COURSE REVIEWS

How the Game First Grabbed Me
(Then Tried to Tie Me Up, Choke
Me and Throw Me into a River)

By Reid Champagne,
The Washington Golf Monthly

My first recollection of golf came when I was about five, and my father would return home after a Saturday round with his friends.

Suddenly the door of our tiny apartment would be flung open, and a cascade of clubs and expletives would follow as my father appeared, swearing (in that endearingly terrifying way of his) that he would never waste his time on such a stupid game again.

I knew nothing about what he had spent the day doing, but something about how miserable it had made him appealed to my own nascent, pre-kindergarten disposition to brooding and dread.

I wanted to know more but was advised by my mother to talk to him about anything – such as losing my tricycle that one day or the time I traded my first baseball glove for a beer coaster – rather than bring up the subject of golf to my father.

Well, due to the communications blackout, and that my father didn’t wind up with any clubs whose shafts could be straightened out enough to pass down to me, I was forced to initially learn the game on the mean streets of miniature golf. I got to be pretty good and one day - I was about 11 or 12 – I captured my first actual golf trophy by winning a hole-in-one contest at a local putt-putt course.

Thrilled clearly beyond what I should have been (the trophy had already started to turn green during the presentation), I fantasized at what I was certain would be just the first in a long line of trophies and awards in my newly discovered, and now perfected, passion.

Almost 40 years later, however, my trophy count remains at one. But at 12, who could know that talent and skill, also played key roles in becoming an accomplished golfer? And until I saw Arnold Palmer play on TV, who could know that dinosaur tails, windmills, clown noses, and a tin replica of the Eiffel Tower were not integral facets of the game? I decided it was time to take my own game to the next level: the Par 3 Chip ‘n Putt.

The Midway Par 3 was carved out of a Mississippi palmetto swamp halfway between Biloxi and Gulfport along the Gulf Coast. My family spent a lot of weekends there visiting my uncle and aunt. And while my uncle and father deposited their wives in front of illegal nickel slot machines, and themselves on a couple of bar stools at the Gulfport Elks Club, they first deposited me at the Midway Par-3.

There for about 3 bucks and $.50 for five cut balls, plus $.35 for a “putting ball”, I was in a world of my own making, defeating the likes of Palmer, Nicklaus, and Player, either straight up or in dramatic four-way playoffs.

From 8 in the morning until 5 or 6 in the evening, I played. I played through the heat and the bugs carding 5,6, and 7 rounds until my hands were raw from improper gripping and my back hurt from so much re-teeing. This was a central fact in those early days as a player. I had no formal lessons and was a pure “feel” player.

Unfortunately, I had the feel of structural steel on a cold day; consequently, through sheer repetition, I succeeded in grooving fundamental swing flaws into unfixable mechanical breakdowns that remain with me to this day. (I remember mimicking Palmer’s scrunched over, knock-kneed, and pigeon-toed putting style. But I kept hitting my toes, knees, and leg with the putter, so I abandoned that approach and returned to my open-stanced, open-faced, and acute- angle- to- the- target- line style of three-putting.)

My father and uncle helped the best they could. But after a day spent bellied up to the bar at the Elks, they were in no shape to give lessons in anything other than getting on and off the barstool without falling. What they taught me I was already well aware: the shank, the duff, and the whiff.

But it wasn’t a total waste. The smell of Seagram’s 7, heavy on their breath as they cheerfully dispensed their collective wisdom, provided me my first link between golf and alcohol, for which – and to this day- I remain in their debt.

Then there was the summer – I was about 17 – when I made the commitment to become a pro golfer. I bought a shag bag, collected a bunch of “smiley” balls too badly beaten to use on the course, and headed for the football field every day after school to feed my dream and further cement my mechanical errors. I came home sweaty, driven and focused, though for all that effort I still couldn’t break 100 on a regulation course. It is not your dreams that drive you past reality, but your illusions.

I was well into my twenties before I was finally able to break that 3-digit barrier, which occasionally required the help of a few strategic mulligans, and some enlightened interpretations of the Rules of Golf as they applied to unplayable lies. But I can still recall the shot that told me I was never, ever going to be a pro.

I was playing New Orleans’ City Park West Course, the longest of the three courses the city ran, and I had hit into a fairway trap, still a good 200 yards away from the green. I entered the trap with a two iron – a Johnny Revolta bladed two iron no less!

I took my stance and for reasons still unknown to me, I caught it pure. It flew out of the trap like sputnik, drew on a clothesline and carried all the way to the green. I then 3- putted for my bogey save, and my education of a golfer was complete.

I have realized since that trap shot was the result of the same unstable law of averages that govern, say, winning state lotteries, and not the result of design or the culmination of years of practice and learning. I’ve never again pulled off a shot as perfectly executed as that one, yet that’s the shot I often think about when I step – as is often the case - into a fairway bunker today. But nowadays I never take anything lower than a five iron there. (In a way, the logic is similar to refusing to buy a lottery ticket from the same place that sold the last winner.)

In short, I believe I can separate dream from fantasy now, and love the dream for what it is. The dream of playing well is different from the illusion of being a good player. Occasionally dreams do come true, and you can par or birdie that #1 handicap hole. Illusions never come true, and are what triple bogeys and bent shafts are made of.

And that may have been the lesson my father taught me long ago. That and to never overlook the 19th hole after (or during) a round of 18. It’s a good way to refresh your dreams or simply drown your illusions.