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ISBN: 9781483514024

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For anyone who has ever hit a shank or missed a three-foot putt.

Acknowledgments

If a man could be judged by the company he keeps on the golf course, I would earn high marks. It is likely I never would have played a single round had it not been for my father, LeRoy, who left his seldom-used bag of aging clubs in the corner of the basement for the unintended purpose of collecting cobwebs and piquing my youthful curiosity about a sport other than football, baseball, basketball or hockey. I played only a handful of rounds with Dad, who left the game and this world much too early. My mother, Betty, played on into her eighties and helped introduce my children to the game at a young age with the gentleness only a grandmother can. Once when she took the three of them out for nine holes one inquired: “Grandma, can we take a cart?” Her reply: “No. When you play golf with grandma, you walk.” Mom still tolerates my occasional golf stories and inquires, not entirely half-heartedly, about the status of my game. Brothers Brian, Greg and Mark shared some of the experiences in this book with me and may recognize themselves in some of antics described herein.

And, of course, my own family, started close to 30 years ago with a non-golfer named Reba who happily – I think – tolerated my drive to get better at this silly game. No one is more responsible for what I have attained in the game than my son Alex, who is at the beginning of his golf journey, which holds far more promise than mine did at twenty-three. His encouragement and developing love and talent for the game at a young age pushed me to get better. His ability to break down my swing remains among the best instruction I have ever received. My daughter Emily and her husband Michael are frequent playing partners for rounds that mean far more to me than any of my meager tournament accomplishments. My daughter Bridget, who gave the game a chance but found other equally (or perhaps more) valuable pursuits is the one most responsible for this book. It took a couple of years, but her continued encouragement finally got me off my lazy duff. Bridget is a fine editor at one of New York’s major publishing houses and the primary editor of the ramblings that follow, and for that I am lovingly grateful.

There are, of course, too many playing partners to mention. I remain indebted to you all, beginning with my very first regular companions, Tom White and Phil Glatfelter, peers in our first real jobs after college as newspaper writers. We shared late-night beers at Bertha’s followed by early morning tee times, and they tolerated my beginner greenness and fledgling incompetence. Michael Keating, whose insane idea of starting a golf magazine actually worked and afforded us over the last two decades hundreds of rounds, dozens of trips, too many bottles of wine to remember and too good of a friendship to forget. Bill Kamenjar, good friend always willing to tote my bag in a big tournament, has over the years continuously told me he enjoys my writing and my golf, even when I might be down on both. I appreciate the encouragement. Larry Den, Rob Buhrman and Bill Jones are among my longest regular playing partners, and more recently Neil Shannon, Walt Ostrowitz, Bill Disney, Joe Zdrojewski and Cliff Harden. Mike Prince, Barry Flaer, Jack Walsh and the regulars in the Thursday afternoon game at Maryland National may recognize themselves in some of these essays, and I thank them for the fodder they unwittingly provide me every week, a fair exchange for the cash I lose to them every week.

The game has brought me great joys, but none as great as the enduring friendships it has fostered. I thank you all. Play well.

