How it All Began, Part II

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Yesterday, I started to relate the foundation of my love of golf, but that was more like a false start.  This is the second part of that post where I really get to the bottom of my fondness for the game.  As I said yesterday, I really want to hear how you ended up taking up golf.  Feel free to drop your stories into the comments.  I won’t be offended if you skip my drivel and go right to the comments.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled program.

As I was saying yesterday: Until…

Starting With a Job

In March of 1994, I was in college and was looking for a job for the summer.  The same group of friends that went out there a year or two earlier (including the two clubless deadbeats – sorry, dude…) decided that we should go down to the “country club” and apply for jobs.

I put “country club” in quotes because at the time, we were so naive, we assumed it was a club for the elite like Bushwood from Caddyshack with doctors and lawyers and executives out there playing for serious bucks.  In hindsight, it was an average public course with a decent sized membership.  Though, to their credit, it was a more traditional place where dress code and etiquette and those sorts of things mattered.

Within a week, my three friends were hired.  I waited and waited and heard nothing.  I was getting stiffed!  By fortuitous coincidence, my aunt happened to know a man who was a bigwig at the club and who was in tight with the ownership.  She phoned in a favor for me and I was enthusiastically hired before she even finished hanging up the phone.  On a side note – coincidentally, while that ownership regime was there I was treated very well.  Hmm, my first and only experience with nepotism, I think.

I worked there throughout the rest of my college days and even a little bit after.  Since I went to college for almost eight years (I got to consecutive bachelor’s degrees – cut me some slack) I spent about 5 years working out there.  My first year, I was a cart attendant (we were called cart boys in those days – not sure if that’s a PC violation now), then I worked in maintenance for three years.  After that, I worked part time on weekends for a season or two as a course ranger.

As an aside, I really do believe that those five years have given me enough material to write a book.  You wouldn’t believe a lot of it if I told you, but those are stories for another day (and most of them will never be recounted in this space).

Learning from the Learned

Those were definitely my formative years in the game of golf.  I was then working for that salty old pro that wanted to bounce us out the door a year or two earlier.  His name was Bob.  He worked a non-golf job for something like 25 years, retired, and became a golf pro, something he had wanted to do early in life.  He had a somewhat gruff exterior, but after getting to know him, he was funny, generous, and had a lot to teach.  He passed away a couple of years after I finished up my tour of duty at the course.

His love of the game was similar to mine, I think. He instilled a lot of appreciation for the traditions of golf.  He demanded players dress appropriate to the dress code.  He was always dressed sharply himself.  We used to joke that he never wore the same shirt twice and it wasn’t that much of an exaggeration.  At one point, he hired a waitress from the restaurant to do laundry for him on the side.  He brought five full Hefty garbage bags full of clothes for her to wash (I know because I moved them from his car to hers).  And he said that was just the shirts.  He would bring the pants after she got those done.

I still miss him.  I think he would be supportive of my effort to become a pro and I would definitely value his advice.

I also worked for an up and coming young pro named Brian.  He was an excellent player and really nice guy.  I learned a lot from him too.  He was well on his way to a career in golf, working through the PGA certification process at the time.  Soon after I started working there, he got a job at a course in Florida and I haven’t heard anything since.  But I owe him too for sparking my love for the game.

Getting a job at a golf course was key because golf was free.  Practice was free, too.  If the seed was going to be planted, it definitely had all the water and sunshine it could use.

Working on the course was a great learning experience because it gave me plenty of time to observe the way experienced players played.  I started to pick up the finer points of etiquette.  I learned where carts were allowed to be driven.  I learned about pace of play.  I saw some good swings and an awful lot of bad ones and started to sort of intuitively recognize some of the differences between them.

Equipment Upgrades

I played golf here and there, and at some point, Brian examined my beat-up old set of clubs and said, “come with me.”  He took me to the shed where the range balls were stored and there was a giant container filled with clubs.  These were the ones that had been in the lost and found for multiple years (current ones were kept inside the pro-shop).  He said, “let’s build you a better set,” and proceeded to pluck me out a complete set of clubs, including a putter.

