The Beginning
My first impressions of golf were not good. My father played on his two days off per week, much to the chagrin of my mother. Dad was a supermarket assistant manager. He never became the store manager, but it certainly wasn’t due to lack of seniority—he had worked at Market World for twenty-seven years, five days a week, fifty weeks a year, eight to twelve hours per day until he dropped dead on his way to his car after shooting a ninety-three and having three beers. My mother was always talking about how the company was trying to kill him. How they didn’t appreciate him. How he needed to assert himself more.
Twenty-seven fucking years and he never even became a store manager. Mom was right.
But all poor Dad ever did was get out of the house as soon as he could on Saturday and Sunday mornings and hit the municipal course for thirty-six holes and some brewskis with his cronies. It wasn’t much of a life.
Sometimes I would get so mad at him. We would have plans to go out to dinner, maybe that restaurant in Hollywood where the train went around and brought you your food. I loved that place and would really look forward to going out on those nights.
But Dad didn’t come.
Mom would start swearing under her breath, pouring herself a highball. Soon the swearing was out loud. I had a hell of a vocabulary by the time I was ten.
Sometimes Mom would pull me to the car and we would go to the golf course, looking for Dad. Even at seven years old, I knew that Dad would be humiliated by his wife coming for him at the course. Most of the time, I figured he deserved it. But I hated it when she would send me off to find him. I learned to first look at the eighteenth green to see if he was just finishing his round. Then I would look down the eighteenth fairway. It would be late, so the shadows of the large oaks would be long, and the grass would be dark, not inviting like grass usually is. I could always tell Dad from the way he walked—a little crooked, cocked to the left, carrying his bag.
Finally, and most embarrassing for all of us, I would look in the bar. If that was where he was, I wouldn’t need to say anything. He would see me, look away quickly, then acknowledge me with a little nod. He would come, but dinner would then be a silent and painful affair that even the stupid little train carrying wing dings could not overcome.
When I turned ten, Dad began to take me to the course with him. I think he thought that Mom would be less pissed off if she didn’t have to be saddled with me all day. I was pretty big for my age and I was able to carry his bag with no problem. I began to caddie for Dad. I felt pretty cool carrying the bag, but what I really wanted were some golf shoes. I loved the clickety-clack of the spikes on the pavement, kind of muffled and rough in the parking lot, then clean and crisp on the cement by the clubhouse. Real shoes, nicer than anything Dad wore to work, but with spikes and a cool flap over the shoelaces.
“Dad,” I would say at least once a round, “it’s kind of slippery out here. I really think I could do a better job for you with some golf shoes.”
“We’ll see,” was all he would say.
As a caddie, I learned about the game of golf. Dad was a high handicapper. Breaking ninety was always a cause for celebration. But Dad played by the rules. He was scrupulous about that.
“Eddie, how a man plays the game of golf is a window into how that man will live his life. If he is willing to cheat himself and his pals on a golf course, he’ll cheat on just about anything in the rest of his life.” Where another eighteen-handicapper might bump his ball out of the divot he was in, Dad would play the ball where it lay, usually skulling it or hitting it fat.
I would hear variations of those “golf is like life” comments a lot over the rest of my life, but most of the time, I would hear them from big-bellied, fat-assed, cigar-chomping CEO types who apparently thought that not counting all of one’s strokes wasn’t really cheating.
Caddying for my father changed my entire perception of him, which admittedly wasn’t as good as it should have been. I mean, I loved him and everything, but I learned to respect him—and eventually, I began to understand him. I wish Mom could have seen Dad on the golf course. I know she thought he was a wimp at work and felt that he let us down by not making something more of himself. But I saw a man who really did believe in himself. I saw a man who was comfortable with his limitations and persevered at one of the hardest games ever invented, despite his limited talent for the game. I saw a man who played by the rules and refused to bend them.
It’s funny how different we can truly be compared to what other people think of us, even loved ones. Dad was seen as a failure, by his own wife. How shitty was that?
I was still too young to truly understand what went on in the corporate world where Dad was competing for promotions. But I intuitively understood that his unbending devotion to rules and form was probably more of a hindrance than a help in the business world. Or maybe I didn’t intuitively understand anything of the sort, since I’m not exactly an intuitive kind of guy. In hindsight, I could be giving myself more credit than I deserve.