CONTENTS

PART I: THE GRIND

1. The Chore of Putting

2. Golf & Socialism

3. Optimism Over Experience

4. Saving the Game

5. Unfinished

6. The Bogey Train

7. Three Stinkin’ Feet

8. The Shanks

9. How Much is Too Much?

10. Complain, Complain

11. Yin and Yang

PART II: THE LOVE

1. The Beauty of the Game

2. Fathers, Sons and Daughters

3. Just Sons

4. Club Love

5. Acquaintances

6. The Ace

7. What I’ve Learned

8. First Memories

9. Thirty-six Reasons We Love the Game

10. Passages

PART III: THE RUB

1. Ill Winds

2. Police Action

3. The Muni

4. Navigating the System

5. Shanks A Lot

6. A Man and His Caddie

7. Shots I’ve Seen

8. Lyrically Speaking

9. Slammin’ Sam and the Art of Betting

10. Junk

PART IV: THE GAME

1. Just Me

2. Why I Hate Golf

3. Safety in Threes

4. Finally Fourteen

5. Eighteen Things Every Golfer Should Know

6. Thirty-six Things You Could Do if You Quit Golf

7. Shots I’ve Seen – The Sequel

8. Those Three Little Words

9. An Inexact Pursuit

PART V: THE WORLD

1. Wide World of Golf

2. The First at St. Andrew’s

3. The Seventeenth at Sawgrass

4. The Eighteenth at Pebble Beach

5. Ballybunion

6. Ballybunion Revisited

7. The Magical History Tour

8. Zeal for New Zealand

9. A Lesser Scotland

10. Vietnam

11. Wales

12. Yoopers

13. Hills of Sand

INTRODUCTION

John Lennon’s acid-induced Walrus lyricism, nonsensical as he later admitted it was, could easily apply to golf: “I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.”

When it comes to golf, I don’t know you, and you don’t know me, but we are the same. I am you. You are me. We are he. And we are all together as we chase this mercurial game, because at some point golf leeched on to our souls and is still sucking our blood. We will spend a lifetime chasing that perfectly struck, kite-tail fade three-iron that tracks to a far-right pin 215 yards away. But we know it will never happen; maybe once; possibly a handful of times; but never with any kind of competent television-golf consistency. Yet we stalk that shot and dozens more even though, at best, success will be momentary; an ephemeral instant of satisfaction woven into the fabric of our mediocrity.

You and I have never met, but together we have tread the same turf, confronted the same golf demons, and together we pursue the same goal. We are all a little non compos mentis for pursuing with such vigor that which is unattainable. We allow ourselves to dream, reasoning that if we hang in there long enough we’ll stumble upon “The Secret” and the real player that we know lurks inside us will appear as if rubbed from an oil lamp with golf wishes to grant.

Other sports give us an end. It may not be clearly defined, but we know when we can no longer compete. Golf taunts us for a lifetime; it’s shapely form sashaying us on. I didn’t play much golf as a kid beyond experimenting with my father’s clubs in the backyard. One summer day when I guess my mother had had enough of us, she piled my older brother and I and a couple of grade-school friends into the car and dropped us off at the local pitch-and-putt course near my childhood home in Milwaukee. That was my greatest golfing experience until high school, when a couple of times a summer my friends and I would sneak on to the local muni and play until the pro chased us off. That was far less an accomplishment of golf than juvenility. Essentially I got a late start, not taking the game at all seriously until I graduated from college and had a little disposable income and three friends in whom the embers of the game were beginning to glow as well. It wasn’t until my three kids were in grade school that I began taking the game semi-seriously, and then it was a few more years beyond that when I started taking it very seriously.

When I started playing regularly after college, I couldn’t break 100; didn’t know the rules; scavenged the woods for stray balls so I’d have enough to finish the round. Twenty-five years later I tried to qualify for the U.S. Amateur. It was the season of 2009, the summer I turned 50, and for a few months the game lent me enough ability to think I “had it.” I thought the journey had taken me to the destination, but it was just another of the game’s taunts, one of the occasional morsels of competence, even proficiency, it doles out, not unlike a cost-of-living salary increase given so we’ll stay put; a moment of happiness to savor while we grind on.

The writings in this book are reflections of my experiences along the way. I have been writing about golf for various publications for almost as long as I’ve been playing, and the foundation for much of this collection of essays comes from writings in Washington Golf Monthly and GolfStyles, two magazines which, among the many hats I’ve worn over the years, I have had the pleasure of editing. Yet for someone whose career is so closely associated with golf, I know surprisingly little about the PGA Tour and, some (my son especially) would argue I know even less about the golf swing. So this book will not help you become a better player nor will it inform you about any of the great tour professionals or happenings of today or yesterday.

What you will find in this book is yourself. I wrote this collection of essays about my experiences, but you could have just as easily written them about your experiences, because they are your experiences. You and I are on the same journey. I admit I am well into the back nine of my golf days, and it is likely my glory days, such as they were, will be visible only in the rearview mirror for the remainder of my journey. My game has slipped, but the intransigent in me refuses to believe I can’t still be better than ever. Maybe your best days lie ahead. On the spectrum of the game, I am likely at a different point than you, but it’s a point you have crossed, or will. Some people begin the journey but don’t last. They give up. They live for instant gratification and anything that doesn’t generate immediate results is immediately discarded. This book is not for them.