Spalding Executive was a popular model at the time and he managed to put together an almost completely matching set for me.  Which begs the question:  how many frickin’ clubs do people lose?!  The math is mind boggling, that he could put together almost a complete set of Executives just out of the lost and found.

But, I digress.

My First “Lessons”

I was charged up about the “new” clubs so I started practicing more.  I signed up for a clinic that Brian ran one afternoon early that summer.  He started me out with some waist-high 7-iron swings and showed me some other basics.  There was a trash can full of range balls for the students to hit and I was out there hitting balls with my 7-iron until dark.

As time went on, I started to play more.  Some of my fondest memories are the evenings I spent out on the course playing alone.  I kept practicing, too.  Despite the fact that I worked at the course, I didn’t take a personal lesson from any of the pros for several years.

I did get lots of tips and casual information over the years, but aside from that clinic my first summer, I didn’t get much other instruction.  I just learned by doing.

Well, that’s sort of true.

One evening, I was at the range pounding balls.  The driveway of the course ran parallel to the range tee, so it was common for cars to be passing by all the time.  At one point, I heard a car slowing down behind me so I hit my shot and turned to look, and it was Bob watching me.

He yelled, “What the f*** are you doing, big man?!!”  You had to know Bob – if he liked you, he would give you a hard time.  I turned and said, “hitting balls?”  He shot back, “You see that sign up there on the road?!”

The road ran up the right side of the range (yes, I did put balls out there on occasion).  There was a sign up maybe 150 yards up and on the opposite side of the  road.  It was probably 20-30 degrees to the right my target which was straight up the range.

I kind of sheepishly said, “yeah” because I thought he might be having some fun with me but wasn’t sure and didn’t want to seem like an idiot.  He yelled, “You should be swinging your club at that g**d*** sign!!”  I started to turn and aim at the sign and he shot back, “Nooooooooo! Dammit!  Aim down the range at your target, but when you swing the club down, swing it out toward that sign!!”

I hit a few shots like that and he was satisfied.  In a much calmer tone he said, “Good.  Keep working.”  He rolled up his window and drove on.

That was my first lesson on hitting from the inside.  Over the next few years, I received other impromptu lessons like that and learned a lot in the process, without really knowing what I was learning.

Brian taught me how to build putting feel by mentally associating a specific length putting stroke with a specific distance.  It wasn’t about a scientific measurement of putt length and back swing length.  It was about knowing that I have a ten-foot putt and being able to have my muscles recall my ten-foot putt stroke, whatever that happens to look like.

In my first year there, I started to play more and more.  When I got done work, I would run home, change in to proper attire, and then run back and hit the course and play until dark.  By this time, I was becoming a reasonably decent player.  After a couple of years, I had no trouble averaging in the low 40′s and would go through stretches where I could consistently shoot in the upper 30′s.  I was playing probably four or five days per week and even went through a stretch where I played 21 days straight.

Defining Me

It’s funny how circumstances define us.

As you can infer from all this, I played a lot of 9-hole rounds.  We were allowed to play whenever we wanted, but we couldn’t play at busy times when we might take a spot from a paying customer. So, I played in the evenings almost all the time.  And that behavior became so ingrained that it continues to this day.  I am most happy on the course in the evenings, playing until dark.  I like to play against someone else because it helps me focus my game, but I rarely play in a foursome.

I learned to enjoy the solitude of the practice tee and green and of the course late in the evenings.  I learned to like practice because I didn’t want to be the 17 year old fool that went out there to play golf without even understanding anything beyond the basic purpose of the game.  Sure, everyone has to start somewhere, but instead of asking, I just figured I knew it all and went from there.

Those were my formative years and gave me my love for the game.  I owe people like Bob for teaching me the tradition and character of the game.  And I owe several people for taking the time to teach me a little about the swing and how to play the game.  But, somewhere the game got into my soul.  I don’t know if the solitude just matches my personality or if the challenge of the game is a perfect match for my innate desire to learn and improve.

Either way, that was a wonderful time in my life and it was a pleasure to relive it in these two posts.  I hope you’ll share your own introduction to the game in the comments below.