Ticket to Ride

Over the past few months, my wife and I have been rewatching one of my all-time favorite shows, Mad Men. In the season one finale, an episode entitled “The Carousel,” Don Draper, the deeply flawed and deeply human protagonist of the series, is pitching an advertisement idea for Kodak’s at-home photo projector, a product the company adamantly wants to call “The Wheel.” Don, a man embroiled in extra marital affairs, consumed by success, and torn between the man he wants to be, one that’s interesting and new, and the man he feels he must be, crafts a subtle pitch framed around “the pain from an old wound”…nostalgia. The pitch lands as Don, using photos of his own life, weaves the concept of photo projector and it’s wheel-like-mechanism to that of a carousel, a ride going forward and backward in time, letting users “travel the way a child travels - around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know are loved.” It’s always been a scene that made me feel something but this time around it hit harder than ever before.

Now you’re probably asking yourself, “what the hell does this have to do with golf?”. Well, I’m in a stage of my life where the past seems so golden. At 39, with a full time in-person career, a wife, and a young terrorist…I mean son, the past seems so comforting from the stress of everyday life. It’s also a window into so many experiences I’m excited to share with my boy as he grows up (far too quickly I’m sure). And as I’ve been filtering through memory after memory and emotion after emotion, I found myself tapping into very early but very important golf swings.

We were a sports family. There were always practices, games, leagues, trainings, camps, and my brother and I couldn’t get enough. So much of our young life in sport took place in our grandparents back yard. We had plenty of room for pitching and hitting and an old clothesline that gave use a makeshift soccer goal. My Gramp loved to toss a ball around or sit down by the shed and tinker while my brother and I ran ourselves ragged. The summer days were longer than any I can remember, nearly endless. In that same back yard, bathed in summer sun, is where golf started for me as well.

Golf wasn’t exactly in the forecast. We were a team sports family, and an expensive, individual, seemingly luxurious hobby wasn’t in the mix for us. Neither of my parents had any experience in the game, but my Gramp played here and there while in the service, and my mom’s brother, my Uncle Mark, was an avid player. People always said my Uncle Mark was a “real player,” but I never really saw him at his best. He passed suddenly in 2008, we played a dozen rounds together in a time when I didn’t know what the game really was, and he was dealing with declining health he didn’t fully understand. However, in one of those childhood summers when my uncle still lived with my grandparents, he ordered, from some random golf equipment catalog of the time, a set of kids clubs. A steel shafted driver, a 5 iron, an 8 iron, a pitching wedge, and a putter came in the set. Looking back, they were copying clubs of the time. The driver was that 90s gray/silver like a Callaway Big Bertha, and the irons had the perimeter weighting and the high toe of a Ping. They even had a knock-off kids version of Golf Pride’s Green Victory grips. My memory is foggy on the feelings, I don’t remember emotions around the gift, but I know for a fact we used those clubs constantly.

We had about 30 or 40 yards to work with in that yard. Near the back door to my grandparents’ house, there was a flat spot, often shaded by the house itself, the grass cool and thick. That was our tee box. The yard then ran down a slight hill toward two sheds framed by oak trees. A massive one between the shreds offered some relief from the summer sun. Just to the left of the biggest shed, my Gramp sunk an old coffee can in the ground and put a real pin flag in it. We had a golf hole, and that, like so many things at that time of my life, was more than enough.

The amount of times my brother and I absolutely smashed a golf ball off of that shed is, was, and always will be incalculable. The amount of times my Gramp had to duck for cover while he was tinkering on some sort of lawn mower engine or while cleaning vegetables from his garden, I could probably come up with if I tried hard enough…he always let us know we would get “whapped” if we ever hit him. We never did, and he never would have anyway. These were the most ideal of times. I can remember so many of those sweltering summer afternoons hitting balls toward the shed, being met with a sandwich and a tall ice cold glass of tea from my Gram as she watched before starting dinner. God, I miss them, the people more than anything, but also those seemingly timeless, always careless days that ended with twilight and open windows.

Eventually, we got to the point where the 30 or so yards couldn’t really contain us. Balls were flying faster and farther, leaving dents in the shed and coming dangerously close to leaving the yard and entering the service lot of a Pontiac dealer that backed up to my grandparents property. Enter, The Golf Farm. 

Seems like every town has some version of the Golf Farm at this point. Some are better than others, some are municipal, some are simply low end public access, but all serve a purpose…a way in. The place still exists, though under a different name, to me it’s still the Golf Farm, even if it doesn’t resemble one anymore. The “clubhouse,” which once looked like a barn, no longer does, and the driving range, which had a kind of farm theme, is simply a driving range with beat up mats and store bought targets. They still have a deal where a round with a cart gets you a hot dog and a Coke. Tees and jeans permitted if not encouraged. Anyway, my Gramp would bring us up to the range and get us a bucket. I can still hear him giving us hell for going through the balls too fast and not taking our time. He used to give us the same hell when we went bowling and tried to throw a fast ball rather than an accurate one…he was a truly great bowler. Later, as we progressed, we moved on the 18 hole pitch-and-putt at the Golf Farm, for so many years that was golf to me. He would give us little tips here in there. Eventually my Gramp just let us enjoy ourselves and often we’d stop for some fast food on the way home. What more could a kid ask for?

As I got older, I left the game behind. Other sports became higher stakes and took more and more of my time, as did girls and music. I was searching for identity and connection, at the same time I always thought of those days in the yard and at the Golf Farm. Eventually, I found my way back to golf, oddly enough through a video game, Tiger Woods 2004. Playing that video game with my buddies pushed me to pick up clubs again. This time around, the game bit me hard. I regretted all the time that had passed, something like 7 years, but from about 17 onward, golf was never far from the forefront of my mind. Somewhere near the end of my senior year, my Uncle Mark took my brother and I out to a different course…to go on course for the first time, a scary proposition. I still remember standing on the tee, looking out at the fairway, a tee shot up will with a bunker on the left and tees lining the right. I pulled 2 iron from the set my uncle let me borrow because something in me told me it was easier to hit than a driver, and out of no where, I pured it. It was over, there was BG (before golf) and AG (you get the idea)… the love affair was on and I was enraptured. 

There’s more to this story, but it’s far less interesting. My uncle and I spent time on course here and there over the next 4 years before his sudden passing. It gets harder every year to feel like that time was stolen from us. My Gramp passed 2 years after my uncle and was always excited to see how the game had grabbed me. We spoke often in those 2 years about the backyard days. My Gram lived a long full life, she loved to hear about the best shot I had hit in a recent round, golf trips, to watch pro golf weekly, and, of course, to have a nice meal at the club from time to time. As I’ve said before, I miss them everyday, constantly. I love the pain from that old wound, I hope it never heals.  Golf is still central for my brother and I. We live in different states, and so golf has become one of our reasons to meet. We get together to play at least once a year (the current record is 177-3 in my favor). Golf isn’t just my hobby, it’s a through line to my past, it’s my mainline to nostalgia, it’s my ticket to the carousel.