But you and I are not wired that way. We don’t short circuit when things don’t go our way at first. We are willing to work for our rewards, because golf, like life, isn’t doled out like so much gruel just because you’re in line. What we get from the game, we earn. From that very first squib shot we hit in the backyard, or off the driving range mat next to Dad or where ever, we have been captivated by the game. It is as if the game threw down a gauntlet, and you and I accepted the challenge when others walked away, unwilling to face the difficulty of the task. And, yes, golf is difficult. It should be so confoundedly simple to hit a ball that’s just lying there or propped up on a tee. Instead we learn early on that the golf swing is a complex motor skill, so we work and work until we finally make that first pure contact that sends the ball rocketing off on its intended trajectory. That is the moment the game hooks us, and then we spend the rest of our lives chasing that feeling of perfection. We try. We pursue. We fail. We fail more; we fail shot after shot, round after round, season after season. We say we hate the game. We say we’ll never play again. But the words ring hollow from the start. We can’t quit the game, we have too much left to do.

And that’s why I think you’ll enjoy this book. It’s about you and your pursuit of the game. It’s about the shanks you hit and the three-foot putts you miss. It’s about your favorite club and your least favorite course. It’s about the guys I know, who are the guys you know – Steak Sauce, Crime, Ice Pick, Backfoot, Jigsaw, Irish Kevin and Steelhead. It’s about playing too much golf, and it’s about not playing enough golf. It’s about our search for “The Secret” and our refusal to give up, which I haven’t and I’m guessing you haven’t either. It’s about my journey, which is your journey.

Then again, maybe we’re all just “eggmen sitting on a cornflake waiting for the van to come. Goo goo g’ joob.”

J.T.

November 2013

PART I:

THE GRIND

CHAPTER ONE

THE CHORE OF PUTTING

My friend Ice Pick says putting is fun. I suppose it is, if you broaden your definition of fun. So now I consider it fun to stub my pinky toe on the coffee table leg. The next time I have to cross an asphalt parking lot in bare feet on a hot August day, I’ll savor the pleasure. When the check for the house payment bounces, I’ll just have to laugh. And when my wife says she’s really had it and is moving to the Caribbean with a guy she’s been seeing on the side for years, well, that will be my new definition of merriment and gaiety.

Putting is fun? What’s wrong with this guy? He must love to clean his toilets, burn his dinner and scratch the paint on his car. If this guy thinks putting is fun, he must be the guy out there cutting his grass at 7:30 every Saturday morning. Putting is fun; give me a break. Actually, don’t give me a break. The straight putts are the only ones I feel I have chance to make.

Putting is not fun. It’s a chore, no different from taking out the garbage, painting the trim in the living room or cleaning out the gutters. The only difference is you can make your kids take out the garbage, you can hire a painter to do the trim or you can go to Home Depot and buy gutter guards. Putting you have to do yourself. If you think about it, no endeavor can last four-plus hours without having a component of pain to it. You could go sailing, but you have to hoist the sails, scrub the barnacles and do whatever sailors must do. You can take the family to Disney World, but you still have to stand in line.

I can see how putting could be fun. If I had a chance to make every thirty-footer like the guys on television, I’m sure putting would be a blast. If every six-footer went in, I would use this chapter to eulogize putting. If three-putts were less common than Big Bang Theory reruns, I’d rank rolling the ball on the short grass right up there with sex, Guinness and scratching off an instant lottery winner. But the fact is most of my thirty-footers then require a six-footer, which I miss, resulting in another three-putt. So rather than extolling the art of putting, I curse the sheepherder who first knocked a rock into a rabbit hole with a stick and decided to make a game of it.

I love striking the ball, and I am somewhat competent at it. I love the purity of the feeling. I love the accomplishment of executing an athletic endeavor far more difficult than it looks. I love the result: the ball taking off violently then flying softly, gracefully, and in the end, landing near the intended target with a gentle thump and a nice little roll out.

So why is putting is such a problem? If the full golf swing is such a complicated process and I can do it with reasonable success, putting should be a breeze. If the full swing is Chopin’s Fourth Symphony in E minor, the putting stroke is “Chopsticks.” If the full swing is rocket science, the putting stroke is a bottle rocket.