Golf made me love my dad more than I ever had before. Unfortunately, it did nothing to help the relationship between him and my mom. On nights after a golf game, I would go to bed after dinner, and like clockwork, they would start arguing. Or rather Mom was arguing. Dad never really raised his voice to my mother. Like the rest of the rules in his life, he did not think it was the way a husband should talk to his wife. So he allowed her to yell at him. Between her outbursts, I could hear his quiet voice trying to answer her with reason and rationality. But the world had cheated my mom by cheating my dad—and in her view, that was that.
I felt so alone lying there, hearing them argue. I wanted to run to them and shake them. I wanted to tell Dad that Mom has a point—that he had been cheated and their lives should have been better. I wanted to tell Mom that Dad was a wonderful and kind person who was respected by his friends. I wanted to tell both of them that they really loved each other and they should shut the fuck up and stop fighting.
But of course, I didn’t say any of those things. Hell, I was only ten. I would put the pillow over my ears and eventually fall asleep.
My dad’s name was James Bennett. His friends at the golf course called him “Jimbie.” His coworkers called him “Jim.” My mother called him “James” (among other things).
He died so long ago that it’s hard for me to describe now what he looked like without looking at a photograph. I remember that he was tall and dark-haired, with big, strong hands and arms, making his putter look like a toy when he held it. After choking on a three-foot putt, his friends would go after him with a vengeance that only men playing with other men could understand.
“Nice putt, Alice.”
“Hey Jimbie, does your wife play golf, too?”
“Jimbie, does your boy here know you’re a homo?”
“Gee, Jimbie, how’d that stay out of the hole?”
My dad would smile at the good-natured insults and make another lunge at the ball with his heavy hands. It was my first experience with the camaraderie of men and the peculiar sexist, racist, and homophobic themes inherent in American sports humor.
Even though I at first thought these insults were original and hilarious, I eventually learned that not only were they tired old jokes, but that they would be repeated over and over by the same foursomes for years. And each time, the recipient of the insult would smile or laugh like an eight-year-old hearing a fart joke and would hurl another old insult back. I loved every minute of it.
I began playing golf at eleven, just a few months before the new year and my twelfth birthday. Jack Nicklaus was to become the leading money winner on the PGA Tour that year, winning over $290,000. Tom Watson won the British Open, his first major victory. Lee Elder was the first black to play in the Masters. The Vietnam War was finally over, Nixon was gone, and Gerald Ford was either falling down or hitting spectators with his errant golf shots.
I had caddied for Dad for two years and so I knew the game pretty well by the time I actually decided to see if I could hit the ball. Even though I practically lived at the golf course on weekends for all that time, I never did anything more than putting on the practice green while waiting for Dad to have his beers.
One day, I asked Dad if I could hit some balls at the range while I waited for him. It was in the fall and the lights of the range were just coming on.
“I was wondering when you would ask me,” he said. “Go mess around with my nine-iron and maybe next week, I’ll ask Arturo to check your grip and swing for you.”
Arturo was Arturo Vasquez, the head pro at our municipal course in Encino, California. Arturo was also one of Dad’s friends and a regular playing partner. My dad was the only one I knew who called him Arturo. Everyone else called him Artie.
It was said that he was from Honduras and had actually won some tournaments in Europe. But while he was in Portugal for a tournament, he had supposedly gotten into a fight over a woman at a nightclub in Lisbon, breaking his left hand. He was never able to seriously compete on a pro tour again. Most of the private country clubs didn’t particularly want a Latino head pro, so he somehow ended up in a suburb of Los Angeles at a municipal course playing for two’s with high handicappers and giving lessons for fifteen bucks a pop.
It is a cruel and fickle fucking game.
I must have hit two hundred balls off that worn-out green mat the first night at the range. I topped and skulled and whiffed and shanked. But every once in a while, I would get one in the air and I knew I was hooked. By the two-hundredth ball, I was hitting clean shots more often than not. I modeled my swing on Arturo’s swing—even then, I knew better than to model it on my dad’s.
At some point, I felt like I was being watched. I turned around and saw Dad and Arturo standing behind me. Dad had a smile on his face and Arturo was inscrutable.
“Looks pretty damn good, Eddie,” said my dad. “Whattaya think, Arturo?”
“Eddie, why don’t you come by tomorrow after school?” Arturo asked. “We can adjust a couple of things for you.”
My heart leapt. I was going to get golf lessons! I turned to Dad with what must have been a pleading look on my face. Please say yes, oh please say yes, I thought desperately.
