What’s in a game? Shakespeare didn’t say that but if he had played golf I am sure he would have used a few more colorful words. I once wrote that fishing is a metaphor for life. I take it back. Golf is the actual metaphor for life…or is it baseball, or chess? Anyway, let’s stick with golf.
I have breakfast on Saturday mornings at the Fort Mill Family Restaurant. On any given Saturday I may be joined by between one and four other guys around the age of “my feet are killing me.” It is all a matter of who is in town at the time. The breakfast meeting is a spin-off of a golf group that sort of evolved.
I was dragged into playing golf by my lifelong friend John. He and our friend Gary played occasionally during the week and John decided I needed to get out more and cajoled at first, then demanded that I get off my lazy…boy chair to start playing again after a brief lay-off of 30 years. I was on the golf course plenty. Though frowned upon now, several years ago it was acceptable to walk on the golf course when no players were around. I would walk the dog, Hannah, and pick up golf balls we found in the brush. Finally, after much nagging from John, I dragged out some of my Dad’s old clubs, selected the best of my found golf balls and had a whack at it…many whacks at it, actually.
Golf is not like riding a bicycle. The skills do not stick with a person. Golf for me is more like juggling cats…I can’t do it and after a particularly bad shot rolls thirty feet down the fairway, I wonder why I even try. There is a way to hit the ball right and a gozillion ways not to hit the ball right.
Until I improved my game from horrendous to just very bad, John and I would often go out in the afternoons and play a few holes. I learned that I could enjoy golf. Not the actual hitting the ball, though even that was sometimes rewarding. The good things happened between one shot and the next. John was always, even on his most trying days, funny. He would find every gully and mound on the course and rattle my bones by speeding over them in the golf cart. When we stopped to let me hit my ball, he would let the cart inch forward so I would have to leap out. His humor ranged from silly to biting and he could recount every goofy thing we did during our sixty plus years as friends.
Despite his humor at my expense, John took his golf game seriously. He focused on every shot and berated himself when his shots went awry. When he hit a particularly bad shot, I could always hear his catch phrase, “Damn it, John!”
Along with John and Gary, Dennis and Joe and David and Ken condescended to let me hack along while they played golf. We each brought our skills and our personal quirks to the game. The other guys were all competent golfers sometimes rising to a level of pretty damn good. Trust me that I am not being modest when I say that if this were the school grounds, I would be the last kid picked for the volleyball team. In golf terms, I am the human handicap, and as a result, am usually paired with whoever is playing well. I don’t mind so much on the days when I contribute a decent shot or two toward a win. I hesitate to ask how my partner feels.
We play during the week on the most deserted course we can find and our rules are not sanctioned by the PGA. They are even frowned upon by AARP. We play from the old guy tees and on the first hole everybody gets a free mulligan, an extra attempt at a drive. We also take a second mulligan per nine holes just because we deserve it. If the ball lands on muddy ground…we move it. If the water hazard is too daunting for several of us then we tee up the shot. We play to enjoy life, not to get covered in mud or contribute golf balls to the pond demon. On days when rain has soaked the fairways and carts have to stay on the concrete paths, I play with special abandon. If I hit a ball that would require me to walk seventy-five or a hundred yards to retrieve it, I abandon it like a $300 car. We play Captain’s Choice and the choice is often literally between a rock and a hard place.
We are not above sharing bits of wisdom along the way.
From my father to John, years ago, “Swing hard in case you hit something!”
From a fine golfer and great friend, Eddie Weldon, “We don’t take pictures, we just write down numbers.”
From Dennis, who, when we miss entirely or dribble one just past the tee, reminds us that it is just a game, “HA! ha!”
From me, when a badly hit ball somehow finds its way to the right place, “I meant to do that!”
I know you serious golfers are gritting your teeth and clenching your fists. I hear you whispering at me like a disappointed father. “That is not the way the game should be played!”
Then don’t play it that way! If golf is so serious to you that you take umbrage at those of us who see it as a recreational sport, then you consider yourself professional and that’s sad, because nobody is paying you.
So how is this like life (I implied that the two were similar way back at the beginning.)
We don’t try to impress each other. There comes a point in life where we are no longer trying to get ahead of our peers. We know that, at our age, our golf game will deteriorate just as we know the same will happen to us. As we get older, our losses are much greater than golf balls and dignity. We have lost loved ones and friends and have to, time and again, pick up our spirits and face the next day. Our handicaps are the physical maladies that accompany our age and we have to pause from time to time to have a readjustment, a new knee or surgery.
While our numbers on the course increase, our tribe has decreased. David, good for him, fulfilled a dream and moved to a home near the ocean. We lost John Morris late last year. For several months we watched him expend every ounce of energy just to be out on the course with us. His strength flagged but his humor stayed with him until the end. Two days before he passed away I visited him in the hospital. He was in pain and still found it in himself to call me a chicken for leaving money behind when we stole a watermelon fifty-seven years ago.
I called my daughter, Kate, who creates beautiful crafts, shortly after he passed away and asked her to put a design on some Yeti-like cups. The design is a golf club and ball with a grass and sky background. Written on the cup are words which may sound inappropriate to some. The words are from John, about golf. For the guys who lost him to cancer, they are about his leaving. The words on the cup read, “Damn it John!”
We remember his courage and his humor. When we played a couple of weeks ago, Gary stopped us on the twelfth hole a Chester Golf Course. It is a hole with two water hazards and John considered it his personal nemesis. Gary took a bottle of Woodford Reserve out of his golf bag, handed us each a shot-sized red Solo cup and poured a drink for Dennis, Joe, me, and himself. We raised the cups heavenward and I believe you can guess the words of our toast.
Damn It, John!
He was Master of the Seven Iron and our Dear Friend and he is not forgotten.
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