You’d think that because the putting stroke requires so little athletic ability – really so little ability of any kind – that everyone would be able to do it reasonably competently. Ice Pick (his stab at the ball is more likely to scar the green than threaten the hole) says putting is fun, but he can’t putt. It’s just that he’s such a terrible ball striker that when he finally reaches the green, he realizes he won’t have to chase it into the woods or the sand or the backyard near the tee box any longer so he enjoys putting. Three or four stabs at it from fifty feet is pure enjoyment compared to seven or eight strokes from four hundred twenty five yards. Switchbacking around the hole a couple of times is fun compared to crossing the fairway three times on a cart-path-only day. You can’t step in any mud on the green, the snakes have no place to hide and as bad as Pick is, he has yet to lose a ball on the green. So yeah, I get it. I see where he’s coming from.

IP understands the psychology of putting. He actually gets all that Bob Rotella stuff, and he uses it. Not well, but he uses it. And he imparts it on me. Like the thing about tossing a beanbag to the hole. Let’s say you’re looking at a reasonably straight thirty-footer. If you tossed a beanbag underhanded to the hole, you’d probably get it close every time. So why can’t you roll your thirty-footer close every time? Sounds reasonable. I’ve tried the beanbag toss. I can do it. But put a shaft and a flat-faced club head between my hand and the object I’m trying to get to the hole, and I wield it with the clumsiness of a drunken jouster.

The problem is, adding that third element – the putter – takes the natural athletic ability out of the equation. Other sports are based on one’s natural motions, instincts and actions refined and perfected over the millennia since human survival was directly correlated to man’s ability to swing a club (the non-golf variety), or throw a spear or a rock. Tell me what caveman ever teed up a rock and tried to launch it with a stick to bring down dinner?

When you’re throwing, you rely on instinct. It doesn’t matter how far you’re trying to throw something, you just throw it instinctively. You don’t have a million things running through your mind. You’re not worried about how far behind your ear the ball needs to be, or about how far you should follow through. You’re not thinking about how much of an arc you need to put on the ball or whether your form and alignment are correct. You just throw the ball like man has done since the beginning of time. Your natural instinct and athletic ability take over, and the ball arrives somewhere near the intended destination. It never winds up getting only halfway there, going a ridiculous distance past or missing the target by an embarrassing margin. Yet all those things happen when you putt, or at lest when I putt.

Other sports are read and react. Actions are made in an instant. Decisions can’t be thought and re-thought and analyzed to the point of paralysis. I have way too much time waiting for my turn on the green, so I analyze and overanalyze because I’m bored waiting for the others in my group to lag up to two feet and mark. By the time I finally stand over my putt, I’ve decided it will break left, changed my mind and decided it will break right, then reasoned my way to hitting it straight at the hole and letting whatever happens happen because in all honesty I can’t read greens any better than I can read Braille.

So I’ve taken the first step to solving my problem. I admit I have one: I can’t putt. There, I said it. Of the three important elements of putting – line, pace and quality of the strike – I usually get two of them wrong. When I do make a long putt, and sometimes even short ones, I don’t feel responsible. It’s a lie. Somehow I beat back the demons without knowing quite how I did it. I suspect many of my made putts are a case of two wrongs making a right – a miss-read and a miss-hit and the ball ends up in the hole.

Yeah, Ice Pick, putting is a freakin’ blast, you moron. I spent years searching for the pendulum of my stroke, seeking the perfect metronomic back and forth that would give me the right combination of line and speed. I looked for the “fall line” of my putts, tried to pick out the pinnacle of the break and somehow incorporate that into my line (as if I could actually hit the line I finally decide upon). I searched for the grain and tried to figure out what it meant. It all simmers to a conclusion of worthlessness. Forget all that crap. The secret to being a great putter, my fellow loss on the moss, is to believe you are a great putter. Embrace the mystery. Surrender to the perplexity and bemusement of this oh so simple task. Admit to yourself that putting is just guesswork and that sometimes it’s going to take you three guesses to get it right.

