were great,” Carr said. “They’re all avid golfers. Plus it was the end of the year. So you would go down there and relax and play golf.”
McDonnell’s handicap is about 14 or 16, but Carr doesn’t care. They played together in many Pro-President tournaments.
“Joe is as laid back as they come,” McDonnell said. “You’re playing with a guy who’s one of the better players in the world and he doesn’t care if you beat it up or whatever. He’s just enjoying the day with you.”
McDonnell has been a member at Worcester CC since 1986 and he’s played in the Lori Lajoie Charity Golf Tournament with Carr nearly every year since.
During the Lajoie this year, Carr could barely bend over, but he still repaired ball marks on the green, raked bunkers and picked clubs off the ground for his playing partners. And he missed only one green.
“I think everybody loves Joe,” McDonnell said. “You can’t not like Joe. If you don’t like Joe Carr, you don’t like anybody.”
McDonnell said in the 20 years he ran Bedrock with Carr, they might have had one disagreement. They’ve known each other for nearly 45 years.
Column ideas welcome
You can suggest story ideas for this golf column by reaching me at the email listed below. Comments are also welcomed.
—Contact Bill Doyle at bcdoyle15@charter.net.
