{"id":72,"date":"2010-04-23T07:30:59","date_gmt":"2010-04-23T14:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tgpnolan.com\/?p=72"},"modified":"2010-04-23T13:02:31","modified_gmt":"2010-04-23T20:02:31","slug":"of-tadpoles-and-ball-washers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/about-the-gameessays\/72\/of-tadpoles-and-ball-washers","title":{"rendered":"Of Tadpoles and Ball Washers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>As seven-year olds go, my son Will is pretty small, so he fights the weight of the clubhead more than I would like to see.\u00a0 But his swing proves that if you set up well and return the club to the ball in the start position, it\u2019s going to work out.\u00a0 He hangs on, nicely balanced, head behind the ball.<\/p>\n

Click.<\/em> \u201cHow\u2019d that feel?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGood.\u201d He says he\u2019d like to go nine today, and advises me that the pro shop has candy in the cold box. \u00a0That’s good: the pro likes to watch him eat chocolate muffins the size of softballs. \u00a0There’s a gambit here, too: nine holes for Dad (Will sometimes wants to quit after fewer — don’t we all?) \u00a0A Snickers bar for Will.\u00a0 It\u2019s a serious offer.<\/p>\n

On the fourth, he\u2019s got to fly a small pond off the tee.\u00a0 Last year he hit from the forward tee, a green thumb thrust into the water. \u00a0Wedge was sufficient to carry the 50 or so yards to the other side. \u00a0Now he sets up on the men’s tee and goes after it with the driver.\u00a0 Today he gets it a little off the toe.\u00a0 Wet.\u00a0 We search, less for the ball than the curiousities that abound wherever water meets land.\u00a0 No ball, but a power of tadpoles zigzag to safety, and we spot a muskrat, its mouth full of bright green grass, gliding across the pond.<\/p>\n

The tadpole frenzy, the swimmer, the life of the pond, are straight out of his science books. \u00a0He is riveted. \u00a0This, I realize, is better than a great shot.\u00a0 He\u2019s oblivious to so much of what plagues me.\u00a0 The scoring, the cranky hostility of my body to repeatable movement, the bouts of frustration.\u00a0 He\u2019s attentive to so much I take for granted: the muskrat, bluebird houses standing sentinel in open spaces through the course.\u00a0 The workings of ball washers.<\/p>\n

On our next-to-last hole I stop to watch him.\u00a0 Will is becoming a golfer.\u00a0 I suspect there will be a long arc of fascinations between this late afternoon and the time when the game grabs him for its own.\u00a0 Baseball, girls, cars, college, friends who don\u2019t play. \u00a0A period of determining everything I enjoy and not doing it. \u00a0At least that’s how I handled things. \u00a0But today his stride up the fairway is steady, the small bag hangs properly across the small of his back, and there is plenty of bounce in his step.<\/p>\n

Golf at its best is a child\u2019s game.\u00a0 Pros teach us our swings, but we should watch our children if we really wish to learn about the heart of the attraction.\u00a0 Golf is about unexpected ecstasies, something children are uniquely available for.<\/p>\n

I had no hole in one today, no run of birdies.\u00a0 But Will is bursting.\u00a0 Those tadpoles, he knows, are on their way to becoming frogs. \u00a0Imagine. \u00a0The muskrat is building a nest with that grass.\u00a0 It\u2019s all connecting for him. \u00a0I know what he’ll tell his mother tonight: the life in the pond was the life he’d seen only in picture books before. \u00a0A perfect moment for him, and the feeling that I was lucky, too, lucky enough to chance upon my child aglitter with pleasure in his world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As seven-year olds go, my son Will is pretty small, so he fights the weight of the clubhead more than… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":74,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1245],"tags":[1249,1250],"class_list":["post-72","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-about-the-gameessays","tag-snickers-candy","tag-childrens-golf"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/22\/2010\/04\/Will113.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":235,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions\/235"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}