Dad gave me an almost imperceptible nod.
I broke into a huge grin. “Oh yes, sir, Mr. Vasquez,” I replied. “I’ll have to do my homework first, but I can be here by five. Is that all right?”
Arturo nodded. “See you then, Eddie.” He turned and headed back into the pro shop.
Dad took the nine-iron out of my hand and put his arm around my shoulder as we walked back to the car. Dad didn’t hug me a whole lot, so his arm around me felt good. I could sense that he was proud of me and I wanted that moment to go on, forever and ever. To this day, I can still hear the clickety-clack of his shoes on the pavement and feel his strong arm around my shoulder.
Like the stupid little shit that I was, I asked, “Dad, now that I’m gonna be a golfer, do you think I can get some shoes with spikes?”
He didn’t answer, but I could sense his smile.
When I went to bed that night, I could hear Mom and Dad going at it again, Mom in her loud and argumentative tone and Dad in a soft voice I couldn’t understand. Once in a while, I would hear my name and knew they were arguing about me. Was my mother worried about losing me to golf like she claimed to have lost Dad? Would she try to stop me from learning the game? I closed my eyes and thought of the balls flying off the face of the nine-iron. I saw only the good hits. I worried myself to sleep.
When I went to breakfast the next morning, Dad had his face buried in the Los Angeles Times. Mom had on her lavender terrycloth robe and was making me bacon and eggs. Now when I picture Mom and Dad together, it is often during mornings like these in the kitchen, with the maroon-and-white patterned rectangles in the linoleum floor, the off-white walls, the ugly olive-green appliances, the window overlooking our back yard with one big oak tree and, of course, the smell of bacon frying. All the fighting from the night before would be over and the three of us would be together as a family. Not necessarily talking, but just being comfortable together, knowing that despite everything, we loved each other very much. I kissed Mom on the cheek and sat down.
“Hey, Mom, did Dad tell you Mr. Vasquez offered to give me some golf lessons?” I wasn’t good at being subtle.
She turned from the stove and looked at me, almost sizing me up. She must have known that I could hear them arguing at night. I was beginning to squirm under her gaze when her face suddenly softened and a wisp of a smile appeared on her lips.
“Just make sure you get all of your homework done before you go. And I don’t want you riding your bike home—there’s too much traffic at that time of night. Dad will come and get you when you’re done.” And with that, she turned back to the stove.
I looked over at Dad, who had lowered the paper just enough to watch the action. He looked at me and winked.
Hot diggity dog, I thought.
~~~
School that day seemed interminable. Our little ranch-style house in the poorest part of Encino was a mile from my school and two miles from the golf course. I think I might have even forgotten to doodle the name of the girl I liked, Theresa Manning, in my notebook that day. I could think of nothing but golf. When I told my best bud, Dude Demeter, what I was going to do after school, he was jealous as hell. He made a strong argument to go with me and get lessons, too, but I told him that this was a private lesson from the head pro himself. I was kind of an asshole about it and Dude moped around, barely talking to me the rest of the day. I didn’t care. Nothing could have ruined that day for me.
I rushed home from school and didn’t even take time to have my usual Oreos and milk before starting my homework. I was fidgety and anxious and I had to read the same paragraph in my history book three times before I understood it enough to do the assignment. I must have asked my mom what time it was four times every fifteen minutes. She would smile and run her hand through my hair, telling me it was five minutes later than the last time I asked.
Finally I was done and I biked to the course, getting there about twenty minutes early. I could see Arturo on the range, giving a lesson to a fat guy in very pink pants. I wasn’t sure what to do. I had no clubs. I had no shoes. I didn’t even have a putter and ball to play with while I waited. So I decided to go into the pro shop and browse through the new clubs, shoes, and other neat golf stuff. Maybe even pick out what I would want to buy someday when I could.
“Hey, Ed. How ya doin’?” asked Billy G. from behind the counter (I never did learn his last name).
Billy was the only one who called me Ed. I think he believed that I would think he was cool by making me sound grown-up. But I had already noticed that around the golf course, grown-up names weren’t what was cool. My dad was “Jimbie.” His friend Paul was “Paulie.” Except to my dad, Arturo was “Artie.” Hell, the famous Arnold Palmer was “Arnie.” There was Bobby Jones and Jimmy Demaret and, of course, Johnny Miller.
“Hey, Billy G.” I pretended to be interested in the price of some new Ping clubs.
