By James Berreth
Love it or hate it, the game of golf is easily one of the most popular sports in the United States and it ranks 8th most popular worldwide. At the beginning of this summer, I caught the golf “bug” myself and have now become totally engrossed in every facet of the game. From playing and practicing to watching the PGA (Pro Golf Association) here at home and the DP World Tour in Europe. This is a telling of my journey into golf madness.
Let me be clear, I absolutely love the game of golf. If I am not watching how-to videos on the proper swing or watching clips from the most recent tournament or shopping for clubs, golf apparel, or shoes then I am most likely thinking about golf, and most importantly, how I can improve my own game. For those that aren’t aware, the game of golf is a beautifully simplistic game that – at times – drives even the most balanced mind to question their life choices. It is just that difficult to play. There are days when I finally feel my game is starting to look decent. But there are always the days where I feel as though I have lost my game; a sentiment commonly shared amongst players. But if we are going to talk about my descent into madness, it’s always best to start at the beginning.
When I was about 10 years old, my dad started taking me to play at a par 3 course named Cimarron Park Golf Course in Lake Elmo, Minnesota. This course was – and is – entangled within a trailer home neighborhood, the same neighborhood where my mother lost three children to a house fire 4 years prior to my birth. I will spare you the details of that night’s events but there was always this strange dichotomy in my mind between what I knew of the past regarding my mother’s tragedy and being in that same place with my father some 14 years later. In any case, once my father had a heart attack on this same course when I was 14, our golf outings ceased, and I stopped playing golf altogether. I am not sure what role this played in my decision to play golf now, 30 years later, but it is the beginning of my story, whether I like it or not.
My largest struggle in terms of playing golf has always been a significant slice which becomes more pronounced with the longer clubs like my fairway woods and driver. This was largely a decisive factor in why I stopped playing for so many years. The journey back to the game started off slow with relatively ambitious goals. Professor Matt Filner in the Social Sciences department at Metro State University, recently wrote a book called Play It as It Lies, a book about golf and fatherhood and everything in between. It was the concept of this book that gave me the idea that I would like to play golf, possibly with Professor Filner and in the future with others, either as a means of networking or just to make new acquaintances. And so started the quest to procure golf clubs and various other equipment necessary to play golf.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I am not one to be able to afford a new set of golf clubs that, for a complete set, can easily cost an individual well over 2 thousand dollars. So, what I did was I first focused on purchasing the irons I needed. I had fallen in love with Callaway’s line of clubs and at the same time, I discovered a convenient financing option in Affirm, the company that allows you to pay over time with no compounding interest. Soon, I was approved for my iron purchase and off I went. From that time until the present – a span of four months mind you – I have purchased three different drivers, five fairway woods, four hybrids, four wedges, a putter, and the aforementioned irons all in a quest to find what works best for me and my game. It has been a whirlwind of buying and selling and debt accumulation the likes of which I have never known, all in the name of a game I haven’t played since I was 14.
While I do have a lesson planned for the 21st of August and a tee time scheduled for the following day, I have yet to play an actual round since restarting my quest to play better golf. I have been working hard at the driving range and the practice green – working on the various aspects of my game – and I refuse to go out on a course and play around other individuals until my game reaches a certain level. More than anything, it is about common courtesy. You see, I have no one that I can call up and ask if they would like to go play a round so, I am certainly relegated to playing with strangers as golf courses don’t usually allow a single golfer to take a tee time all to themselves. As I will be playing with strangers, it’s the least I can do to minimize the amount of time searching for lost balls from errant slicing tee shots.
But what else may be at the heart of my quest to play golf? Aside from the health benefits, the time spent doing something I love, and the opportunity to make new friends, there is this sense that I want to play the game the way it was meant to be played. My father taught me how to play the game, but he never instilled in me the way you should conduct yourself while playing the game. I can recall numerous instances when he would break a club over his knee from a simple bad shot. He never let the game teach him anything, like how to grow your patience while playing the world’s most frustrating game. I want to set out and do things differently and let the game teach me what it can while playing at a level that my father never saw me achieve. The anniversary of his passing is coming up on the 31st of October and it will be the fourth year since I lost him. So, I guess playing golf is a way for me to reconnect with my father and hopefully one day, one of my boys will show an interest in playing with their dad. I will be sure to remain patient if they do.