Finding Our Way Through the Frost

There was a time in my life when I would anticipate my first round of golf each year like it was a wedding or a graduation. I would obsess over weather trends and plead with the gods, silently begging them to melt the snow, lift the grey of winter, and open the local golf courses.

Some of this is a product of growing up in Montana, where the golf season can end in November and not begin until April, but that ache bled into my adult life in Maryland. Spring could not get here soon enough. There are people in Florida and California who would recoil in horror if presented with the opportunity to play golf when it’s 55 degrees out, but those of us in cold-weather states live by a different code.

If you’ve been cooped up in your house all winter, you will start looking at your clubs when the thermometer hits 40 degrees. I’m not sure you can truly say you love the game until you arrive at a moment when you decide you have to hit 3 wood off the first tee because you can’t put a tee in the still-frozen ground. A regular date with a simulator can help, I suppose, but only in the same way Zoom or Google Meet might serve as a replacement for a night sitting next to an old friend at your favorite pub.

You miss the tactile world.

Some of my first-round enthusiasm, unfortunately, has waned the last few years. I’m reluctant to admit it, but it’s true. My obsession with playing golf has been dulled (at least a bit) by the realities of life. It feels like there are always work concerns and family concerns getting in the way, yardwork that ought to be done, a piece of writing that is perennially unfinished. I am also reminded, each February, of the work I did not do in the gym during the winter, the promises I did not keep to recapture some of the flexibility I had back in my 30s. It is much easier, in the cold winter months, to pour a second bourbon and flip on the NFL. When the PGA Tour canceled the Sentry this year because of a water dispute at Kapalua, it only exacerbated my malaise. I didn’t feel the same envy I typically feel when I watch golf on television in January.

When the weather lifted and the opportunity for golf returned this year, I was almost caught off guard. My friend Ryan texted me, asking if my daughter and I wanted to join him and his son, Colin, for a round at his country club. It was wet and cold, he conceded, but the course was open at last.

Ryan is the first friend I’ve made as a result of a youth sports connection. Years ago, our daughters Keegan and Meredith ended up on the same PGA Junior League team, and they soon became golf buddies. That camaraderie turned out to be infectious. After several years of walking the fairways together, fist-bumping after birdie putts, Ryan and I became something more than just neighborly acquaintances. We became Junior Golf Dads.

I’d heard rumors about that kind of friendship, I just never expected it to unfold in my life. Sports parents are — just putting this candidly — frequently lunatics. I generally like to remove myself from the parental wolf pack at events, if only as an act of self-preservation. But over time, Ryan won me over. He has the right mixture of enthusiasm and perspective. He’s not under any delusion that we’re raising future PGA or LPGA stars, but he’s good about steering me toward the right tournaments and clinics that might give our kids the option to play in college someday, if their talent justifies it. My daughter Keegan was partnering with his son Colin in an upcoming tournament, so we figured it would be fun to give them a practice round together as partners in anticipation of the tournament. They are each extremely intense, and we joked that it was like combining two volatile elements on the periodic table without knowing the outcome. When the morning of the round arrived, my daughter was downstairs making breakfast and cleaning her clubs before the sun was in the sky.

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I greeted the dawn with less enthusiasm. I felt a bit like the Tin Man in the “Wizard of Oz,” desperate for some oil to loosen up my joints. When we arrived at the course, we were informed that there was a 30-minute frost delay and the driving range wasn’t open, so there would be no chance to loosen up with rehearsals and take a hastily-found swing thought to the first tee. I watched Colin and Ryan carve shots in the middle of the fairway, then lumbered forward to take my turn.

I don’t know how far I turned behind the ball — it could not have been far — but I do know the outcome. I cold-topped my first shot of the season into the woods. It was the kind of ball you don’t even bother looking for. Some nervous laughter flitted through the group. With a reluctant yet audible sigh, I re-teed.

I cold topped a second ball, this one more pathetic than the first.

“Maybe try slowing down a bit in your transition, dad?” my daughter quipped, trying to be helpful.

I nodded, more embarrassed for her than for myself.

Somehow I muscled a third ball in the direction of the fairway, but the moment lingered. I sulked my way through the next couple holes, and felt ashamed for doing it. Ryan, on the other hand, was cheerful, encouraging our 14-year-olds to communicate with one another, to read putts and talk strategy. I couldn’t help but marvel at his enthusiasm.

In the winter, Ryan had texted me with some difficult news. His youngest daughter, Evelyn, had been diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, and she was about to begin treatment at Johns Hopkins. Evelyn has always had the most graceful, natural swing of his three kids, and she already wanted to know when she might be able to hit balls again. The junior golf community was already rallying around her, trying to find a way to get her favorite players Nelly Korda and Rose Zhang to send her “Get well soon!” wishes. We’d texted back and forth about it — the prognosis so far has been good — but we hadn’t broached the subject yet in person. I wasn’t sure how much he wanted to escape for a few hours, so I left it alone.

It was Ryan who eventually brought it up as we navigated the seventh fairway.

“You know, they say if your kid is going to get cancer, this is the one you want them to get,” he said. “I keep trying to focus on that.”

I mumbled some words of comfort, but mostly I felt awed that they were facing things with so much dignity and purpose. During her PET scan, Ryan said, the tech asked Evelyn if she wanted to listen to Taylor Swift. She scoffed and asked if they had Kesha instead. Then they scolded her for dancing in the tube.

Ryan had to run to an appointment at the turn, so I took the kids on to play the back nine. At some point, I found some semblance of a swing, and on 18, I laced a missile down the middle of the fairway. I had long ago stopped keeping score.

“Where was that all day?” Colin said with a smirk.

We made our way up the hill toward the 18th green. The sun was finally shining. The kids were already asking about hot chocolate and french fries.

Ryan texted me later, thanking us for coming, for braving the cold. It was nice to be reminded that the sport could heal you in ways you didn’t have to understand.