Itchin' for the Fairway
2020 was so hideous in so many ways, and certainly way down the list in true importance would be the state of one’s golf game, but with the joy it has given me (and plenty of misery, too) through the years, I will not try to pretend it hardly matters to me. I played less golf in 2020 than I have in at least thirty years, and I sure hope that doesn’t repeat itself in 2021, but I am hardly certain of that. Since I started Dannyclinkscale.com and The Reasonably Irreverent podcast business in late 2018, the volume of play has slowly ebbed, but it flat crashed last year.
Things kind of started out on a promising note, well, from a golf standpoint. Shortly after the shutdown in March, when the weather got better, my wife announced that she would like to do what many others were at the time, returning to the game of golf. She played when we met, and was a pretty good player. But she was building her own business at the time, and had trouble playing enough to keep her game up. She belonged to a women’s league, but half the time was not making it. Then of course that led to playing not as well, frustration, and she just gave it up about fifteen years ago.
But like millions of others who wanted to find a way to get outside, Jayne said she wanted to start again. We bought some new clubs and on a sunny and blustery spring day we hit the links. The way it went was so typical of golf. Despite not even having hit balls in fifteen years, she was actually making great contact, and advancing the ball. In fact she had a putt for par on the second and third holes. Then, of course, she hit a few crooked ones, or topped a couple, and she instantly became frustrated, thinking that since she had hit some some good shots right off the top, that it would just proceed seamlessly from there. I talked her off the golfing ledge, and we had fun. We played a couple more times, and it was great. It really is just practice for me. I’m carrying two bags and helping her out, but still, it was going to be quality time with my wife, and an excuse to sharpen up a bit, too. But after just these few nice times, my wife her ankle badly, and couples golf would not be an item again in 2020. That, and many other circumstances, conspired to make it a year of precious little golf for me.
Despite not playing much, I’m still OK, and when I get out now, I generally still have a realistic chance to at least compete to break 80. It happens at a lesser percentage each year, and last year in about fifteen rounds, I think maybe I did it four times. Usually at least for ten or twelve holes I have a realistic chance at it a decent percentage of the time. It’s nice to have some kind of a goal, because in the last couple of decades, because of the circumstances of when and how I could get out to the course, I very often play alone. I don’t mind that all all really. I very much enjoy playing in a group, but I also very much like the solitude of being out alone. That was another effect of 2020. Usually if I went out on a Monday or a Tuesday afternoon, which is when I played the most in the last fifteen years, there were hardly any players out, and I could just cruise around easily. What was great for the game was bad for me as the course were mobbed, ands that created yet another obstacle with my limited time.
I have played golf since I was ten years old, but kind of sporadically until my thirties. I was lucky to have some natural ability. I had played tons of baseball, and that helped. The first time we played was at a nine hole course in Maine while on a summer vacation. I shot 54 for nine holes, and that fortunately was the Iast time I put a 5 in front of a nine hole score. There have been some real scares the last couple of years, however. I played enough in my teens to play high school golf and was in a rotation as the number one player despite the fact I had no instruction, I played with six clubs, and used a baseball grip.
I didn’t play much golf once I went to college and in my twenties, but late in my twenties to this date it has been an unabashed passion of mine, both playing it an following it. I can’t even fathom how many hours of televised golf I have consumed through the years.
I could tell about a thousand golf stories, but that would be a book, not a blog, so I think you’ll get a sense of how my golfing years have been spent, and how I feel about the game to this day with a couple of excerpts from my 2016 book “Leaving Cancer for the Circus”. The book is part road trip travelogue, part personal flashback, and in the main a cancer recovery story, and these two tales give a sense of where golf fits in . The first one details the delightful time when I played the most golf of my life, getting to be at least fairly proficient, enough so to get that much more disappointed in the heights that couldn’t be reached…….
“I was doing morning drive in Utica, New York, in the early 1900s. Our children had not been born yet. I had to be on the air at 4 a.m. and work on the AM and FM stations in a very busy schedule. But I usually could get out of the office around noon. I was by this point extremely dedicated to my running and was in the relatively early stages of my almost 20-year daily streak. Because I wanted to get out to the golf course after work, I would ordinarily rise at about 2:30 in the morning to run, get a shower, and get off to work.
There was a beautiful golf course about 15 miles out of town, The Golf Club of Newport. It was an old course that had fallen into disrepair until it was purchased and rescued by a man named Pete Grygiel, who was the owner and superintendant. It was a labor of love, and a family business. Because the course had been in such bad shape, and the perception was that it was a lot further away than it was, it was not heavily played.
My first wife worked regular hours, and as I said we had no children. We would meet at the gym about 5:30. So I had all afternoon to play. I walked the lovely, hilly, tree-lined golf course for 27 holes every single weekday. Anybody’s golf game would benefit under these circumstances, and I had some natural talent, and I was playing the same golf course over and over. My handicap dropped to as low as 3.4, and would have been lower if I had been any good at all under pressure. I played a lot of the local tournaments, and even played a couple of U.S. Mid Amateur qualifiers. I learned much to my dismay how different it is to play regular golf and tournament golf. I never played “as well as I could” in these events. I wasn’t alone, but I was probably one of the worst offenders. Before one year’s club championship, four of us who were considered among the favorites played 36 holes for decent stakes to prep for the event. I shot 73 and 74 and beat them.
