He could do it all

From court to course, Pete Bostwick Jr. made his mark

G.H. “Pete” Bostwick Jr. was in his mid-80s when I met him a few years ago at his Long Island home, and despite a bunch of physical woes he was still regularly getting on a tennis court and a golf course. Despite Bostwick’s age and infirmities, underestimating what he could do with a racquet or a club would have been a mistake. He hadn’t forgotten what made him the sportsman that he was: always try to get better.

Bostwick, who died last week at 87, had a remarkable athletic life. In this age of specialization, his versatility—he excelled in multiple racquet sports, golf and hockey—stands out as example of what can be achieved if someone has the time, talent and tenacity. That he passed away as standout athletes from various sports got set to play in the American Century Celebrity Golf Championship in Nevada was fitting given how seamlessly he moved from one sport to another from childhood to old age.

Born into privilege—Pete was a great-grandson of Standard Oil founding partner Jabez Bostwick—he craved competition. “I played all those sports not because it was about winning but because I just loved it,” he told me when I interviewed him for a story in The Met Golfer.

But there was plenty of winning for Bostwick, who spent a lot of his formative years in Aiken, S.C., where his father, Pete Sr., who had been a leading polo player and steeplechase rider, trained horses.

Bostwick won 16 American championships in court tennis, was a three-time U.S. squash champion and a two-time U.S. Open racquets champion. A knack for knowing how to spin a ball in those games made him a crafty lawn tennis player as well.

“The fact that he played so many racquet sports allowed him to occasionally engage in some ‘creative cross-pollination’ by borrowing a shot from one sport while playing a different one,” Rob Dinerman wrote in DailySquashReport.com. “This often forced his opponent to deal with a shot he hadn’t previously been exposed to, a scenario which almost always worked to Bostwick’s advantage.”

At 18, in 1952, Bostwick competed in the U.S. National Championships of tennis at Forest Hills, the event that transitioned into the U.S. Open in 1968. In 1959 qualified for the U.S. Open at Winged Foot, missing the cut by three but bettering a young Jack Nicklaus by a stroke. Appearing in the U.S. national championships for tennis and golf put Bostwick in a tiny fraternity: The only other men to accomplish the tennis-golf double are Ellsworth Vines and Frank Conner.

An accurate hitter who hit plenty of fairways and greens, Bostwick came to golf naturally since his great-aunts were Hariot and Margaret Curtis, champion amateurs of the early 20th century and founders of the biennial Curtis Cup Match between the United States and Great Britain and Ireland. He got a strong foundation as a youngster through lessons with one of the most famous instructors of his era, Ernest Jones, who taught in a New York studio.

“He was all about swinging the clubhead from start to finish with your hands,” Bostwick recalled of Jones in The Met Golfer. “Hit the ball as hard as you possibly can as long as you don’t destroy the swing motion.”

Bostwick’s name frequently on the leaderboards of golf tournaments in the 1960s and 70s, and he won the 1964 Richardson Memorial, 1966 Travis Memorial and Long Island Amateur, 1968 Northeast Amateur, and Hochster Memorial (1968-69). With brother Jimmy, he claimed Anderson and Ike titles, prestigious two-man events in the Metropolitan New York area. Club championships? Bostwick won eight at National Golf Links of America, seven at Piping Rock Club and one at Seminole Golf Club, where he was an occasional playing companion of Ben Hogan as the legend prepared for the Masters. Surprisingly, for someone with such good touch and feel, putting could bedevil Bostwick, who tried croquet style before it was outlawed and sometimes utilized a long putter before there were many of them around.

Hockey became a focus for Bostwick when he began prep school in New Hampshire as a ninth grader. He went on to star in the sport for Middlebury College (as well as in tennis and golf) and played for Manhattan’s St. Nicholas amateur hockey club for a quarter century (1958-1983). Bostwick was skilled enough on the ice to be invited to try out for the 1960 U.S. Olympic hockey team and years later, when he was in his 40s, he remained good enough to scrimmage during pre-season with the New York Islanders of Bryan Trottier and Clark Gillies.

Few have been better at more sporting pursuits than Bostwick.