CHAPTER TWO

GOLF & SOCIALISM

I live on a small lake about an hour outside the city; far enough away that a murder is still front-page news in the nearest town with a daily newspaper, but not so far that I can’t drive into the city for dinner and a show without having to make overnight arrangements.

My lake is more than 1,000 miles from New Orleans, and eight years have passed since Katrina, but the winds of George W. Bush’s debacle of the aftermath of the storm are now rippling the water on my lake, which sits 308 feet above sea level and a four-hour drive from the nearest ocean. The water level of my two-hundred-nineteen-acre lake is controlled by a dam. My house sits thirteen feet above lake level when everything is peaceful. In a big summer storm the level of the lake rises a foot or so. When a petering hurricane moseys through from the south, the water rises maybe two feet. When Superstorm Sandy plowed through, the water rose about five feet – just enough to deposit a layer of slit on my dock and be a nuisance but still well below the foundation of my house, which sits thirty feet off the lake’s edge.

After the Katrina recovery debacle, Dubya sent the Federal Emergency Management Agency out to essentially widen every possible flood plain it could find. Of course, the man-power needed for such a project was well beyond even the scope of the federal government’s resources, so without so much as sending out an engineer, surveyor, or even an intern to gather actual data about the lake and my home’s relationship to it, FEMA declared my house and a couple of neighbors to be in a 100-year flood plain and told us we all had to go out and buy flood insurance.

As near as I can tell from local bureaucrats, someone at FEMA (probably trying to justify his job) looked at some old topographic maps (quite possibly created before the land for my relatively recently built lakeside community had been graded to its current configuration) and decided that if the Mother of All Storms ever swept through, the water could rise to a level that would endanger my house – ignoring the fact that long before it would get to that point it would just spill over the top of the dam and follow its natural course, which is what water does.

Well, maybe Superstorm Sandy wasn’t the Mother of All Storms (although it would be hard to convince many of my fellow Northeasterners of that) but the way it ripped through my inland town that night it had to be a close cousin, or maybe an in-law. So if the water dumped by mother-in-law of all storms couldn’t even get close to endangering my house, it stands to reason that even if it rained for forty days and forty nights (which I believe occurs a lot less frequently than every 100 years) my house would be in no danger. And at that point the world would have far greater concerns than whether I have flood insurance.

But the federal government knows what’s best for me, and Big Brother stepped in to protect me because it believes I am not capable of protecting myself.

So now the federal government – uh, the United States Golf Association – is telling me what’s best for my putting stroke. If golf is where we seek refuge and escape, why is someone tapping me on the shoulder and telling me what to do, just like the federal government?

The USGA and the Royal and Ancient Golf Association have mulled the anchored putting stroke for years. They combined their knowledge, wisdom, and vast experience and came up with a proposal not to outlaw the long putter and belly putter, but instead to tell us how we can and cannot use them. I am a traditionalist, but I have tried the long putter, even putted well with it for stretches. But like the water level of my lake, my putting always seems to find its natural mediocrity, so I gravitate back to the regular putter.

For the last couple of years, it seems the USGA has been hell-bent on doing something about what it perceives as the competitive advantage of the anchored putting stroke. It seems to me the correct course here is to define what constitutes a conforming putter, not legislate how we can use a piece of equipment the governing bodies deem legal. The game has never outlawed technological innovations (see gutta percha, steel shafts, titanium clubheads, etc.).

The worst rule the USGA ever implemented was to ban croquet-style putting. It’s the only rule that goes against the game’s underlying premise: “Play the ball as it lies, play the course as you find it, and if you cannot do either, do what is fair.” If Sam Snead figured out that putting between his legs was his best chance of getting the ball in the hole, who is the USGA to tell him he’s wrong?

The thing I love most about the game is that it lets you work your way around the course as you see fit. When my ball wanders into knee-high grass in a hazard, it may be my choice to drop within two club lengths of the red line, add a stroke and play on. Or, more likely in my case, I will attempt the heroic shot and ultimately take an X on the hole. But the rules of golf say I am free to exercise my stupidity as I see fit.

