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A life spent on the links
Bend's Jill Coe has had a rich career on the golf course
Published: January 23. 2008 4:00AM PST
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Jill Coe, 77, holds her first and only putter she has had and used for 61 years, and the golf ball she shot her 5th and last hole in one with, in her Bend home on Monday morning.
Andy Tullis / The Bulletin
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Jill Coe’s 61-year-old putter is more than just a memento of her many years playing golf.
To this day, the 77-year-old Bend resident uses the same Freddie Haas Model 160 mallet-style putter included with the set of clubs her father gave her in 1947.
Her husband, who died in 2004, used to tell her that she would be better off with a new putter. But she wouldn’t listen.
That old flat stick has been all over the country, rolling in putts at such legendary courses as Pebble Beach in California, Pinehurst No. 2 in North Carolina, and Doral’s Blue Monster in Florida.
The putter is perhaps the greatest symbol of the years Coe has spent playing the game she fell in love with in Michigan as a 16-year-old high school senior in 1946, and a reminder of the times she shared with her late husband, Charlie, for the more than 50 years they were together.
Like the many memories she has collected and can now recall in rich detail, Jill Coe will never give up that old putter.
“I’m known for being a very good putter,” she says. “Charlie gave me two putters over the years, but I won’t use them.”
Coe loves to talk about golf.
The entry to her Bend home is adorned with trophies from various country-club member tournaments collected over the years. But to truly learn how much the game has meant to her, you need only to ask.
She will tell you about the time in the early 1960s when she and her friend, another woman golfer, were cheered after teeing off at Pinehurst No. 2.
The male-dominated golf club wasn’t accustomed at the time to seeing women challenging a course that had been host to a number of golf’s most high-profile events.
“The men would follow us,” Coe recalls. “If we hit a good shot, we got applause from the guys behind.”
That night at dinner, a man from a nearby table asked Coe what she shot that day, she says.
“My husband sat back and chuckled: ‘They never asked me. I had a 74 today,’ ” Coe says. “We had a lot of fun at Pinehurst.”
She can remember playing at Pebble Beach, “so long ago that the greens fees cost $25.”
“I can remember shooting in the 90s (at Pebble Beach), but I couldn’t tell you my exact score,” she says.
But golf hasn’t made Coe, a former housewife, famous. And she admits she isn’t a great golfer, never eclipsing a handicap better than 12.
Yet, she keeps a stack of newspaper clippings that have chronicled her golf accomplishments.
“I was always getting my picture in the paper, even though I was a bad golfer,” she jokes.
One of those clippings is from 1961, when she made her first eagle. She carded that eagle during a city tournament in Roanoke, Va., where the Coes lived from 1960 to 1962 before moving to the Cleveland area.
Coe shot a less-than-stellar 99 that day, but because of her eagle she was the focus of a story in the Roanoke Times — which she still finds amusing.
But her proudest accomplishment can be seen on her Cadillac, whose Oregon license plates read “Aced-05,” in honor of her five hole-in-ones.
“It’s the only thing I ever beat my husband in,” she says, noting that Charlie managed four aces and played to a 2 handicap.
The Coes moved to Oregon in 1968, and before Charlie retired from swimwear manufactuer Jantzen and they moved to Black Butte Ranch in Central Oregon in 1986, they lived in Lake Oswego. It was in 1968 on No. 4 at Oswego Lake Country Club, where the Coes were members, that Jill recorded her first hole-in-one.
Jill played that day without Charlie, who was in Hawaii on business. She still has the telegram she sent him after she hit her hole-in-one — and the telegram that he sent back.
“The minute I leave town you have to show off,” the telegram from Charlie reads. “Congratulations. I will be home for a lesson.”
For all her experiences on the links, Coe is more than just an avid golfer.
She’s the mother of two sons: Jeffrey, 55, who lives in Pennsylvania, and Robert, 53, who lives in Portland.
Coe also has seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, and like any proud grandmother, she is quick to show her photos of them.
Of course, Coe has passions other than golf — most notably, figure skating.
For 12 years beginning in 1976, she volunteered for the United States Figure Skating Association.
Coe has pictures of herself with such American figure-skating stars as 1984 gold medalist Scott Hamilton and 1988 bronze medalist Debi Thomas.
During her final eight years with the USFSA, Coe was in charge of outfitting the 1984 and 1988 U.S. Olympic figure skating team.
But choosing the team’s uniforms and traveling to the different competition venues became an almost full-time job.
“Those eight years were a very, very busy time,” Coe says. “Right now, I have happy memories of that time. But I was really torn between golf (and figure skating).”
And no sport will ever top golf for Coe.
She carded both of her most recent two hole-in-ones on No. 3 at Black Butte Ranch’s Glaze Meadow Course, in 1997 and 1999.
The Coes joined Awbrey Glen Golf Club in Bend in 1998. In 2001, when Charlie fell ill with cancer, moved away to St. George, Utah, in part to be closer to treatment for Charlie in Southern California.
But in August 2004, a few months after Charlie died, Jill moved back to Bend.
She remembers the day she came back to play at Awbrey Glen on Aug. 31, 2004, a day after her moving truck rolled into Central Oregon. That day she carded two birdies, she recalls.
“That was kind of fun,” she says.
Again a member at Awbrey Glen — her favorite golf course anywhere, she says — she still plays as much as she can.
She’s been slowed during the last year by hip and back problems, but she has been undergoing rehabilitation with hopes of returning to the course by the time the Central Oregon snow melts off.
Then she will be able to use her trusted Freddie Haas putter once again.
“I’ve had a very, very busy life,” Coe says. “No wonder my body is wearing out. It’s just been a very confusing, very happy, busy life. And it is still going on.”
Zack Hall can be reached at 617-7868 or at zhall@bendbulletin.com.
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