“What you up to?” Clearly Billy G. didn’t have anything to do.
“I’m just waiting for Ar . . . for Mr. Vasquez. He’s going to give me a lesson.”
“Oh shit! I mean, oh yeah, I forgot about that. Sorry, Ed, I was supposed to give you these and tell you to help yourself to some balls and start warming up.” Billy handed me two irons, a nine and a seven. Then he put two buckets of balls on the beat-up counter. “Sorry, man.”
“No problem, Billy.” I took the offered clubs and tried to pick up the buckets of balls like I knew what I was doing. But of course, I spilled about ten balls which Billy helped scoop up and then I banged the clubs against the glass entry doors of the shop on the way out. I made my way to an empty spot and poured the balls into the container next to the mat.
I didn’t exactly take over where I had left off the night before, but there weren’t quite as many tops, shanks, and whiffs before I was once again getting the ball in the air with some degree of regularity.
A voice interrupted my thoughts, causing me to shank the ball I had been about to hit. It was Arturo, who had silently come up behind me.
“Rule one of practice,” he said, “is to slow down. Flailing at one ball after another isn’t going to teach you anything. You need to think about what you are doing and what you just did. Why did that ball go to the right? Why did you top it? Only by thinking about the swing and understanding what causes the ball to travel the way it does will you begin to truly learn and understand the golf swing.”
I nodded as if I understood what the hell he was talking about. I mean, then, all I really understood was that you swing the club and you hit the ball, hopefully in the right direction.
And with that, we began what would be a long and fulfilling relationship for both of us. I don’t know what was ever said between Dad and Arturo, but he never charged my dad a dime for my lessons and allowed me to hit as many balls as I wanted. I later learned from Arturo that he had seen something in my swing that first night at the range and had decided then and there to see if there was more potential. The more he taught and observed me, the more he knew with absolute certainty that I was a natural. If I had the heart and mind to train and compete, he thought that I could become a great golfer.
Of course, he didn’t tell me any of this until much later. In those early months, we worked on things one step at a time. I began seeing him three or four afternoons a week. One week, we would talk about my grip and that would be all he’d allow me to think about. Another week, we would focus on my hand position at the top of the backswing.
“One thing at a time,” he would tell me, so that my head was not clogged up with swing thoughts and I could instill that one lesson in my muscle memory.
Some evenings, we would hit no more than ten or twenty balls. We would stand in his teaching cubicle and talk about why the ball went right, left, high, or low. He would take the club from my hands and gently push me out of the way, hitting a high, soft fade, exactly as he described it.
I was only eleven, just a kid. And sometimes I would act like a kid, pestering him with questions.
“When can I go play?”
“When can I have my own set of clubs?”
“Wouldn’t I have better traction with golf shoes?”
“If you can do anything you want with the golf ball, why aren’t you still on tour?
I asked that last question one July night, that first summer of my lessons. The night was warm and windless and the evening shadows were long. It seemed so quiet after I blurted out the question that I could hear nothing but the whack of other golfers’ balls and the cicadas buzzing loudly in the weeds on the other side of the driving range net.
Arturo looked at me for a long time. He wasn’t angry. It was a reasonable question, after all. Especially by an eleven-year-old.
“I’ll make you a deal, Eddie. When you win your first tournament, I will sit down with you and if you are still interested, tell you the story of my life. Then you’ll understand who I am and why I am here.” He smiled at me, I think to take the edge off the strain of the moment.
“You got a deal, Mr. Vasquez.” I paused. “Does that mean I actually get to play the game someday?”
With that, Arturo laughed. A true, deep, hearty laugh that made me laugh, too.
My birthday was in January and I was turning twelve. I remember praying that I would get a set of clubs for my birthday. Mom and Dad played it coy. Mom would ask me what I wanted, pretending that she didn’t hear me say I wanted my own set of clubs the last time she asked. I was using whatever clubs Arturo had lying around the shop, usually unclaimed ones that had been left on the course.
“Maybe I should call Dude’s mom and have her ask him what you might like. That way, it would be more of a surprise.”
“But Mom,” I whined, “I really, really need golf clubs.”
“Oh golf, golf, golf. That’s all I ever hear around this house.” But there was good humor in her statement. A change had come over her in the last month or so. She had gradually become more supportive of my golf and volunteered to drive me to the course. She began to ask questions about how the lessons were going.
