As a youth, my family could not afford something like golf. As I entered my teenage years, my family’s fortunes had improved after the explosion of my dad’s store and his subsequent employment selling carpet.
I took public lessons at Daffin Park. Unfortunately, I was left handed and the only golf clubs available were right handed. I learned to play golf right handed. My dad did not know this and bought me left handed women’s club. Thus, I quickly became a cross handed golfer which complicated my progress as a golfer.
You can sometime overcome bad technique by getting really good at a bad technique. I played a lot golf after my dad learned to play golf and the family had a club membership at the Wilmington Golf Club which today is known as the Savannah County Club. Given the golf course was right across the street, my brother Corey and I were able to constantly farm an endless supply of golf balls from the water traps.
Other than Wilmington, I had the opportunity to play ay Bacon Park, at Amelia Island Plantation whenever my family would go down for vacation, or at Hilton Head whenever my dad needed a golf partner and I could drive up and join him. By my junior year in high school, I was playing several rounds of golf a week and I became a decent golfer.
West Point, not surprisingly, would severely limit my ability to play golf. I did take an elective physical education class in golf which ironically only had right handed clubs and they would not let me use my clubs until the final exam. I got a “B” in the class.
After Eileen and I moved to Fort Bragg and before we had kids, I would play golf every weekend at the Pope Golf course with fellow officers. Once we deployed to Italy, golf was not really possible as we were deployed nine months of the year and being with our first child was much more important.
I did not consistently play golf until ten years later when I was deployed to South Korea. The base I was stationed at had a short but adequate 18 hole golf course and again I would play with the other officers in the battalion periodically on the one day a week we had off.
Kids did not leave a lot of time for golf for the next 20 years and it would not be until 2010, after I retired from the Army, that I was able to play again consistently at the Georgia Club. My time as Vice Chancellor for the state of Georgia created several golf-related opportunities to play in Athens, Atlanta, or Lake Oconee. My dad would occasionally join me although he was now much better than I was. He could not drive the ball very far but he almost always 1-chipped and 1 putted. I enjoyed our time together.
It was during this time that I started to build a small collection of humorous stories to tell while we were golfing. I would pace these stories every couple of holes and others will try to remember the stories and retell them in very much the same manner in which a virus spreads. They did attribute the jokes back to me which led to more invites to play golf with new people.
Once I moved to Birmingham, AL, I continued to play golf for the first 4 or 5 years but that tapered off as work became more demanding of my time. I still play in an occasional scramble as I have enough muscle memory to drive and putt enough to be in the comfortable middle of the pack of golfers with an occasional stroke of genius.