The "Big News" in Northern Indiana is about Bob Carteaux, who achieved the rank of Grand Life Master this summer. He's the only player in our Unit -- and all of District 8 -- to earn this rank, which requires 10,000 masterpoints and a national championship.

The press in Bob's hometown of Fort Wayne found the event newsworthy, too. Below, reprinted with permission, is the feature article that appeared in the September 23, 2006 edition of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.

Crossing the bridge

    Fort Wayne card player earns game's highest honor

By Dell Ford, for the Journal Gazette

Robert W. Carteaux earned his Grand Life Master in bridge in July.

Call it a fluke. Call it fate.

But when Bob Carteaux rose up from his chair that day in February 1984 to fetch a cup of coffee, his life took a twist.

"I popped a disk," he says, grinning.

He wasn't grinning then. "Hurt? Oh, yeah. It sure did ... could hardly move."

The slipped disk not only hurt. It ended his tennis playing and running 4.6 miles five days a week. And the bowling. Most of all the bowling.

Carteaux, now 72, began bowling when he took a job setting pins at Scott's Bowling Alley on South Calhoun Street. He was 15 years old and a sophomore at Central Catholic High School.

By his own rough mental calculation, Carteaux estimates he bowled "probably 25 games a week from 1950 to 1984." He was a great bowler - the first left-handed bowler to score an 800 series.

"On March 10, 1955," he says, "at Court Street Recreation - games of 279, 289 and 255." And there were two 300 games, but neither was in a sanctioned event.

Carteaux bowled for Falstaff Brewery in Fort Wayne.

"By far one of the top 10 teams in the country," he notes with pride, adding the team bowled in 35 national American Bowling Congress tournaments "east coast to west coast."

But the slipped disk put an end to bowling.

And opened the door to bridge.

Carteaux was a great bowler; he is a great bridge player. One of the best, in fact.

In July, playing in the North American Bridge Championships at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago, Carteaux entered the 10-day event needing 119 points to reach the 10,000 required to become a Grand Life Master. He won 148 points playing -- like all entrants -- up to 72 hands of bridge a day.

Grand Life Master, Carteaux says with a big smile, "is the highest rank. The ultimate in bridge."

He called home and told his wife, Donna: "Hey, I made it! I did it!"

Donna in turn e-mailed "about 80 people - family and friends. I wasn't proud, was I ?" she says with a side glance at her husband.

There are roughly 180,000 members of the American Contract Bridge League. In July, in Chicago, Carteaux became one of only 230 members to achieve Grand Life Master.

On Thursday, a 20-inch-by-30-inch portrait of Carteaux in a hand-carved wood frame was given to the new Grand Life Master. The portrait, commemorating his achievement in Chicago, was presented at a party thrown in conjunction with the annual seven-day Fort Wayne Regional Bridge Tournament at Grand Wayne Center. Carteaux was co-chairman of the tournament, which hosted more than 600 players from all over the United States.

The road to Grand Life Master is no cake walk. For Carteaux, the walk didn't begin until he was 49 years old, after the slipped disk.

Growing up he'd played "a lot of cards ... euchre, hearts, canasta, pinochle ... but no bridge."

He did, however, read newspaper bridge columns and often commented how interesting the game seemed.

Enter Donna. Without telling Bob, she enrolled him in a bridge club sponsored by Saint Francis College (now University of Saint Francis).

"They found me a partner, and we played at members' homes. It was strictly social," he says.

Carteaux played in the "strictly social" bridge club for a year.

An offhand remark to Steve Jackson, a Fort Wayne attorney whom Carteaux calls "an excellent bridge player," got the former bowler moving forward in bridge and toward every bridge player's dream: Grand Life Master.

"I was in Rotary Club with Steve, and one day I told him, 'Someday I'll be a Life Master in bridge.' That's the beginning (toward Grand Life Master). It takes 300 master points. Steve said, 'You'd better get started -- you're 50 years old.' "

Master points are won in American Contract Bridge League sanctioned duplicate games -- local club games or tournaments.

Carteaux earned his first master point - actually it was one-quarter of a point - in 1985 playing with Jackson as his partner in a Tuesday night limited game. Two years later, he made Life Master.

He never dreamed of achieving Grand Life Master, which requires not only the 10,000 master points but winning a national championship as well. There are six plateaus (bronze, silver, gold, etc.), with different point requirements, between Life and Grand Life Master.

"That's the key," Carteaux says. "A national championship and 10,000 points."

He cleared one hurdle in 1997 by winning a national championship -- National Seniors Knock Out Championship -- in St. Louis. He also left St. Louis with "a few more than 5,000 master points."

At that point, he thought the dream of Grand Life Master just might be attainable, might be a reality.

The year before the St. Louis tournament, Carteaux retired as president of CTD Inc., a wholesale electronics distributor, one of five companies he started and owned.

Retirement opened the door to "a lot more bridge playing." And Grand Life Master in 2006.

What made the achievement "a bigger deal" to Carteaux was being the first player in District 8 to become a Grand Life Master. The district includes western Kentucky; the city of St. Louis; Illinois, with the exception of Chicago; and the northern half of Indiana.

Ask the great bridge player what he believes makes a good bridge player, and he ponders a moment.

"Well," he finally says, "just playing. The more you play, the better you get. It's like a sport, or anything else. It's a combination ... reading books on bridge ... and playing a lot of bridge. You learn by mistakes ... bad bidding, bad opening lead. There's no substitute for playing. And if you don't make mistakes, you don't learn." Pausing, he adds, "Not everyone looks at a bridge hand and sees the same thing."

In Carteaux's opinion, bridge is "by far the most difficult of all card games. Nothing else comes close."

What he likes about the game is "it's highly competitive. It's stimulating. You know ... the thrill of victory."

Donna does not accompany her husband to all tournaments (she did make the trip to Hawaii with him), but she's been to enough to know "you can hear a pin drop. There's no noise. They're concentrating on their cards."

Which reminds the Grand Life Master that "keeping your mind active is important. I don't care if it's ... crossword puzzles."

For Carteaux, it's bridge.

Where once he lived and breathed bowling, he now lives and breathes bridge.