Chapter 2-No Such Roses...

My experience of playing golf with Grandpa fueled my desire to improve my skills. Finding myself on a real course had given me challenges that I hadn't anticipated--the most difficult was my inability to gauge relative distances--the huge scale of the outdoor surroundings played tricks on my eyes and I would think the hole was close and it would end up being 200 yards away.

Also, it was surprising how wonderful it was to hit the ball off the supporting grass carpet of the fairway. My weed-filled practice field had made me an expert at getting the ball in the air under the worst conditions.

Lastly, it caught me off guard how far I could hit the ball--the schoolyard where I practiced was only a little over 100 yards, and I would hit diagonally and maybe be able to get the ball about 130 yards. When I got out on the course with new golf balls and the necessity to crank the ball as hard as I could to get it down the fairway, I was able to do it.

That Christmas, my dad gave me a great gift: his old set of golf clubs. I guess I didn't realize that they were in the garage all this time. He took them out, cleaned them up, and put them in a brand new bag and there they were on Christmas morning--I couldn't wait to get to practice with them.

My dad, an engineer, really didn't care too much for outdoor activities like fishing, camping, and golf--he would suffer through it, and would go camping with us sometimes and took us fishing a couple of times, but it just wasn't his thing.

One thing he was good at, though, was hanging on to stuff for a long time. Our garage was a work of storage art--it pretty much hit critical mass early on and stayed there, even through today, despite my mother's best efforts to reform it. Following the philosophy that something saved isn't of value until it is used again, I was often given things in their second life. The best example of this was my baseball glove, which was perhaps the exact model that Lou Gehrig started his career with in 1925. In fact, it could have been the same glove. The leather had a dusty, rust-colored coating that I used to scratch at with my fingernail while playing out in the outfield. The padding had been pounded flat in the palm from hundreds and hundreds of caught balls, so if you played catch with someone with a good arm, your hand would sting for a few hours afterward. Now, this would typically be a pretty cool thing for a kid to have when he was growing up, but it kind of embarrassed me. I wished I could have a brand new glove from Target to play with and not a hand-me-down antique. My coaches would kind of look at me funny when I would trot out to the field with my "mitt".

Here are other items which my dad held onto beyond their anticipated useful life: Lawn mower (push mower with no automatic drive): 20-something years til it finally died, fire alarms (still has them after 35 years), college books, LP's of marching band performances from the '50's that we used to torture my mother with by blaring them on our stereo (age: 30 years) on Saturday mornings, VCR (17 years before it died), Electric carving knife that Edison could have invented, and the list goes on.

However...my dad now rides around in comfort on a new riding lawn mower while I push my broken-down 8-year old model like a tackling dummy because the automatic drive broke down. So who is modernized and who is a stubborn miser now?

So it didn't surprise me too much, when examining these old clubs, that they weren't of the same generation of the clubs that I had seen when playing with my grandfather. These clubs were labeled with old English names: Mashie, Niblick, Mid-Iron, And the driver had a huge wooden head, unlike my Grandfather's "metal woods" that made a nice "ping" when he hit it solidly. Back to the library to get a key that would tell me how these older-style clubs translated to modern-day equipment. There was a pretty good translation, but the book refered to these clubs as "pre-modern-era". Too funny. In some ways, these slim clubs made me a better golfer. It turns out that modern clubs are weighted differently to increase the club head momentum during the golf swing. These "new" clubs of mine were decidedly unforgiving and required the perfect stance.

I imagined myself hitting shots in the highlands, but the best Scottish accent I could muster sounded more like the leprechaun on the Lucky Charms commercial.

Nevertheless, I practiced with these clubs for another year, then showed them to Grandpa when he was over for a rare visit. I guess it renewed his interest in taking me golfing, because, almost one year to the day after our first visit, we went out again.

This time, I was much better prepared for the challenges of the day. It was a beautiful spring morning and the air was crisp. I teed up a practice ball on the range, reminding myself to go slowly. I hit my first shot with my huge, wooden driver from the 19th century.