The USGA rightfully legislates equipment, just like any other sport’s governing body. But it doesn’t tell us how to swing our maximum 460cc driver, so why should it tell us how to swing our fifty-inch putter? If it’s legal, it’s legal. If it’s not, then ban it.

What bothers me about the USGA’s pending decision is the same thing that bothers me about the Snead decision and FEMA’s decision in my backyard – don’t presume to know what’s best for me. Let me live my life and putt my ball the way I want.

CHAPTER THREE

OPTIMISM OVER EXPERIENCE

The best view at my club is from the back terrace of the clubhouse tavern. There is better scenery on the course – mountains not too far in the distance, fairways that ebb and flow through the gathering foothills and a couple of drop-shot par threes that test one’s skill, tax one’s club selection but give you some eye candy from the elevated tees. There is an interstate highway delivering folks to and from the rat race of the nearby megalopolis, of which I strive to remain slightly west at all times, just to the left of the thirteenth fairway. When I play that hole I wonder where those folks might be headed, and I’m glad my biggest concern of the moment is whether I can reach the par five in two.

Those things considered, the truly revealing view at my club is from the tavern balcony. To the right are the day’s optimists, waiting, practice swinging and jibber-jabbering on the first tee while the group ahead clears the fairway. Soon they will – warmed up and properly prepared for the round or just out of the car, slap the clubs on the cart and go – try to fit a drive between a large bunker and a wooded hillside.

To my left is the eighteenth green, pushed up out of a low-lying wetlands area like a zombie digging out of the grave. There are bunkers to the left, impossibly thick underbrush to the right and a forced-carry over a marshy death. The whole scene is ample in the eyeful you get from the balcony thirty feet above, but truly frightening staring it down with a six-iron from fairway level.

Departing the eighteenth green are the dispirited and downtrodden souls who have fought the fight and now knock in their final putts, or perhaps just scrape away the last few feet and surrender. No mas. Subjugated, persecuted, repressed and even tyrannized by the course, they trudge up the hill to the clubhouse in search of comfort and relief from the tavern tap, driving right behind the first tee where just a few hours ago they were the optimists.

A journey of seven thousand yards around my course could be covered with a smooth wedge backwards off the first tee to the eighteenth green, and a lot of agony would be avoided. What happens after the optimists disappear over the crest of the first fairway and don’t return to view until they approach the eighteenth green? My course is hard, no question. But golf played anywhere is supposed to be fun, though you couldn’t judge so by the temperament of those muddling to the clubhouse after a round at my course.

A tour pro once told me he finds nothing sadder than a seven-handicap who takes the game seriously, meaning that unless you’re trying to make a living at the game, just enjoy it. Yet we can’t do that. I wonder what that pro would say about the twenty-handicapper who I just watched fat two shots into the marshland in front of the eighteenth green and slam his club into the ground repeatedly on his way back to the cart?

Sad, indeed.

Somewhere between the first tee and last green the game sucker punched this guy. And knowing my course, it probably hit him early, often and hard. My course scathes the best players. Its beauty hides a vitriolic soul.

It just doesn’t seem right that we enjoy this game so much when it just keeps knocking us down. We regularly swear off the game only to return to that same first tee a few days later as cheery optimists. Time may heal all wounds, but it apparently heals golf wounds in its most prompt and efficient manner. Maybe it’s the empathetic post-round beer(s) with the day’s other misfortunate souls, sharing similar stories of disaster and catastrophe. Or maybe it’s because golf wounds really aren’t very deep at all; a little scar to the ego, a scrape of the psyche – nothing that can’t be fixed right up on the drive home with a little anti-bacterial self-analysis that convinces us that the ninety-four we just shot really could have been a seventy-nine with a couple of favorable bounces and the tightening up of a couple loose swings. That thirty-footer that lipped out really should have gone in, the double bogey on seven never should have happened, and those four three-putts were just a package of stupidity. By the time you hoist the clubs from the trunk and put them in the garage, you’re cured and cued up for the next round. The game doesn’t leave any wound unattended for very long.