Then came the tournament. My 147 would have won, but I didn’t approach it. I shot 81-82 and wasn’t much of a factor. The other guys didn’t play as well either, but nothing like me. Mr. Grygiel was a big supporter of me. He saw how dedicated I was to practicing and playing, and expressed surprise that I hadn’t done better. He shouldn’t have been. I would see it unfold more than a couple of times.”
I will excerpt one more that is a fine reflection of the beauty, and the intense pull of the game, even in the most serene of conditions. By the way, there are a few other fun (I think) golf and golf-related stories in the book, if you are interested read to the end you will have the chance for a nice little prize. This one is about the seventh day of my solo journey after radiation treatment in 2015 that is the template for the book as I traveled from Pierre, South Dakota to Valentine, Nebraska……
“It was a cloudy, warmish day with medium winds, which would prove to be absolutely perfect. It was midafternoon when I headed out of Valentine, which is pretty remote in itself with a population, under four thousand, and south on Route 20 out into the country toward The Prairie Club. It was definite Sand Hills terrain, although it is 90 miles northeast of the Sand Hills golf courses.
About 20 miles out there is the smallest of signs indicating the club, and you turn onto a sandy, unpaved road. Around 3 miles of winding road and you start to spy some golf holes, and I knew I was in for a treat. Carved into the rolling landscape were two golf courses. There was a very nice, huge clubhouse, a few cabins … and that’s it.
Out here in the middle of nowhere, I was going to play The Dunes Course. The other one is The Pines. It was late afternoon when I teed off, and it was a long drive in the cart to the first tee. Right away, it was evident that it would be special. The Sand Hills links land is perfect for golf courses, in fact when I first had started driving out of Broken Bow a few days ago in my first pass through the Sand Hills, I kept thinking, man, you could put a golf course here … and here … and here.
After a few holes on this slightly breezy, cloudy day with no one in sight, I had the distinct feeling that I was playing golf in Scotland, which I have never done. And if I never do, I will certainly have had a wonderfully reasonable facsimile. The architects had all the land that they wanted, and they used it. It also became evident quickly that you had the tremendous experience of playing each golf hole, and not being able to even see another hole. Since I was playing by myself, this created a spectacular solitude.
It’s funny about playing golf, though. The first few holes I was just soaking in the experience, literally almost transported to another part of the world in my mind, openly speaking out loud about how cool this was. But then I was making the turn and started to realize that things were going well. I was only a couple of shots over par, and this was a very hard course. So then starting the back nine I went bogey, double bogey, bogey, double bogey. I was furious, and was calling myself things I would never call my worst enemy.
I got to the next tee box and gave myself a little talking to. “Hey, idiot, this is about as cool an experience as you could possibly have, let’s not jack it up because you are not going to shoot a fancy score.” I looked around at the vistas which were as enjoyable for a fan of links golf courses as you could have, and got a smile back on my face. I played OK the last few holes, but that was far from the point. I got to soak in something special.
There in one more note for the more golf oriented of you. It took about seven holes for me to realize that what I thought would be an impossible course to walk was actually a brilliant design for that. In my cart playing the fourth tees from the back (still 6,500 yards), the drives from the previous green to the next tee box seemed extremely long. But I eventually realized that if you were walking and playing the back tees, the next tee was no more than one hundred yards from the previous green. For a golfer, it was an almost mystical experience. The solitude of the afternoon was completely fitting for this journey. I saw only one other group of golfers, at a remarkable distance away. The wind was blowing on my face, which was (mostly) stuck in a wonderful grin. It was incredible.”
Yes, it was. I have had so much enjoyment with the game lo these many years, even though I am far too serious about it. A leftover from the days when I played quite a bit of competitive golf is that I don’t drink when I play. I have always felt that the game was hard enough, I wanted to be as sharp as possible, and hell, there was plenty of enjoyment to be had at the 19th hole. But sometimes these days when things are going awry, it might just be a good idea to have a cold one. But it’s an idea that i have not yet acted on.
As I type this it is shaping up as a very nice day, and even though it’s still a little muddy out there, it is the kind of day that I would scrap through and enjoy on the course. I will play when it’s in the high 30’s if the wind isn’t blowing. But alas, in keeping with the recent theme, i have far too much to do today and playing golf will not be part of it. You can count on the fact, however, that around about ten o’clock tonight I will be enjoying the DVR’d televised golf from today.
I want 2021 to be a year when golf plays at least a reasonable part of it. Winning Powerball would help. But even if the rounds are limited, I will begin each one with great hope and excitement, and hope to soak in the experience with a little less crazy competitiveness.
Fat chance.
I hope you enjoyed this little excursion. If you have reached this point and have any interest in reading a few more golf tales, and a whole lot of other stuff, the first two emailers who shoot me a short personal golf story to Danny@dannyclinkscale.com will get a personalized copy of “Leaving Cancer for the Circus”
Hit ‘em straight!