I had a friend once who had a three-legged dog named Tripod. I think he had to love "Tripper" more than most people loved their four-legged dogs. Somehow it compensated for the missing leg or something. This is the way I felt about my old set of clubs. I was glad to have them, and I felt a little protective of them from ridicule. Over time, I came to secretly believe that I was really a better golfer and played a more "pure" game than people who used currently, more technologically advanced equipment.

Craaaaaaack! The ball sailed beautifully over 200 yards. I turned around and saw my grandfather's face break out in a wide smile. I had been practicing at the local driving range, and had become impressive with this driver--I knew exactly how to hit it perfectly, like a musician with an instrument.

I went through the bucket of practice balls, warming up and getting my footing and swing down for each of my clubs. At this point I had accepted that I was never going to have "modern" equipment, so I had thrown myself with enthusiasm into learning how to use what I had. By this point, my swing had become so solid that I had outgrown my practice field and could really only practice with a couple of short-range clubs. I still carried my cut-down 5 iron and 4-wood in my bag, just in case.

I felt more at ease walking around the country club now--I didn't feel like I belonged there, but I didn't fear being thrown out for invading their forbidden culture. I was too self-conscious to make many close observations, but now that I had a bag of clubs and new golf balls that I had purchased with money from my magazine delivery job, I felt like I didn't stick out so badly.

We walked up to the first tee box. Grandpa went first, and I followed with a solid shot. I had clearly improved.

On the fourth hole, a long par five requiring the best driver shot you can hit straight down the fairway, I decided to unleash everything I had on the ball. I hit a thundering 275-yard drive which was so incredible that my grandfather actually drove back and forth, measuring the distance with the markers on the course. He wrote on the scorecard "275 yard drive". I know, because I still have the card. Unfortunately, I still hadn't learned out to putt and ended up shooting a score of 6 on the hole. I had even tried mowing a patch of particularly fine grass in our yard down to putting green size, but the mower wouldn't go that low. It was pretty laughable, because, even though the grass looked nice from a distance, the ground under it was lumpy as hell and the ball wouldn't roll smooth. Besides, practicing putting wasn't nearly as impressive as pounding huge drives at the range.

Two holes later, it was time for another drive. We had met up with one of Grandpa's fellow club members, and older gentleman with white hair and a red face. I remember his gold watch sparkling in the sun that morning as I went to tee up with my trusty driver.

"What do you say, Tom? I bet my grandson outdrives you on this one."

(laughing), then quietly: "okay".

Oddly, this didn't shake me at all, even when I thought I heard someone say "fifty bucks."

I teed up my ball, picking out a blazing white, new ball I had just bought for today's game, my second game ever on a real course. As I set the ball on the lucky blue tee, I was determined to just hit it as solidly as I had just a few minutes before. I clamped my teeth together and things seemed to go in slow motion as I spun my 13-year-old body with perfect form. This time, as I hammered the ball with all my might, I felt a nauseating dull thud. The ball came off the club with a funny, lilting spin, swerved over to the cart path, and slammed against it with a loud whack, bouncing twice more on the path before rolling back onto the fairway a fairly disappointing 180 yards away.

I turned around and Grandpa was shocked and silent. So far he had never seen me mis-hit a drive so poorly, and I'm sure he chalked it up to inexperience and rattled nerves.

But then I looked down at my club. I knew something felt odd--the clubhead was missing.

We walked together, silently, about fifty yards down the course, straight down the middle. There we found the ancient, wooden clubhead split open down the middle, the freshly-exposed wood shining bright against the emerald field. Grandpa picked it up, grinning, and held it up for his friend, who was impatiently sitting in his cart by the tee box, to see. Then he turned to me.

"God Damn, Boy! We're going to have to send you for a Mad Dog test! You knocked the everloving shit out of that one. Split the club head clean down the middle where it connects to the shaft!" It was the combination of the hard drive on the previous hole, which certainly was what cracked the head, and all the force that I put into the final drive, which split the clubhead open cleanly. I held the clubhead up to my nose and will never forget that it smelled just like newly sawed lumber. Obviously, that club could never be repaired.