I think that Mom began to see a difference in me in those early months of my golf lessons. And why wouldn’t I be changed? Except at school, my life was spent with grown men who were treating me more and more like an equal. The on-course sarcasm and insults became more frequent as the golfers got used to my presence and I had developed an easy relationship with Arturo. Once in a while, I would even make a comment about one of the guys’ shots and the others would crack up. I was maturing in subtle ways. I didn’t think I was any different, but a mother sees all.
Slowly and quietly, I began helping out around the pro shop and driving range. I might ask Billy G. if he wanted me to sweep up for him and he was always too happy to oblige. I began picking up the ball baskets from the range and stacking them in the shop where Billy would load them to sell. Eventually, other patrons who had seen me doing errands began to assume that I worked for the club and would ask me to do something. I never corrected them. If I was capable of doing what they asked, I simply did it. It was a silent understanding that I had created with Arturo, an unspoken show of appreciation.
~~~
On my birthday, I had a lesson scheduled with Arturo. When I got home from school, Dad was already home. Although he had put in an eight-hour day, it was unusual for him to be home so soon. He worked ten- or twelve-hour days more often than not. He needed the overtime and the company was happy to pay assistant manager rates for an employee who knew more about the store’s operation than any manager the store had had for the past ten years.
Both Mom and Dad offered to drive me to the course. They said they were going to drop me off and go run some errands while I had my lesson. Then we would all go out to my birthday dinner.
“How about that place with the train?” Dad asked. ”We haven’t been there in a long time.”
“Aw, Dad, that place is for kids. Let’s go to Hamburger Hamlet on Sepulveda.”
My parents smiled at each other. I know it probably sounds silly to most of you, but seeing my parents smile at each other was one of the nicest things I remember about them. It was too rare for that kind of moment to go unnoticed and I felt a deep stirring of happiness. We were still a family that loved each other.
“Whatever you want, Eddie,” said my dad.
We got to the course, but instead of driving off after I got out of the car, Mom and Dad got out, too.
“What are you guys doing?” I didn’t think I had ever seen Mom at the golf course, except on the occasions when she had barged in to pull Dad out of the bar.
“We just want to have a word with Arturo for a moment.”
So we all walked into the pro shop together. Arturo and Billy G. were both behind the counter. Mom shook Arturo’s hand and I introduced her to Billy. He kept his golf cap on and mumbled something that was presumably “nice to meet you,” and then went back to pretending to stack the new shipment of Titleist balls.
“Come into my office,” Arturo said, leading us into a small but comfortably furnished room. There were trophies casually strewn about the office, some even sitting on the floor. On the walls were pictures of Arturo and other golfers. Standing in front of his desk was a nylon walking bag with a set of clubs in it.
“Your new clubs just arrived today, Jimbie.”
What? Dad was getting new clubs on my birthday? I thought. Did that mean I was going to get his old clubs? I knew enough now to know that Dad’s old set of MacGregors were not right for me—among other things, they were too tall, as Dad had built them up. I was tall and growing, but I was still only about five feet, seven inches tall. No, this just wasn’t going to work at all, I thought.
Mom and Dad were looking at me and I was looking at Dad’s new clubs, Spalding Tour Editions. The set had a three-iron through sand wedge. There were two woods, a beautiful persimmon driver, and a funny-looking five-wood that seemed to have brass rails running along the bottom of the club head. It was made by Orlimar, a company I had not heard of.
“Well, Eddie, aren’t you going to take your new clubs out to the range?” Dad asked. “Arturo doesn’t have all night to give you a lesson.”
I looked up at him. “These are for me?”
“Well, who else? I doubt your mom intends to take up the game.”
Mom poked Dad in the ribs.
“I mean, well, I just thought that if I were lucky enough to get some clubs, they would be a used set. You guys . . . ” I was talking fast and bursting with joy, almost to the point of tears. Then I turned to my parents and took them both into my arms for a hug.
The three of us just stood there and hugged each other until Arturo finally cleared his throat to get my attention.
“C’mon, Eddie,” he said. “Let’s see how you hit ‘em.”
I picked up the bag and put it over my shoulder, just as I had done hundreds of times with Dad’s clubs. But somehow, they felt different. They felt like mine. I began to walk out of the office and into the main pro shop.
“Hold on a sec, Eddie,” said a voice behind me.
I turned around and saw Arturo, holding two white golf shoes. “I almost forgot to give you my present.”