It beats us up, sure, but it also hides little morsels of not only competence but excellence along the way – little rarities that are such a surprising delight you continue forward in search of more – the forty-foot putt that drops like Tiger rolled it; the stuffed short iron that bounces once, checks and settles next to the hole for a tap-in birdie; the towering drive that clears the bunker you thought out of reach and guides itself to safety into the middle of the fairway. On some level we recognize these are merely the pearls in a career of oysters, but they truly are the shots that keep us coming back. I don’t care how bad you are or how horrendous your last round was, a player steps to the first tee draped in the optimism that today is the day because in golf, as in life, we remember our moments, and our psyche, especially our golf psyche, does quite an efficient job bandaging our ineffectuality.

I’ve come to the realization that Mark Twain nailed it. Golf absolutely is a good walk spoiled. What other explanation could there be for the contrariety between the first tee and the eighteenth green? And so I ask, what’s wrong with spoiling a good walk? We live for those few-and-far-between shots that reveal our best and hint at our inner virtuosity. As long as the game continues to hide those nuggets of greatness along the way, we’ll be happy to spoil a good walk every few days. And we’ll always show up with a smile on our face and optimism in our heart.

CHAPTER FOUR

SAVING THE GAME

My friend Jigsaw called one evening during this year’s long, hard, cold winter to let me know The Streak is alive. The Streak isn’t anything I lose sleep over, nor is it Ripken-esque. It’s just that Jig has indefatigably played at least one round every calendar month for almost twenty-five years, which for a Northeasterner is a task that requires advance planning, good fortune and a fair amount of testosterone.

The Streak started long before I met Jigsaw, and quite frankly I don’t have enough interest to have ever bothered to ask him how it got started. But his call got me thinking. It’s guys like Jig that keep the game thriving. It’s not the country clubbers who exist in their own few hundred acres of the golf world, often oblivious and uncaring about the Jigsaws of the game. It is certainly not the pros playing on television that keep the game moving along. In fact, I submit, all they do is slow the game down, perhaps even move it backwards, with their five-hour rounds in twosomes. Besides, Jigsaw (he always pieces it together) and I can’t relate to the 340-yard drive or covering the 630-yard par five in two mighty blows. Give Jigsaw a par five of that length and he’ll need rations and camping equipment.

But Jig is one of the game’s workhorses. He slides into the yoke and tugs the game along, happy to do so. He’s out there every weekend, and sneaks away from the office early a couple times a month to make the Wednesday afternoon game. He buys balls in the pro shop, supplements his meager pro shop gift certificate winnings with a C-note of his own to buy the newest putter. He’s not the kind of guy who shows up at church on Christmas and Easter like other guys we know who see the Open or the Ryder Cup on television and say they want to start playing seriously. So they go out for a round and remember how hard it is, and that it costs money and that it takes effort, and they shelve their clubs until the next whimsy strikes. No, Jigsaw is in it for the duration, however, long that may be and however bad the weather gets.

He’s not one of those guys who can just wing off to Florida or Arizona whenever The Streak comes under the onslaught of a Northeastern winter. I’ve driven by the local public course, late in a winter month on a day I wouldn’t consider playing for a comped round at a U.S. Open venue, and seen his car in the lot. The only car in the lot. And I imagine him out there somewhere; two knit caps pulled down over his face, winter golf gloves inside mittens, layered to the point where his swing might look like the Michelin Man taking a whack at it, head down in steely determination to complete the round, because to Jigsaw, the game and The Streak are the same. They must go on.

But this year, February stubbornly clung to unplay-ability. It doesn’t matter how dedicated Jig is, you can’t play with a foot of snow on the course. The deeper into the month and the freeze we got, the more panicked he became. Damn the brevity of the Aquarian month. As February shortened, Jig started calling south, and then farther south, and he kept up his charge until he found a course deep into the Confederacy where the assistant pro charged with manning and unmanned clubhouse thought they would finally be open on the last day of the month.

It was a five-hour-drive to play as a single in barely tolerable conditions without the most remote possibility of pairing up with another player; the lunch counter closed and the only human interaction coming begrudgingly from the disgruntled assistant pro whose status on the pro shop hierarchy demanded he be there, all day, by himself just in case a guy like Jigsaw showed up.

