{"id":938,"date":"2010-03-07T10:30:54","date_gmt":"2010-03-07T17:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jeffwallach.com\/?p=938"},"modified":"2011-02-25T16:42:54","modified_gmt":"2011-02-25T23:42:54","slug":"family-affair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/golf\/personalities\/938\/family-affair","title":{"rendered":"Family Affair"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story originally appeared in <\/strong>Links Magazine in 2001.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always been fond of both adventure travel and golf, and I recently had the opportunity to combine the two– by undertaking an adventurous golf trip with my girlfriend Renee and my parents.\u00a0 What could be more fraught with danger than risking twelve hours in the car with Mom and Dad?<\/p>\n

It happened like this: Renee and I decided to spend last Thanksgiving with my folks in Florida.\u00a0 To help defer trip costs, I landed an assignment to visit and write about the new Ocean Hammock Golf Club, in Palm Coast.\u00a0 The course was so<\/span> new management assured me I\u2019d be the first person to ever play the spacious Jack Nicklaus oceanside design, which would open officially two weeks after my visit.\u00a0 Not even Jack had golfed the completed layout.\u00a0 I smelled course record!<\/p>\n

It also happens that my father has played golf nearly his entire life; it\u2019s his most intense passion.\u00a0 When I was growing up, the game provided his sole diversion from a six-day work week.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s also one of few interests we share.\u00a0 I figured taking my Dad along to Ocean Hammock might give him a small thrill.\u00a0 For the past several months, he\u2019d been recovering from cancer surgery that involved removing part of his hip bone, and he\u2019d been making slow progress.\u00a0 Mom reported that even after a few weeks, he could barely maneuver his walker to the front yard, where he likes to hold court in his bathrobe, smoking and greeting the neighbors.<\/p>\n

Before the surgery (his third in recent years), Dad\u2019s doctor promised him he\u2019d eventually be able to play golf again.\u00a0 I suspected that golf was driving his recovery.\u00a0 Each Sunday when we spoke on the phone, he\u2019d boast about the five ghost swings he\u2019d executed in the living room, or tell me that he\u2019d picked up and gripped an actual club.\u00a0 I hoped that setting a deadline by which he would need to actually hit full shots might speed his convalescence.\u00a0 If he wasn\u2019t up to it, I told him, I\u2019d hit all the long shots and he could chip and putt– a sort of modified father\/son scramble.<\/p>\n

In putting together this golf game, and inviting Mom and Renee along, I had an ulterior motive, as well: to draw my parents and my girlfriend together in a way that might bond them.\u00a0 Although Mom has never even ventured a practice swing, I figured she could drive one of the carts, and maybe provide some color commentary if anyone happened to hit a good shot.<\/p>\n

When I first pitched this particular story to my editor at Links, he feared a syrupy, over-dramatic tale of love and reconciliation with altogether too much potential for hugging.\u00a0 He suggested that everything didn\u2019t necessarily have<\/span> to work out smoothly.\u00a0 I knew he was rooting for at least a minor blow-up, if not a full-on festival of family dysfunction.<\/p>\n

Which I thought about during the six-hour drive from Delray Beach to Palm Coast, as my Dad read aloud every road sign we flew past.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, honey.\u00a0 Stuckeys,\u201d he said thirty two times.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, honey.\u00a0 $1.99 super value meal,\u201d he repeated every twelve miles.<\/p>\n

For her part, after asking several times when and where we <\/span>wanted to eat, Mom forced us to have lunch at The Cracker Barrel \u201cno earlier than 12:30\u201d but, it turned out, no later<\/span> than 12:30, either<\/p>\n

*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *<\/p>\n

The stellar staff at Ocean Hammock Golf Club currently top my list of people whom I wish lottery jackpots upon, and they are all welcome at my own door at any time.\u00a0 Under the sensitive oversight of Head Pro Chuck Kandt, they treated us like visiting dignitaries in spite of the pressure of having to open a new golf course in two weeks.\u00a0 They welcomed us with sparkling rental clubs, sleeves of balls, logoed shirts, boxed lunches, and that rarest of all things at golf courses today: genuine hospitality.\u00a0 I believed they were actually glad to see us.\u00a0 My parents– who\u2019d not really witnessed me \u201cat work\u201d before– were impressed.<\/p>\n

Following our warm reception, two O.H. staff members escorted us to the practice range, where four perfect pyramids of golf balls glistened on the untouched grass.\u00a0 Twenty minutes later we all stood nervously on the number one tee as the marshal finished his orientation and invited us to let fly the first official shots on this virgin course.\u00a0 I stepped up and absolutely RIPPED a high fade far down the center of the fairway.\u00a0 Renee, who only golfs occasionally, and only occasionally well, unwrapped her long, lovely and often dazzlingly inaccurate swing to punch a respectable line drive out into the green expanse.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d played enough golf with my Dad to know that he would swing hard and clumsily, stepping away from the ball at the same time that he tried to kill it dead, and thereby stub an embarrassing dribbler to the end of the tee box.\u00a0 I held another ball in my pocket, ready to proffer the requisite mulligan.<\/p>\n