“Oh man! Thank you, Mr. Vasquez.” I took the shoes from him and transferred them to my left hand so that I could shake his hand. He pulled me to him and gave me a hug, even though my bag was slung over my shoulder and I had shoes in my hand, making it awkward.
Finally I was outside with my brand new clubs and bright white shoes, which I placed on a bench near the driving range. I have to admit that I broke into a huge grin as I made my first clicks and clacks walking across the cement walkway to the driving mats.
I had yet to set foot on a golf course to play golf myself, but at that moment, I felt that I was a golfer. When I arrived at the course from then on, I would go around to the trunk, sit on the bumper, and put on my shoes—just like the other golfers. Then I would pull out my clubs from the trunk, swing them over my shoulder, and go clickety-clack all the way to the pro shop.
I was a golfer and my parents seemed happy. It was the best birthday of my life.
Dude and I had known each other ever since the sixth grade, when his family moved to Encino. He showed up at my school one day, looking lost and scared. His desk assignment ended up being next to mine and it wasn’t long before we were passing notes, hanging around with each other during recess and lunch, and eventually eating at each other’s homes. Although I knew most of the other kids from kindergarten, I had never really had a best friend before. There were a few guys that I hung out with more than others and I was popular enough to never worry that I was a nerd, or not well liked. I just hadn’t really connected with anyone until I met Dude.
Dude was part Native American and clearly had some black blood in him from somewhere, as he was a beautiful light-chocolate color. His father was as white as could be and looked almost like a caricature of a red-nosed Irishman. His mother was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen and I will now admit to having had more than one sexual fantasy involving her and my right hand. She was where Dude got all his ethnic blood. You could see the Indian cheekbones, and of course, her skin was a permanent soft brown tan. Her hair was jet black and straight, and although she wore it pinned up most of the time she was out, at home she would let it hang down, almost to her waist, sending me into an adolescent frenzy of fantasy.
Dude’s father was an attorney who worked in a small real estate firm in Van Nuys. They were considerably better off financially than we were and their house was a rambling ranch house on one of the few multiple-acre lots left in the heart of Encino. Most everything else had been subdivided by then. Their back yard was huge, with a great swimming pool and a grove of walnut trees where we would play “soldier” for hours on end.
We seemed to have similar personalities, which I suppose was what drew us to each other. We were both smart enough to get A’s and B’s without trying too hard. We were both moody at times and it took awhile to be comfortable enough with each other to understand that. We both asked ourselves some of the basic life questions which I guess everyone asks themselves at some point: “Who am I? Why am I here? What makes me me?” But when you’re young, you just don’t realize that you’re not alone in asking these questions.
I mean, it’s not like I thought I was the only deep thinker. In fact, I guess I thought the opposite. I believed that it was stupid or childish to ask questions and worry about these things. We didn’t go to church, so I didn’t have religious indoctrination that presumed to answer those big life questions with simple beliefs. Had I gone to church, I would have been able to simply tip my golf hat to God, say, “Well done,” and forget about it. Instead I brooded and I figured that I was the only one of my friends that ever thought about these things.
Of course, I had not yet read the great literature of the world, which was premised on these very core questions. All I saw were other kids having a great time or else crying because they couldn’t have their way. I wondered if any of them ever stared at their own hand for minutes at a time, wondering at its very existence. Eventually, Dude and I confessed to each other that we had many of the same thoughts and questions, and we bonded even tighter.
We also had perfectly matched senses of humor. What was funny to Dude was also funny to me and we would waste no time milking a humorous event for all it was worth. In class, our notes would literally fly back and forth, and we would have to bite our hands to keep from laughing out loud and losing our recess privileges—or even worse, our library monitor privileges.
For those last two years, I had been the library monitor at our elementary school. I could spend all the time I wanted in the library because it was my job to keep the books filed in a nice, straight line. Whenever I did not feel like participating in recess, I would use my key to the library and work or read. After Dude and I became friends in sixth grade, I convinced our teacher that I could use some help, so Dude was authorized to be a co-monitor. What a scam.
The library became our personal fiefdom. We would spend our recess or lunch holed up in there reading, playing games, or pushing each other around on the book cart. But the best idea Dude had ever come up with was when he suggested that we invite the two girls we liked for a little “spin the bottle.” I’ll be damned if I can remember how I got her to come, but there was Theresa Manning, sitting at the table with her friend Elizabeth Wong. We used an empty Coke bottle and took turns spinning it. We all knew who liked who, so if I spun and the bottle pointed to Elizabeth, she would yell “Ewww!” and feign horror. Theresa would then save her by volunteering to kiss me. If I spun and it landed on Dude, we would make a big show like we were going to hug and kiss each other, and the girls would squeal things like “Gross! Yuck!”