I play a few times a year with Jig (though never on a February day where he’s just trying to keep The Streak alive), and our foursome usually includes Crisco and Snowflake, two other guys who do a lot of heavy lifting for the game. These guys usually don’t break 100, don’t know the difference between a water hazard and a lateral hazard and have likely never played a round where they’ve followed the rules to the letter or even holed every putt. But they are the masses that keep the game going. They play for the birdie they make two or three times a year; for the thrill of two well-struck shots and two quality putts for par, for the beer-beer-beer nassau with some silly side bets, even though we never worry about whether the outcome of the match actually reflects who pays for the beer.

In my regular groups there is always money on the line so you play by the rules and hole all but the eight-inchers; and sometimes even those when things get testy. But most of the golf in the world is played by guys like Jigsaw, Crisco and Snowflake. The game survives on them far more than on purists like me. It was the golf masses that carried the sport through this recent Great Recession, and it was no easy task. The last time I played with Jigsaw he proudly unsheathed his spanking-new, black-as-night Ping driver and promptly duck hooked one into the woods. Then he talked about how it’s time to upgrade the rest of his bag because he had let two or three generations of technology pass him by in the three years since he last bought a set of irons.

Golf is not what you see on television on Sunday afternoon. Golf runs far deeper than the winners of PGA Tour events, local amateur events or even the club championships. Golf is largely Jigsaw, Crisco, and Snowflake out there shooting their 95s and happy to score that well. They are the meat and potatoes of the game and the reason golf, unlike most other sports, wouldn’t fade and die without the professional level.

I’m not sure you would see as many young kids playing basketball on the neighborhood blacktop if they weren’t watching Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant and Lebron James on satellite television every night. Wouldn’t Pop Warner football dry up if kids couldn’t aspire to the wealth and fame of NFL stardom? Yet if the PGA Tour folded tomorrow, Jigsaw would still be out there working to keep The Streak alive, even if it means playing through blowing snow, by himself, a tank of gas away from home.

Thanks Jig.

CHAPTER FIVE

UNFINISHED

If Schubert couldn’t finish his symphony, how can we be expected to finish golf? The game is music to our ears, a rainbow to our eyes. We chase the pot of golf gold. But we can’t find it. It’s not there. Or is it there, somewhere? We run through the spectrum looking for an end, for a completeness to the natural circle of start to finish. But the game doesn’t provide that. Golf is forever unfinished.

Other things begin and end – careers, marriages, lives. In golf, there is always another shot to be hit. There is always another round to be played. There is always another pile of striped balls to be practiced. You work your way through an entire pyramid on the practice tee only to have the range boy show up and build another one for you. You play your Wednesday afternoon game and then look forward to your Saturday morning game. You hit balls on Sunday afternoon; squeeze in a chipping and putting session on Monday after work and then think you have it all figured out for the next Wednesday afternoon. But you don’t, so it goes on and on. We can’t just write the last note and call it finished.

A single round may end with a definitive number in the far right-hand box on the scorecard, but that number is never good enough. We celebrate the first time we break 100, and then we eye 90. We check off 90 and put 80 in our sights. Few get there, but those who do, dare they even dream about 70? They must. It’s almost a requirement of this game that won’t end, this game that constantly demands more. And we are happy to give more, to seek more, to pursue the gold. But, like the rainbow, there is no end. There is only more, and more more, and more.

The first time I broke 70 came just a month after the first time I shot level par. Both came as a surprise. I didn’t think my game had yet gotten to that level. These are the rounds that move you on. It’s not so much that the game demands more from you, it’s that you demand more from the game. You can’t shoot 99, 89, 79 or even 69 and think you’re finished. Your career best round had room for improvement. There was a putt that lipped out; an iron shot that wasn’t pure. There was a loose drive or a careless blast from a greenside bunker. There was the chip-in for birdie on a green you missed, and you know that to maintain this level that really needs to be a GIR and one-putt.

I love golf, but I hate the game because it can’t end on my terms. There will be no final victory; no last tip of the cap and no Bobby Jones-like walk off into the sunset. The game takes you to the peak of your career, however indistinguishable that may be from the rest of your career, then spirals you down at such a painfully glacial pace that you’re not sure if you are in permanent decline or just a temporary lull.

At any time you can quit; just give up and walk away, but that is the game forcing you