It’s a Golf Thing, You Might Understand

Everyone had a different path to the game. Some were introduced to it as a child when their father or grandfather cut down an old 7-iron and let them swing it. Some picked it up in high school or college when they went with friends to play.

My own path was a little different, but probably similar to some.

I tried out for my high school golf team when I was a rising junior. I borrowed a pair of my step-father’s pants (because I didn’t own anything but jeans), took his clubs, and held them between my legs as I rode my moped to the golf course. I did this five times during the summer because it was a five-day tryout.

I didn’t make the team, but something inside me had been stirred by those five days. I didn’t think anything of it until several years later, when, as a newly minted airman in the United States Air Force, I was sent (sentenced?) to KI Sawyer Air Force Base in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It was probably the last place I would have chosen for myself, had I been given the choice. It snowed in October, and there was snow on the ground until May which was when I decided I needed something outdoors to do that didn’t involve Carhartts and shivering. I’m neither a hunter nor an angler, which are two of the primary activities in that extremely rural part of the world, so on a whim, I decided to go to the golf course and hit balls on the range.

The pro at the base golf course (whose name, I’m ashamed to admit, escapes me) lent me his driver, gave me some tees, and didn’t even charge me for the first bucket of balls. He gave me one piece of advice, “Swing hard.”

Armed with my first “lesson,” I walked out onto the deserted range in the cool spring evening, teed up a ball, and following his directions, swung hard.

They say there is nothing like the feeling of well struck golf shot, and I can attest to that statement. It has been more than 28 years since I hit that ball and such was the contact, the feeling of pure majestic power transferred from club to ball that I can still feel it. I can still see the ball flying in a sweet trajectory, rising into the evening and landing what I hoped was 350 yards away, but was probably closer to 200, having flown straight and true. It was as if it had been struck by the Golden Bear himself.

I spent the rest of that bucket and two more, trying to recapture that feeling. It was only when I could no longer see the ball on the tee that I turned and saw the pro standing there, smiling. He knew what I knew. I was hooked.

He then gave me my second and final lesson. “Buy a cheap set of clubs. Don’t invest too much money until you know you love it and want to play. And, get some lessons.”

He left a few days later, his wife, who was in the military having been transferred away.

Once again, I’m ashamed to say I never got any lessons, but I bought Jack Nicklaus’s “Golf My Way” and read it cover to cover. I still have that book.

I spent hours on the range and on the course, working on hitting that ball exactly the way I had with that first swing with the pro’s driver. My friends and I would play until we couldn’t see the ball, learning to feel the impact and know where the ball went based on that feeling alone. “Oh, I nutted that one,” or “I hit that a little thin,” would be the narration as we walked up the 18th fairway in the dark to find our balls and play to a green we could barely see.

That feels like more than a lifetime ago. I have played on four continents in a dozen countries. I have played with guys who never swung a golf club before, and guys who make my 9-handicap look shameful. I have played in 105-degree heat and in 30-degree cold.

Many people who have picked up the game can attest that none of these things is strange or even out of the ordinary. It is nothing for a golf player to start playing after work and not stop until the sun has hidden for another night.

This is but one story in millions, and while it is unique in the details, it is similar in the tone. Golf players both love and loathe the game we play. It is equal parts astonishingly fun and spectacularly frustrating.

Golf is like being tortured by naked women. Part of it sucks a lot, but part of it is pretty awesome.

My grandfather just turned 90 and he still plays. After I had been playing for a few years and was starting to get pretty good, during a round in Michigan, where he lives, I asked him why he loves golf so much. His reply was one I will never forget.

“Todd, you’ll never find another game like it. When it’s good, it’s great. When it’s bad, it’s humiliating. But no matter what, you’re never going to want to stop.”

In other words, it’s a golf thing. You understand.

Cover Photo via Flickr