Theresa had wild black hair and the most beautiful dark eyes I have probably ever seen. I think she was part Spanish or Portuguese or something exotic. She was a gentle and happy girl. Our kisses then were just touches of our lips, but it was wonderful, mysterious, and exciting.
Of course, we all got busted for our sleazy sexual escapades in the library. Our teacher, Mr. Dominguez, suddenly appeared in the library one day, just as Dude and Elizabeth were about to kiss. When he saw the four of us, the Coke bottle, and the poised bodies of Dude and Elizabeth, he went ballistic. Naturally I was the one who got the worst of it, as I was the one who had originally been entrusted as the library monitor. I was the one Mr. Dominguez had thought was responsible. I had never been a troublemaker—but at that moment, I had broken his trust and had corrupted the morals of two of his best female students. I immediately lost my esteemed position and was ordered to stay after school every day for a week and write “I will not violate a trust” one hundred times on the blackboard.
At home, I expected the worst. Mr. Dominguez had felt compelled to inform all of our parents about our iniquitous behavior. To their credit, none of the parents seemed particularly upset. We all got the perfunctory lecture and extra chores for a week or two, but that was all.
I did feel badly about embarrassing Mr. Dominguez, but I have to say that our collective stock with our classmates went up tenfold from that day forward.
All four of us were going to be attending the same junior high school the next year. And from there, unless someone was forced to move, we would all attend the same high school. We had our futures—and we had each other.
Summer was coming to a close and I was determined to play a round of golf with Arturo before I had to start school again. I could hit every club in my bag and my putting and chipping were excellent. But I was just a “range rat,” and I wanted to be a real player—so I decided to confront Arturo about it that night. I was hitting some balls as I waited for my lesson when I looked up to see Dude walking toward me, carrying a bag with clubs. I should have known.
“What, it isn’t enough that you beat me at baseball and football and everything else? Now you want to waltz in here and beat me at golf?”
“May as well give it a try.” He put his bag down. “Seems like it’s the only way we’ll be able to hang with each other.”
“You going to ask Mr. Vasquez for lessons?”
“Nah, I been gettin’ lessons all summer from the pro over at my dad’s club. Thought I’d surprise you.”
I stood there looking at him as he put his glove on and pulled out a five-iron to stretch with. I was already pissed because my gloves were crusty old things that Dad had thrown away. Dude’s were brand new.
“So, you surprised?” he asked.
“I shouldn’t be. This is just like you. How you hittin’ em?”
I was, frankly, stalling for time to figure out how I really did feel about this. On the one hand, I had missed Dude and the time we used to hang together after school. But on the other hand, this was my adventure. This was me learning golf. Me getting good at something that I might actually be able to beat him at. Me being selfish.
I watched as Dude began to hit some balls. Pretty damn good. I felt some satisfaction that he was clearly not as good as me. I wasn’t kidding about him beating me at every other sport we ever played. That may have been one reason why I had begun to think of golf as my sport. Something I could excel at without competing with my best friend.
I hit a few more balls, conscious of Dude in the cubicle next to me and how my ball flights compared to his. It was distracting to some extent; I was used to going into a kind of meditative state while hitting balls and was rarely aware of other people around me. But it was also kind of cool, in a competitive way. I hadn’t done anything like that all summer. I began to enjoy the subtle competition of hitting the best balls. I noticed that Dude’s swing had a little hitch on the backswing, clearly a result of his involvement in baseball.
Arturo finally showed up and didn’t seem at all surprised to see Dude, whom he had met several times before. He and I went to work without discussing it. We worked on a drill where he had me take a five-iron and hit it at twenty-five-yard intervals, starting at one hundred yards, until I maxed out on the distance. The purpose was to teach me control and a feel for distance. I shanked more than a few of the shorter shots. I had never felt self-conscious on the range before—but that night, with Dude hitting next to me, I did. I would hit a shank and then look over to see if he had seen it. If he had, he pretended that he hadn’t. He just kept beating balls, seemingly oblivious to Arturo and me.
When we finished, I was soaking wet. It was a warm and humid late summer in Los Angeles. Arturo turned to go to the pro shop. It was now or never.
