You are wildly passionate about golf and playing it competitively, but you are savvy enough to know you need a true measuring stick to see just how good you are. So, where do you go?

Well, if you were fortunate enough to come of age in the ‘70s and cross paths with a gentle giant by the name of Andy Bean, he would offer you career guidance in an awe-inspiring manner.

“When you saw him hit golf shots, you knew you had to get a job,” said Mike Prendergast.

“He would put his huge hands on the club and you wouldn’t see the grips,” said Kevin Carey. “Then he would hit his long irons like no one could. I knew I was a decent player, but I was nothing like him. To watch him was an education.”

But to count Andy Bean as a friend was to receive more than a priceless tutorial about golf. “He was,” said Carey, “a big, beautiful man.” And Prendergast notes that “for all his kidding, Andy was very, very religious and dedicated to his family, just a great man.”

At a time when our young professional golfers lose their way very easily, blurred by a quest for more money but less competition, bigger beachfront homes but smaller schedules, the passing of Bean at age 70 reminds us of a time when the PGA Tour was simpler and arguably more about golf than financial spreadsheets.

Every obituary notes Bean’s 11 PGA Tour wins and how across a 10-year-stretch (1977-85), the man was as good as anyone – top 10 in money five times and never worse than 35th.

That his contemporaries would praise Bean for his quality wins – playoff triumphs over Lee Trevino, Bill Rogers, and Hubert Green, romps by eight and seven strokes, two wins at the Kapalua International against quality fields that are of the “unofficial” flavor – validates all the stature his PGA Tour career is extended. But what applies a punctuation point to a life well lived are the memories of humble men who consider it a blessing to have shared time on this earth with Bean.

This is how Mike Prendergast and Kevin Carey will remember this gentle giant.

“He was Paul Bunyan,” laughs Prendergast, a Massachusetts kid who wanted to play college golf and loved what he saw when he made a visit to the University of Florida. A friend told Prendergast “that you’ll be able to play,” but the friend was wrong.

“I was in over my head. Andy was in my freshman class, Gary Koch was already there and (future PGA Tour players) guys like Phil Hancock, Woody Blackburn and Mike Sullivan played there.”

Cut as a freshman, Prendergast in his sophomore year won a team qualifier, a five-round tournament that earned him a roster spot way down the lineup after coach Buster Bishop’s stalwarts.

“I played a little but not a lot. Sometimes we’d field two teams and sometimes coach would bring just the ‘B’ team,” said Prendergast. Nevertheless, the time I got to spend playing and practicing with Andy was incredible.”

Prendergast and another team member, Steve Smyers, would play their best ball against Bean, who didn’t have a teammate. “We would play for chili dogs,” said Prendergast. “And this giant of a man had a big appetite. I bought him a lot of dinners at Alan’s Cubana.”

Given his bigger-than-life persona and his quiet southern drawl, Bean was blanketed by mythical stories – tugging on an alligator’s tail and biting into a golf ball, for instance – “and I can you they are all true,” said Prendergast.

“His Wilson staff irons were these stiff steel clubs, all of them double-tipped and only he could swing them. But he was about 6-foot-4 – he could squash me with one hand – and oh, how could pure it.”

Unforgettable memory: The 1975 Miami Invitational at the former Melreese GC next to the Miami airport. “I was a senior and went down to just watch the tournament,” said Prendergast.

For all four days, the wind howled, “15 to 20 knots,” said Prendergast who was aghast at how brilliant his friend played. “Andy shot a third-round 61 (next-best score was 73) and he didn’t hit knock-down shots. He just flushed it through those winds. Most mind-boggling performance I ever saw. (Bean won at 282, by 20 strokes.)

“Just a rare, rare talent.”

Carey was a Cape Cod native who worked at New Seabury CC and wanted a winter job in Florida. Contacts set him up at Grenlefe Golf & Tennis Resort in Haines City which is where a young PGA Tour player named Andy Bean set up shop and kept his game sharp when he wasn’t traveling.

“There was a huge range at Grenelefe and way down at one end of it, Andy would open the trunk of his big Continental, play some music and just hit balls for hours in the rain.

“He’d get soaked, but he didn’t care.”

When Carey’s work was done, he’d play late-day nine-holers, often with Bean. No questions, no queries, just a young kid hooked on golf watching and studying a PGA Tour guy who carried a 1-iron with a sweet spot the size of a dime and could flush it. Time after time after time.

“I learned so much just watching him,” said Carey, who was ecstatic the first time he broke 70 on Grenelefe’s best course that stretched to about 7,500 yards.

“I was playing with Andy, Hawk Harrelson, and a young pro named Steve Owens and I’m pumped by my 69. Only Andy shot 65 like he was breaking sticks. He was so good.”

Consummate amateurs with serious game and distinguished resumes, Prendergast and Carey were astute enough to find out early on that there was golf and there was tournament golf, and there was tournament golf and there was PGA Tour level golf. Different animals, all of them, and the time spent in the company of Andy Bean helped point them to where they were comfortable and could thrive.

“Caddies back then (were an indicator),” said Prendergast. “They knew who the good guys were and they absolutely loved Andy, because after he played he would come back and play with them. They knew Andy would never change, even when he won.

“They were right, too, because Andy never did change. He still lived in Lakeland, Fla., in a very modest golf community. He didn’t have to have a McMansion; he was humble.”

Prendergast still has a passion for the game. He practices more than he plays and embraces all things University of Florida, including memories of his former teammate, the guy who enjoyed so many chili dogs at his expense.

It is hard to believe such a giant of a man was left so sick, even with double-lung replacement surgery, but Prendergast is comforted to know how strong Bean’s faith was. On Saturday, Prendergast will be there to bid farewell at services for Andy Bean.

“I got a life lesson from him – get a job and work hard,” he said.