Don Kuehn has shot his age 500 times

The first time Don Kuehn shot his age, he was playing in a senior team event in Louisville, Kentucky. A teammate told Kuehn to make a note of it because shooting his age, he said, was the only stat he was keeping track of in his game.

“So I wrote it down,” said the now-77-year-old Kuehn, who was 66 at the time and had just fired a 65. “And then I wrote some more down, and I’ve been writing them down ever since.”

Shooting your age (or beating it) is a common currency in golf, so mouths will drop at the next part of the story. When Kuehn, of Kansas City, set out on the senior circuit at the start of 2024, he had two goals in mind: to shoot his age or better for the 500th time and to win his 50th championship title.

Kuehn hit the latter when he won the Legends division of the Kansas City Amateur in late July, but the former?

“I had a good feeling that I might be able to get to No. 500 at Pinehurst, and it worked out,” he said.

When Kuehn played the North & South Senior Amateur at the North Carolina resort earlier this month, he shot rounds of 74-73-74, meeting his goal in the final round.

The statistics surrounding Kuehn’s golf game are at once totally remarkable and unsurprising. Kuehn, retired from a career with the American Federation of Teachers, figures he plays just over 200 recordable rounds a year these days. Kuehn, can be found at Paradise Pointe Golf Complex, a country-run in Smithville, Missouri, on most days. There are two 18-hole golf courses there, and Kuehn likes to tee off first most mornings and get in 18 holes in under three hours. Maybe practice a little after that.

Like most players Kuehn’s age, it hasn’t always been like this. During his professional career, Kuehn traveled extensively, and had little time for golf. But several years into the gig, he found himself sitting at the bargaining table one day in Los Angeles with a man who had attended Ohio State right after the Jack Nicklaus and Tom Weiskopf era. To kill time, they started talking about golf – namely where Kuehn might be able to play in the city.

“I found out that I was kind of a better person when I got away from the tension and the stress of negotiating a contract for 58,000 people,” he said. “…I played a few times out there and then I started playing a little bit on weekends, on a limited basis.”

Eventually, Kuehn was scheduling his vacation days around golf tournaments. He won his first serious tournament in 1998 – a club championship…