2024-09-18 / Wednesday / Mulligan

BACKSTORY

Do you know how sometimes, when you think about someone, you think of them as “something”. When I remember my Dad, I think of him as a “golfer”. He loved golf, he LIVED golf, really. It was his passion, his personality, and in some ways, his gift to me. I loved going to the course with him, riding in the cart, smelling the grass, trying to smack that little white ball as far as I could when he would throw a ball down for me. Sunset Hills Country Club in Thousand Oaks was my first real taste of it.

When I was eight, we moved to Columbus, Ohio, and joined Hickory Hills Golf Club in Grove City. He signed me up for lessons, and I started to think of myself as a golfer too. My first coach just said, “Just learn to hit the ball as far as you can, and the swing will develop around that”. And it did. I would sit and watch golf with him and look at the swings of all of the tour pros. My Dad would tell me which ones to emulate, one stood out to me: Jerry Pate. Such a smooth, effortless swing. My Dad later gave me a book by Ben Hogan, his own personal golf hero, and I ate it up.

I joined the Junior golf program, and joined my Dad every Saturday morning, and every other chance I could get. At eleven, I started to take it pretty seriously, and practiced as much as I could, putting across our living carpet into a putting machine that would spit the ball back when I made it. Later I joined the Golf Club in 7th grade, then junior tournaments around the area. I made the varsity Golf Team as a freshman at Hilliard High School, then at Bishop Watterson when I changed schools.

[Rick Smith paragraph]

Another move to Charlotte, NC as my Dad took a new job. His first priority, get my Mom a house she would love, his second, join Raintree Country Club up the road. Raintree had 2 courses, the North and the South, double the fun for us. I got a job at the course for the summer as a Cart boy. I would clean the carts, put them away, get them charging and run out and play as many holes as I could before the sun went down.

I tried out and made the South Mecklenburg High School golf team. We had a decent team, making the State Championships my Junior year, and finishing second my Senior year.

At this point, in my mind, I was going to play golf for a living. It was what I did, and I was good at it. My Dad was busy contacting college golf coaches, lining up interviews, and we were making a plan.

And then he suffered a major, life-changing, debilitating stroke. Our world caved in. He lost all movement on his right side, lost his ability to speak, or to walk. Months of physical therapy allowed him to walk again, he learned to write left-handed, learned how to string words together again to form partial sentences.

I wasn’t prepared to handle all that comes with lining up a golf scholarship to play in college. There were no forms to download, no videos to upload, no websites to check, there was no internet. In hindsight, I should have talked to a smaller school, played for 4 years, honed my game, but I still wanted the big name school. The best I could manage was an offer from Ohio State to come tryout with the other recruits.