"I bet you'd drop ten strokes if you golfed more," my father said on a windy early evening last week just outside of Gaylord. We were playing the back nine of the Gaylord Golf Club, driving up to the tee boxes on the 17th hole. I was having my usual experience of up-and-down play -- mostly down, to be honest -- but I thought about what he said and decided to engage in a little experiment: That next week, I would golf nine holes at least once every day during the week to see if I could get the average to drop. And so I did.
If there's one positive to having seven online classes, it's that you can schedule your time for golf pretty easily. And after grading for hours each day in the early morning -- Monday was the worst, with just over an hour's worth of grading for each class, eyestrain and neck cramps be damned -- you really want to hit a little ball as far as you can over and over, so it was 9-hole therapy at its finest. With a few texts and Facebook messages, I scheduled a round each day of the past week, and based on this limited sample, it's clear that dropping ten strokes isn't going to happen anytime soon.
On Monday, I played the front nine at Springbrook (pictured) with my NCMC colleague Kerri Finlayson. Kerri and I were both hired on at NCMC in the fall of 1998, she a 24-year-old Big Ten graduate and me a 27-year-old former DJ and record store goon. In her time at the College, Kerri has skied to the North Pole, biked the length of Africa, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, taken students to Mexico a handful of times, and done a bunch of other cool shit that I've known about and forgotten or just haven't known about. (But only one of us has talked to David Bowie, so.)
I've spent almost half my life with one faculty office separating us, but it had been years since we'd golfed together, and I hadn't seen her in the flesh since the late winter. But as usual, we quickly fell back into our patterns of friendly conversation as if little to no time had passed. It was only her second time playing golf this year, but she came out swinging from the tee, absolutely killing her first few drives. As for me, my first three holes were double bogey /par / bogey, and then it got worse from there, ending up with a 53 with 17 putts. At least the hang with Kerri was fun, although I felt bad about her being exposed to potential infection with each class session while I was at home with my online army. We finished our round with a plan to go back, Jack, and do it again.
Tuesday was a visit back to the Charlevoix Golf Club, a nine-hole walking course, that I played with Chance Gawlinski. Chance was a former student of mine who recently founded Second Chance Counseling Center in Petoskey after graduating with his MSW, and after reading about his golfing exploits on Facebook, I finally reached out to see if he'd like to golf together. I played the Charlevoix Golf Club a few weeks back and hit par on the first and last holes, so I felt somewhat okay about my chances. Of course, it turns out I shouldn't have been so sure of myself, as I started poorly and fucked about the entire round, ending up with a 59 with 20 putts, easily one of my worst rounds of the year.
But while it was bad golf, it was a solid hang with Chance, who I'd golfed with the week before at Springbrook. Even as a young man, Chance was a person I identified as a role model for those in his life, and he never wanted for friends and admirers. (If you're wondering what personality traits would fit into "role model," feel free to read this research summary from Northwestern University; trait research in personality is one of the most valid and reliable areas of research, and the NU researchers narrowed traits down to four clusters of the Big Five based on meta-analyses.) In the realm of counseling, he wants to be the person he needed when he was younger, just as I wanted to be the professor I wanted when I was a kid, so we have some motivational characteristics in common. It's funny that his counseling service is called "Second Chance," because the gap between when I first met him in class and now could be seen as the difference between First and Second Chance from my perspective. And for another parallel, I found out that Chance and his wife Alice bought a house in Petoskey that we made an offer on, so he's carving out a rich and rewardingly layered life -- job, home, love, peace, repeat -- at a much earlier age than I did. We also made a deal to golf again, as it's always nice to have repeat business, so to speak.
When Wednesday rolled around, I was determined to go back to Springbrook by myself and do two things: golf better on the front nine than I did on Monday, and find as many lost golf balls as possible. Because I have a generous wife who indulges me, I did both those things. As I wanted to make it a leisurely solo experience, I played two different balls on each hole, with the first ball earning a 46 with 16 putts (and four pars, which must be a new record for me) and the second ball getting me a 50 with 16 putts (only two pars, but two lost balls). Of course, the real achievement is finding 81 lost golf balls, the majority of which now reside in my garage, waiting to be lost anew. While I hope to one day shoot lower than 46, I doubt I'll ever find that many golf balls in one round, so I believe I unlocked an achievement that day.
After a nice family outing early Thursday afternoon after only a few hours of grading, I went back to the Charlevoix Golf Club just before 6pm to try and beat Tuesday's pathetic outing. And in 56 minutes, I was able to walk the nine holes and hit a 51 with 18 putts. The sun was setting, the winds were minimal, the seagulls were gathering, and the aerated greens gave putting an extra but not insurmountable challenge. And on Friday morning, I was in Roscommon at Ye Olde to play nine holes with my father, playing together at the course where he played with his father. Our 9am tee time was pushed back an hour so the glistening layer of September frost could melt off the greens, so after a meandering drive around Higgins Lake to admire the fresh bloom of Trump signs and abandoned businesses, I pounded out a 51 with 18 putts, just like the night before. The last three holes at Ye Olde were a good summation of my current game: A nice putt for par on the par-3 #7, an ugly fucking 10 with three putts on the par-5 #8, and a 4 on the par-3 #9 after missing a par putt by inches. Like I said, up and down.
What I found from the week of golf was that, as I approach 50, there is a sweet spot for me of golfing some of the old rust away before the new rust has a chance to sweep in. My best round was the first ball on Wednesday smack in the middle of the experimental week, as I don't easily recall a round where I had 4 pars and 2 bogeys (and three WTF holes, but okay). Wednesday is also about when I started noticing the sore lower back and the tight pain in the left side of my neck and the growing inflammation in the pads of both my feet that feels like I'm stepping on a spongey egg that burns and throbs. I can conclude that a good day for me in golf is a score in the high 40's, an average day is low 50's, and a rough day is above that. And while I wish it were different -- like, there's no way I should have scored a fucking 10 on #8 on Friday -- it was once said that a man's got to know his limitations, and this week showed my limitations laid painfully bare, sometimes literally so.
I golf now in middle age pretty much like how I played basketball when I was younger, not so much for the athletic achievement as for the hang time of social interaction. While I golfed better and more quickly by myself, I was able to spend the week with people who -- for whatever reason -- wanted to spend their time with me and endure my self-centered bitching and banal storytelling and flat humor. Like most people, it's been a near-constant state of agitated depression since the middle of March, when it was clear that it was time to stay isolated and alone or risk death or killing your loved ones, a state that we are still in to a great extent (whether we believe it or understand it or care). I've been lucky enough to have a round or two of golf now and again to help make me set that depression to one side for a moment, like a passenger in a golf cart behind you, just out of view. I just didn't know I missed the hang as much as I did. And even though it hurts to walk on the bare floors of our new house, I'm already looking forward to the next tee time.
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