Most of my early memories of golf come from my grandparents’ home in Arizona.
They’re all single images—some from so early that I probably saw a picture one time and tricked my brain into calling it a memory.
Golf balls scattered on the driving range.
Putting a golf cart in reverse on accident and not knowing how to make it stop beeping.
Chipping obsessively.
The popcorn machine in the snack shack near the putting green no one ever used.
The scolding I received for chipping on that same putting green.
I can still see the golf balls embedded in a cactus that was always too close to the tee box. I can taste the lemon hard candies they had in the pro shop. My favorite club was (is?) a scratched up seven-iron I kept in my bag solely to use in case I had to hit out of the desert.
I remember only getting to putt on a few holes and spending most of the time watching from the cart. I remember getting to play most holes from 50 yards out. I remember getting to play every hole from my dad’s drive. Then, I remember playing.
Golf feels different to me today.
It’s both the boy’s favorite activity and the one way I know how to steal time.
Golf is now this patch of dirt in our backyard where the boy has left permanent divots through thousands of swings. And it’s the clanking of range balls getting dispensed into a bucket before I turn my brain all the way off and hit them toward nothing.
Golf smells like freshly mown grass, tastes like mango seltzers and hot dogs, looks like a fully-faded sunset, and feels like the one part of the world that remains separate from every other part of the world.
It’s the sounds of a driver’s ping and an iron’s thump. Of tree branches breaking and leaves crunching. Of flagsticks being dropped on the green. Of balls hitting the bottom of the cup. Of muttered curses when they don’t.
It’s an isolated event, somehow both solitary and communal, that happens at odd intervals.
It is simultaneously so stupid and so important. And that’s why I love it.
One of the best, and perhaps hardest, parts of being a parent is hoping that your child likes the same things you like without you having to force it upon them.
You want them to like what they want to like, of course. You want them to be their own person, to form their own opinions. But you also want to share everything with them.
Great parents will learn to love whatever it is their child loves (my mom reads everything I write because she is the best, but I guarantee right now she’d rather be working out). Still, every parent hopes that the question that starts with “Can you show me how to…” ends with something they already love to do.
So, yes. I hope the boy loves golf. I hope he stays obsessed with different clubs and different balls. I hope he keeps asking if we can get a golf cart. My heart will always swell when he asks to watch golf instead of Bluey.
I want him to love golf not because golf is great, but because I love golf. And because I love golf for a million reasons, some pointless and some personal.
I love golf because it’s a great excuse to be outside. I love golf because it’s where I learned what self-talk means.
It’s where I learned how to focus. It’s where I learned how to goof off.
Golf is how I see my friends. It’s something I do with my brothers. It’s the one place my dad has ever yelled at me (I have not thrown a golf club since!).
Golf is where I remember that I’m not as athletic as I think I am. It boosts my ego and breaks my heart, sometimes in a span of ten minutes.
Golf is what the better half and I did on our first date when we learned that quality time our shared love language.
It’s all very silly. To allow a game to possess all of these important moments.
But life’s important moments will always be connected to something. So, why not make that something a game?
Why not golf?
Thanks for reading this far.
- jd
And also…
A hole-in-one on a Par 3 course doesn’t count because you’ll always feel the need to explain it. I’m as devastated by this as you are.
The cost of checking a bag on an airplane is criminal. Not the amount it costs. The entire concept.
My worst writing happens after midnight no matter how much I wish that weren’t true. Writing late into the night is a romantic idea that turns into a pumpkin and leaves me feeling like I forgot something every single time.
You should listen to Acquired.
