When the annual Men’s Open golf tournament tees off at the Innisfail Golf Club on Sept. 3, Darryl Tronnes intends to be there – just like he has for the past 57 years.
A golfer since the age of 12, the former Innisfail resident was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease four years ago. A one-time 4-handicap on the links, Tronnes said he has been able to manage the shaking and shuffling - common symptoms of the degenerative disease that attacks the central nervous system - through medication. He currently takes about six pills a day to help calm the symptoms.
“(I’m) not too bad in the head, and my hands are pretty good when I get over a club,” said a vibrant Tronnes, who has been a member of Calgary’s Silver Springs Golf & Country Club since 1971.
Now 74 and living in Calgary, Tronnes spent his formative years from 1942 until 1955 living in Innisfail. He still has many family members and friends living in the area.
In 1955, he headed to Calgary to attend SAIT, where he studied drafting and surveying. In 1959, he married his schoolmate Dawn Percy and discovered that Dawn’s parents, Dick and Betty, were both avid golfers. Tronnes’ sons, Stephen and Richard, developed the same love for the game as their father.
After articling through Jim Clark in Calgary, Tronnes was commissioned as an Alberta land surveyor in 1966. He then formed his own company, Tronnes Surveys, which has now been in operation for 44 years. Tronnes is still a regular visitor to the office.
“My doctor says, ‘You’ll have to keep going because you’ll die if you sit at home,’” Tronnes said with a chuckle.
While Tronnes’ handicap has risen steadily since his diagnosis, he still breaks 100 on a regular basis, and recently shot an 84 at Silver Springs.
“I’m still able to play the game, as shaky as I am. It’s been a hell of a ride,” he said.
Dr. Hank Wagner, the original owner of the land where the golf course is now situated, gave Tronnes his first set of hickory-shaft golf clubs.
Schoolmate Bob Bickerson, whose father was the Royal Bank manager at the time, invited Tronnes to go golfing on the nine-hole course, which at the time featured sand greens and fairways that were maintained by a flock of sheep.
“We’d start on the sixth hole because it was closer to town. We’d walk the nine holes – start at six, go up to one and keep on going. End up at six, grab our bikes and go home,” Tronnes recalled. “We never stopped playing.”
Tronnes’ commitment to the tournament, which started in 1924, hasn’t been lost on the Innisfail Golf Club. Eighteen years ago Tronnes and his father-in-law were presented with plaques for long-term attendance: Percy for 60 years and Tronnes for 40.
“That’s the rest of the story of why I keep going – (is) to try to catch my father-in-law,” Tronnes said.
Five years ago, Tronnes also received a honourary life membership for the tournament from the club.
“I’ve taken them up on it,” he said with a hearty laugh. “I said, ‘Guys, I could live to 100.”
Club pro Jim Boomer said the club felt it was important to honour Tronnes’ dedication.
“Because it was such an integral part of the whole development of the golf course we thought it would be nice to honour the guys who had made more than a habit of coming to our men’s open every fall,” Boomer said.
Early in his playing days Tronnes said so many family members entered the tournament that then-Province editor Hap Clarke joked the tournament should be renamed “The Tronnes Open.”
Though he hasn’t called the area home for more than five decades, Tronnes still has vivid memories of his time in Innisfail – including his friendship with Jack Daines.
“Jack would have been a hell of a golfer, but he lost that eye in 1956,” Tronnes said. “He was the tenacious type but he always came out to Innisfail to play golf every Labour Day for probably 30 years. He quit coming because that rodeo took too much of his time.”
He even helped Daines pick out the rodeo grounds when Tronnes was 18.
“He said why don’t you build a golf course and I’ll put the rodeo grounds here. That’s where it is today,” Tronnes recalled. “The golf course would have been just behind the rodeo grounds. I said, ‘Gee Jack, I have no money.’ And I didn’t have a job.”
For the better part of two decades Tronnes would be found in the championship flight on the final day of the tournament, and was runner-up on several occasions. While he now toils in the last flight, he said he still gets charged up whenever he tees off at the tournament.
“I intend to keep going until I can’t play anymore,” he said.
