Golf Through a Childs Eyes

I was fortunate as a youth to grow up on a golf course. Besides the scenic view, there were numerous benefits to living on the golf course.

I could pull up a lawn chair and observe and take in all of the free golf lessons a young aspiring golfer could ever want. There were many good golfers worthy of picking up pointers, but the golfers that really stuck into my memory over the years were from the bad golfers.

Golf, while a serious competitive game, was taken a bit too serious by some. One of my first golf lessons was watching the turf fly further than the ball. While we have all done that once or twice, the real lesson was the four-letter vocabulary I learned that was used to describe such a shot. That lesson could then proceed to the more advanced lessons on how to ground your club hard into the ground. If it was a real special day I might even learn how golfers wrap their clubs around trees.

Living on the course I would also occasionally dive into the golf course ponds to pick up golf balls. This was very profitable as we could on a good night pick up 75 or more name brand balls and sell them the next day for 50 cents a piece. For a young kid I was rolling in the dough!

The best finds out of the ponds were not the golf balls. Once in a while we might pick up a club or two. But the grand prize of all was finding complete sets of golf clubs. Evidently for some golfers wrapping the club around a tree wasn’t enough. So if you’re that frustrated why not throw the club into the pond!
Looking back I think the guy that threw his whole set of clubs in at least had something right. He knew that he had to walk away from the game. Golf is meant to be fun! We all have bad shots or bad days but don’t let it eat you alive.

I still wonder how the guy that threw his whole set ever got home that day. I still have his keys!