The elegant ‘Mouse’
Bob Toski holds a distinctive place in golf ’s history — and even taught Arnold Palmer a thing or two.
In today’s Travel family fun in Phoenix’s West Valley.
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Bob Toski thought he was going out for a quiet family celebration of his 90th birthday at the Ruth’s Chris in Boca Raton last Sept. 18. When son Robert drove past the turn to the restaurant and continued to the Boca Raton Marriott, Toski got his first inkling that something was up.
Moments later, he was greeted by a standing ovation as he walked into the hotel ballroom holding 140 of the friends, relatives, PGA Tour pros and golf instructors who have come to cherish this son of a Polish immigrant who holds the distinction of being a leading money-winner on the PGA Tour as well as the No. 1 golf instructor in the history of the game.
In the hours that followed, Toski sang a couple of numbers, including Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” listened to the hilarious stories told by the dozens of proteges who turned out and heard a congratulatory letter by Arnold Palmer, composed one week to the day before Palmer’s passing.
“I never imagined this,” he said later. “It took me totally by surprise.”
It shouldn’t have.
A ‘mouse’ and a powerhouse
In Bob Toski’s more than 70 years as a member of the Palm Beach Gardens-based PGA of America, he has touched thousands of lives as both player, instructor and, most recently, organizer of the Bob Toski Junior Tournament, which enjoyed its fourth renewal last summer at Seagate Country Club in Delray Beach.
At this week’s Masters tournament, attention will be paid to history’s greatest golfers, including those who played alongside Toski and those he taught. (Toski himself played in five Masters tournaments in the 1950s.)
His contributions to golf also include eight instructional books. But no one had written a book on his amazing life — until his l o ng t i me f r i e nd Jo hn Mason approached me in January 2015 at the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando.
A great storyteller, Toski was holding court for about a dozen listeners one afternoon when Mason pulled me aside.
“Bob’s not going to be around forever, you know,” he s aid. “When he’s gone, all these stories will go with him. Somebody needs to write them down. What do you think?”
That planted the seed. In seven months I would be retiring after 35 years as a sports writer at The Palm Beach Post, and while my wife, Maria, and I had plans to travel, my calendar was far from
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