As many golf practitioners know, the game can just find a way into people’s lives for any rhyme or reason. When it does, it takes hold, for months, years and eventually, decades.

That’s true of 77-year-old Bruce Murr, of Walla Walla, Wash. Since 1985, Bruce has been a WA Golf and PNGA club representative at Veterans Memorial Golf Course, a role from which he will retire next year.

As that title suggests, golf is prevalent in Bruce’s life. He plays five days a week, still boasting a Handicap Index of 10.4.

He’s served the club for just about as long as the GHIN system has been implemented, starting in the early 1980s. Membership at his club has fluctuated since then, Murr said, but this past year was the first in a while that it had again risen above 200, an amount that seems to reflect how well-known Bruce has become.

“I know everybody, and everybody knows me,” he said. “If they need a score changed or anything like that, I take care of it.”

Murr entered the U.S. Marine Corps following graduation from Shelton (Wash.) High School in 1967. He served for seven years, and worked in the National Guard and at Washington State Penitentiary in the following years. In the lattermost role, he began a tenure on the director’s board for Veterans Memorial Park, at the behest of his mother-in-law who had served in the same capacity.

After the implementation of GHIN, Bruce was off and running in his club rep role.

“I learned it,” he said of what was his new role. “It’s pretty easy.”

He handed the job off to two other guys on two separate occasions but found himself back in the role both times. In advance of his retirement taking effect, Murr has been training retired Police Officer Dennis McKee to take the job, someone he knows well.

“He’ll do great, and I’ve got him in our system,” Murr said of his successor, adding that he himself will remain “always available” for assistance.

Not much comes to mind regarding what the position has meant to Murr. It’s something that he’s just come to be comfortable with given his previous service.

“I’m an old Marine,” he said with a laugh. “And I make sure it’s done right.”

He views his ties to the game with a similar sense of benign impartiality, even while playing multiple times a week with a rather sharpened Handicap. Structure to his week certainly exists, though, like on Fridays, where a large quantity of men and women members play for prize money through a buy-in skins match.

As the summer sun continues to blaze down upon Walla Walla, Murr knows it remains business as usual ahead of his impending retirement.

“We just keep on charging,” he said. “And I’m good with that.”