Sometimes it was hard to tell when my grandfather was mad or when he was just making a fervent point with lots of emphasis. I clearly remember thinking that I was somehow in trouble, and slowly realizing that he was proud of what happened, and it was a story that he could talk over with his golf friends later, especially since there was a witness to the event.

His friend didn't hit a shot. He drove off in the cart, shaking his head.

I still don't know if the bet was ever paid.

I finished the round horribly. It didn't sink in until later, but losing that old driver took the fun out of it for me. I liked to think of myself as playing against the odds in the face of adverse conditions--my secret that was an indicator that I could be even better than I appeared to be.

My grandfather let me use his metal driver for the rest of the round. It was depressing to see my shattered clubhead rolling around in the cart as we drove from hole to hole--I guess I'm not sure why I saved it but sometimes I do just save things like that (in my cardboard "memory" box I still have it in a zipper bag stuffed with playbills from Broadway, birthday cards from my ninth year, business cards of people I don't know anymore, and a silver medal from the National Latin Exam--it reminds me of things that Boo Radley would stuff into a knothole.)

I imagine in my mind that my old clubs let me feel the ball making contact with the club better, and I got depressed when I knew there was no going back to my old rejects--I was going to have to join the world and start playing with current equipment. Or did I? No, I refused to get a new club. My old ones got dusty in the garage, and I didn't play anymore.

We packed up my parents' household and moved away, away from the schoolyard. I had already stopped practicing at that point, but it was a point of no return--Much like life progresses, I realized I could never go back to running across the street and hitting golf balls for an hour. In retrospect, this has even greater symbolic meaning to me as my responsibilities continued to increase to the point where I can't just break away to do what I want anymore.

The clubs got left out in the rain by my younger brothers, and started to rust. I rescued them from my parents' garage, took them with me, and then let them sit in a corner of my tiny apartment while I slaved away working forty hours a week and taking a full load of college courses.

When I was nineteen, I got angry at my dad, and took revenge in the only way that I could--I loaded the clubs in the back of my car, and gave them away to an acquaintence. They were a constant and painful reminder, and I just wanted to unload that burden, mutilating myself somehow in a way that could never be reversed, and would always conjure up memories of the pain that I was going through. When I was unloading them, he saw the funny names and realized that they were quite old, and asked "Are you sure you want to give these to me? I mean, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them, but I would hate for you to regret this." I assured him at the time that I wouldn't, and, strangely, I never have.

Four years later, my grandfather died of cancer. While he was sick I felt like kind of an ambassador for the family, primarily because I spoke "golf". I went and visited him a few times before he got really sick, and I was so glad to have something to talk about with him. I hadn't played in ten years, since that now infamous day on the course when the Mad Dog was unleashed, but it felt like it had just happened the week before, and it was good to see him laugh. I remember him clearly, sitting on the edge of his bed in his striped pajamas, his blue eyes glistening a little as he told me "I want you to know that I'm proud of all of you kids." It felt like he regretted just getting to know me and not taking the same time with my brothers and sisters. If it hadn't been for golf, it would have never happened, and we both knew it.

It was another ten years, a full twenty years after my last game, when I picked up clubs again. The game had vanished from my mind, with the exception of occasional reminders, like driving by the pristine fairways near my house or sometimes the sweet smell of cut grass. My company had a tournament, and I faced the inevitable experience of venturing out on the course again. My skills were surprisingly decent, and when I smashed the ball, the quiet of the fairways seemed to echo my grandfather's voice "Goddamn, son, that was a helluva shot!" I smiled.

A year later, I introduced my son, Ryan, to the game. It felt like I was introducing him to his grandfather, whom he never had the opportunity to meet. I tried not to let it sink in to deeply or attach too much importance to the event, but I can't help but consider how generations link together.

I even bought a new set of clubs, but it will never mean the same thing to me. There will never be a passion for the sport like there was during my youth, but that makes the memories sweeter.