Paul Hendrix, longtime golf pro at Briarwood Golf Club, passed away at age 81. Briarwood is now called The Cascades in Tyler.

It was the summer of 1969 when I watched Neil Armstrong become the first man to walk on the moon. Overcome with the moment, I did what I suspect others did — I ran outside to look up at the moon and just marvel.

I watched at the home of Paul and Wanda Hendrix in the Idlewild subdivision that was brand new at the time. That entire summer of my sophomore year in high school, I worked for Paul, who was the head pro at Briarwood Country Club, now known as The Cascades. My job was taking care of the golf carts and helping members with their clubs. It was a great summer job for a teenager who loved golf.

Such memories came flooding into my consciousness last Sunday morning when I listened to a voicemail from Wanda telling me that Paul had passed away on Saturday. He was the victim of a heart attack at age 81.

High school sweethearts at Tyler High before there was a John Tyler or Robert E. Lee, Paul and Wanda had been divorced for many years but remained friends. It was just three weeks ago when they had a nice visit. Both expressed gratitude for the years they spent together rearing three children — Holly, Heidi and Chance.

Hendrix was a good golfer but never too serious about his game, preferring to hunt and fish. During that summer I worked for him, there were many colorful characters who played their golf at Briarwood. The Gregory brothers, Clifford and Reagan, come to mind as they were famous locally for having played on Tyler’s state championship football team in 1930, many years before Earl Campbell would lead JT to another championship in 1973.

In those days, Hendrix had a “rat pack” of close friends who made working at Briarwood a lot of fun. That group included the late Raymond Kraker, Johnny Paul Price and Nolan Manziel, the great uncle of Texas A&M Heisman Trophy winner “Johnny Football” Manziel. Also among that group was the late Don Meredith, who at that time was the quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys when they were challenging the Green Bay Packers for supremacy in pro football. Needless to say, I was always soaking up the stories about “Dandy Don” and “America’s Team!”

The hours were long that summer, basically dawn until dark. Hendrix appreciated my loyalty and gave me some good advice that I have never forgotten.

“The members are always right,” he told me and even more lasting, “If you want to play a lot of golf when you get older, don’t get in the golf business.”

Now 65, I can attest that his advice was spot on! I enjoyed a 25-year career in mortgage insurance that allowed me to play a lot of golf and now I still try to play often when not writing or talking about what I consider the greatest game.

During his years at Briarwood, its annual invitational golf tournament flourished on what was commonly known as the beer and barbecue circuit. Always the first weekend in August, the tournament attracted the top amateurs in not only Texas but also Oklahoma and Arkansas. Future winners on the PGA Tour like Mark Hayes, Rik Massengale, John Mahaffey and Bill Rogers played in those events while in college.

“Those were fun days,’ Hendrix told me in 2010 when I was doing research for a book on that subject. Part of his role as the head pro was to help recruit the top players each year.

One of those hot shot college players called for a ruling one year and the story is a classic.

He was on the fifth hole, a par 4 at the far southwest corner of the course, a long ride in a golf cart from the golf shop. Too young to play but hanging around the course watching the action was Howie Alexander, then only 12 or 13 years old.

“Come on kid, let’s go make a ruling,” Hendrix said to Alexander and they hurried off to the fifth hole. When they arrived, the college player, decked out in his golfing finery that included patent leather shoes of orange and white, said his ball was in a furrow created by a burrowing animal. In those days, Briarwood had a rawness that was similar to Pine Valley with sandy rough to the right of the fairway. Hendrix took a long look at the lie of the ball and agreed, granting a drop of a club length away with no penalty.

The player said on second thought, he would just play the ball as it was. He then proceeded to shank his second shot over a barbed wire fence and out of bounds.

“Now you can drop it,” Hendrix said with a wink and a smile. “Two club lengths and no closer to the hole.”

It captures the essence of a bygone era and was representative of the boyish humor Hendrix possessed as an adult.

The beer and barbecue circuit died in the early 1980s with the USGA cracking down on tournaments with a Calcutta gambling pool and the advent of a national junior golf circuit. Hendrix left Briarwood for private business but later got back into the golf business near Houston where he managed public golf courses in Cleveland and then Livingston.

Wanda taught golf at Willow Brook for many years before retiring to move to Huntsville, where she lives now with her daughters. During those years at Briarwood, she won two Texas amateur titles with one coming at the famous Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth in 1971.

Hendrix was true to his word about club pros not playing a lot of golf but on occasion during that summer of ‘69, we would go out for a twilight nine holes.

On one of those evenings that I will never forget, Wanda did not hit one green in regulation but shot one under par. Never far off the putting surface, she chipped up and one putted 8 times and then chipped in for birdie on the final hole.

I don’t remember what Paul said after we were finished but I can only imagine that it was something like this:

“Kid, if I were you, I’d starting working pretty hard on the short game.”

Just like his other sage advice, that comment still rings true.