But Dad teed off with a three-iron and modeled the best swing I\u2019d seen him make in two decades, following through to a perfect finish position and only looking up in time to see the result land and bounce in the center of the fairway 160 yards out.\u00a0 Mom smiled, no doubt assuming he always executed shots like this.<\/p>\n

Out on the fairway, Dad nutted another long iron to just short of the elevated green, pitched close to the pin, and made the first par ever recorded on Ocean Hammock.\u00a0 He hadn\u2019t performed this well since the Carter administration.\u00a0 After being unable to get out on the course for so long, Dad had come to play.<\/p>\n

We went on in this way, hitting some fine shots and a few not worth describing.\u00a0 After several frustrating holes swinging her ladies\u2019 rental set, Renee switched to my clubs and suddenly adopted a new golf personality.\u00a0 She tied my bogey 4 on the 146-yard fourth hole, which amused her to no end.\u00a0 We laughed a lot, and nearly melted into a group hug several times.\u00a0 Who knew that hanging with loved ones could be this much fun?<\/p>\n

Not to disappoint my editor, there was tension, too.\u00a0 I spent much of the day managing these golfers who lost themselves in the scenery, in the wonder of balls and grass and palms dancing in the wind; at one point a foursome of tortoises asked if they could maybe play through.\u00a0 Additionally, I had to explain the 90-degree cart rule to my Dad at least one time for each degree.\u00a0 And throughout the round, he continually exclaimed \u201cNice shot!\u201d even when I sliced a drive into the tullies, topped an approach into a bunker, or bladed a chip over the green.\u00a0 He wanted<\/span> them to be nice shots; what could I say?\u00a0 Renee, on the other hand, couldn\u2019t seem to remember that the higher the number on the club, the shorter the distance it hit the ball.\u00a0 Mom, for her part, at first refused to drive the cart altogether; when she relented, she still wouldn\u2019t take it out onto the fairways, which was necessary to minimize dad\u2019s walk to his ball.\u00a0 Mom was also skeptical of that ninety-degree thing.<\/p>\n

On the seventh hole, a reef of thunderclouds gathered off shore, threatening a storm of biblical proportions.\u00a0 Lightning cleaved the sky, sliding closer all the time.\u00a0 I willed it away, prayed that the weather would not ruin this rare opportunity.\u00a0 But on the eighth hole, where the gray ocean suddenly popped into view as we walked up to the green, the marshal asked us to come inside.\u00a0 It rained like it only can in the tropics– hard enough to drive nails– as we ate lunch huddled in the makeshift clubhouse.\u00a0 Then, twenty minutes later, the sky lightened; we\u2019d been granted a reprieve.<\/p>\n

On the back nine, I recognized that we were in a race to finish before dark and I herded my family along like a sheep dog nipping at the animals to keep them moving when they wished only to graze.\u00a0 On the last two holes, as we squinted to see our drives against the darkening sky I thought: we\u2019ll never make it.\u00a0 My family won\u2019t simultaneously hold the men\u2019s, women\u2019s, and senior course records, if only for a day.<\/p>\n

But somehow we chipped up to the eighteenth green as nightfall slurped the final light off the ocean.\u00a0 Back at the clubhouse, the staff greeted us like Odysseus returned home after his long journey.<\/p>\n

We scored no holes-in-one that day.\u00a0 We staged no dramatic scenes of connection or reconciliation– but there were no shouting matches either.\u00a0 We exhibited no kissy-faced earnestness.\u00a0 We played golf steadily and sometimes quietly and occasionally well.\u00a0 We switched cart partners every six holes so everyone had a chance to ride with everyone else.\u00a0 We were simply a family playing golf in the afternoon, hoping to finish before the rains came again or darkness fell.<\/p>\n

My Dad shot 103 with the help of some slightly creative scorekeeping.\u00a0 Who\u2019s really to say that a 75-year-old man recovering from surgery and playing his first full round of golf in months shouldn\u2019t be allowed to re-tee whenever he damned well feels like it?\u00a0 Which is why I advocate an amendment to the rules of golf: a mulligan for every radiation treatment undergone with quiet dignity.\u00a0 A conceded putt for each painful step from walker to walking again.<\/p>\n

After our round, Dad admitted that in a half-century of golfing, this was the best experience he\u2019d ever enjoyed.\u00a0 He talks about it still.<\/p>\n

For me it was equally as good.\u00a0 For an entire afternoon of sunbreaks and thunderstorms, swaying palms and sunken putts, I traveled through a beautiful place with only my parents and the woman I love.\u00a0 We created some stories that we\u2019ll continue to tell for years to come.\u00a0 And I watched my aging father unobtrusively and without comment or complaint, set the Ocean Hammock senior course record and simultaneously kick cancer\u2019s ass.\u00a0 I have never been more proud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This story originally appeared in Links Magazine in 2001. I\u2019ve always been fond of both adventure travel and golf, and… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5048,7],"tags":[944164,10,286,158,5494],"class_list":["post-938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alternative-golf-assoc","category-personalities","tag-golf","tag-essay","tag-family","tag-jack-nicklaus","tag-ocean-hammock-golf"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=938"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1146,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938\/revisions\/1146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}