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The drive sliced way, way right for the third time in a row. I think it cleared one of the houses lining the fairway. On the first out-of-bounds drive, I might have been a little distracted. On my second drive, I really did try to overcorrect the slice how my dad was showing me. I aimed left and set the ball forward in my stance. It didn’t work. But on the third drive, I just let it rip. I wanted to prove a point: golf wasn’t for me. “Let’s just take a drop down the fairway, bud,” my Dad said. His Dad, my Grandpa, had taken us out for a round on the nice course in town, the one my dad only played a few times each year. Usually after bad shots my Grandpa would say something encouraging, or funny, or helpful. After this spiral orange peel slice, he just looked at the ground. I stumped an elder statesman of the game. They would never say so, but I knew I was ruining their round. Up until about six months before this, I hadn’t played a lot of golf. Only about two times per year when my dad could convince me to join him for an afternoon. I was always a dusty baseball kid, and even though my dad coached golf at my High School, I chose the catcher’s gear over the golf bag. But after a tough Sophomore year on the JV baseball team with a bad coach, and no clear spot for me on the Varsity team, my dad convinced me to give golf a try for a season when I was a Junior. High School golf teams have six players. In competitive play, each team tallies their five best scores, drops the sixth, and counts up who wins. I was the sixth man on our six-person team, and over the course of the year, my score got dropped every time. I literally contributed nothing to the team’s score the entire year. “The only difference between shooting 100 and shooting in the mid-80s is about 10,000 swings,” my Dad used to tell me. This frustrated me the most. If I rolled over a curveball in the batter’s box, I could sprint down the line to make it a close play at first base. If a forward got past me on the soccer field, I could chase him down and use my body to block a shot. Coaches and teammates would yell, “Good hustle!” To me, this was the worst part about golf. There is no hustle. Just focus, skill, and 10,000 range balls. Soon after that terrible round with my Dad and Grandpa, my Dad offered to buy me some golf lessons. I decided to counter. “What about voice lessons?” I asked. I had been singing in the choir and playing guitar for about a year at that point, and music was becoming a serious interest to me. I saw the disappointment flash over his face. He couldn’t hide it. I knew he didn’t understand it. I thought he didn’t understand me. After a quick fumbling of words, and some glances toward the floor, he conceded. — In my Senior year, I started at second base on the Varsity baseball team. The rest of high school went by pretty fast, especially since I wasn’t wasting hours on a lonely golf course. I was riding high. I went to homecoming and prom. I played a few shows with my rock band. I kissed a few girls. Then I said goodbye to the suburbs. College in Southern California was more of the same, just bigger and better. I cruised through my classes with no stress, played a lot of live music, and scored a few internships in advertising. I was wound up tight, ready to slingshot out of college into a job with a cool advertising agency. But right at that time, a bomb got dropped on my head. My dad was diagnosed with cancer. It was difficult to cope with. I couldn’t focus. I lost the spring in my step. My ad agency internship didn’t pan out as promised. I entered the workforce as a freelancer. I moved to the city. I picked up a few dishwashing jobs to make rent. Some months, I barely did that. Throughout this time, my dad was getting chemotherapy. He had a few surgeries to remove large tumors. If he wasn’t sick from radiation, he was recovering from his chest being opened up and sewn back together. He would be in remission for a little while, then the cancer would return. There were some healthy moments during these six years. There were some good memories. But there were also many difficult times. Sick times. Sad times. Stressful times. When my dad passed, the hardest thing for me to accept was the fact that our relationship couldn’t grow anymore. In those final years, my dad and I began to see eye-to-eye on things. We found more to talk about, and he loved hearing about the projects I was working on. We talked baseball, we talked marketing, we talked writing. Even in the midst of his sickness, and even when the end was in sight for him, he still took interest in the things I had going on. But now our relationship couldn’t grow. It would be frozen in time for the rest of my life, just a fraction of what it could have been. — A few months after my dad passed, I went on a trip to Catalina Island to produce a photoshoot for some boats. I was working with my cousin and my best friend. The morning after we got there, a windy storm blew in, and we had to push back the photoshoot one day. But by the afternoon, the storm cleared, and we found ourselves with some free time. We decided to check out the 9-hole executive course up the hill on the Island. By then, the weather was perfect–sunny and 71 degrees with a cool breeze. The course was accessible, with mostly par 3s, and a few 4s. None of us had golfed recently, so I proposed we play a scramble–a team game that would keep our wayward drives from becoming lonely bushwhacking expeditions. We hacked and chunked and bladed our way down each hole, taking the best lie, scraping together a lot of bogeys and a few pars. We played with rented clubs in t-shirts. My cousin hit low top-spin drives with a swing that looked like a tennis forehand. My best friend only brought sandals, and after a few holes, found better traction swinging barefoot. And then, all of a sudden, somewhere around the third green, I started having a lot of fun. This wasn’t a nice course. There were no houses lining the fairways. There were no swing tips, and no pressure to get better for the next season. If I made a bad shot, my best friend or my cousin could pick me up. We were a superintendent’s nightmare, divoting our way down each fairway, slowly falling in love with the game. — I know a lot of golfers, thanks to my Dad and my Grandpa. When I run into them, they ask me if I’ve picked up the clubs. My answer is always the same. “Oh, I play twice a year,” I say with a smile. Some years it’s true. Some years it’s an exaggeration. This year, it’s an understatement. After that stolen afternoon on Catalina Island, I played nine holes on vacation in Costa Rica with my best friend, and another nine at a course by his house. I played two three-par courses with my brother, then we played a full 18. I played four rounds of Top Golf with my cousin in one weekend. I’m headed out tomorrow to play another 18. I’m getting better. My scores are still a mile high, but I’m starting to see the lines. I’m beginning to quiet my mind before each shot. I take deep breaths and flush out the anxiety. I’m starting to see what my dad loved about this game. And I see now that I was wrong. With every swing, every putt I sink, every chip I chunk, and every mile I walk, I feel closer to my dad. I know it sounds strange, but our relationship isn’t frozen. It’s still growing. I understand him a little more each time I play this game. I’m seeing how it wooed him. How it challenged him. How he could publish a devotional every weekday for 20 years about the parallels between golf and life and faith. I’m still trying to break 100 for the first time. But after this year, I’ll have taken about a thousand swings. Only nine thousand more to go before I can shoot 85.
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