“Mr. Vasquez,” I said.
He turned.
“Would it be all right for me to play a round of golf before I have to start school again? I think I’m ready.”
Arturo stared at me for a moment. Then he glanced over at Dude, who had stopped to listen, and smiled.
“I have a tee time for us tomorrow. You, me, and Dude here. We tee off at ten.” With that, he turned and walked away.
I looked at Dude. He was grinning.
“You knew! You guys had it all worked out. He even knew you had been taking lessons. Didn’t he?”
Dude smiled sheepishly and shrugged his shoulders. “What can I say? You better practice some more. I don’t want to kick your ass too bad your first time out. And you sure don’t want to embarrass yourself by hitting any more of those shanks out on the course.”
I looked around to be sure there were no grown-ups in the immediate vicinity and flipped him off. Then we both went back to hitting balls.
I was up and at the course by nine o’clock. Dude showed soon after. We changed into our golf shoes and took up where we had left off the night before, hitting balls at the range. A little before our tee time, I went to the putting green and worked on four- and five-footers. I had butterflies in my stomach. All I could compare it to at that time in my life was my first day of school. Something new was about to happen and I wasn’t quite sure how it was going to be.
Finally, Arturo called out and we walked with him to the first tee. How many times had I walked to that tee with a bag over my shoulder? It had to be over a hundred times by now. But man, did this feel different. I was the player, not the caddie. I was the one making the clicks on the path to the tee. I was the one putting on my gloves. I was the one telling the other players what ball I would be playing. I was the one who was going to have to step up and hit that damn ball off the first tee with people milling all around. I was just plain scared.
The first hole was a straight away par four. Not a hard hole. We played the white tees, so it was 394 yards to the middle of the green, with trees down the fairway on both sides. The landing area was pretty generous, maybe forty yards wide, and the green was protected by a deep bunker on the right with a terrible slope to a swampy area on the left.
Dude was the first to hit and he sliced his ball into the rough on the right. But he wasn’t behind a tree, so he was safe and would have a long but clear shot to the green. What more could you ask for on the first tee shot you ever hit?
Arturo hit next. A beautiful stripe down the middle. He would have an easy eight- or nine-iron in.
My turn. I could barely breathe. How was I going to swing? I took a deep breath and tried to remember all the pre-shot tips Arturo had shared with me. I went into my pre-shot routine. Remember to breathe. Visualize the shot. Take an easy practice swing. Check my aim. Step into position. Commit to the shot.
I hit my first golf-course shot of my life at twelve years old, straight down the middle of the fairway, about 235 yards. Could it get any better than that?
As adults, there are so many things we do every single day that we simply take for granted as part of our daily rituals. Shaving in the morning. Driving to work. Walking down a fairway to your ball. But as a kid, the first times to do those things are like rites of passage. They are new, exciting, and childishly fun.
As I walked down that first fairway, I felt like I was walking into manhood. I think Arturo sensed this because he left both Dude and me alone to our own thoughts. We each strolled down the fairway alone. We said nothing. We simply allowed those moments to exist and become a perfect part of our memory. I would not have changed those special minutes for the world.
My second golf-course shot was not quite as perfect as my first. I knew where I wanted to go, but I must have been a little pumped up because I overswung and pulled it left, exactly the mistake not to make on that hole. I had to take a drop on my next shot and was lying three and not on the green yet. Even though I had been practicing the pitch shots at the practice green, I didn’t quite have the touch for the short game. I skulled my fourth shot across the green. I had a very long putt for a bogey and two-putted for a double. Pretty ugly, but definitely not bad for the first golf hole I ever played. Dude limped in with a triple and Arturo birdied.
We played the round mostly in silence, with only the occasional “good shot,” “tough luck,” or Arturo’s short and to the point words of advice. There was none of the banter which I knew so well from my dad’s games. I parred three holes on the front nine and shot a respectable forty-eight. My dad would be envious. On the back side, I had two blow-up holes, two more pars, and shot a fifty. I had broken one hundred on my very first round. I knew that was a fine feat, but I also knew how easy it would be to shoot a better round. I knew the shots that had gotten away from me and which I could have hit. I understood the mental errors I had made.
Better yet, I had beaten Dude at something for the first time in our friendship. It was the first sense of having an urge to really compete that I could ever remember. As we walked off the eighteenth green, we shook hands like men. I couldn’t wait to play my next round.