My Golfing Days Come To An End

Most (maybe all?) of my readers don’t know that I went to college on an athletic scholarship. Well, for the first year, anyway. More about that in a minute. First I want to talk about golf.

I grew up playing golf. My dad was the club champion at his 9-hole sand green course in Hettinger a number of times, and he taught, and encouraged, his kids to play golf. Five of the seven did that.  One of the girls was more interested in dolls, or boys, and one of the boys, a left hander, replied when I asked him later why he never played golf, said, somewhat wistfully, “There were no left-handed clubs around.” I felt bad about that. I had never thought about it before. The rest of us just shared a couple different sets of cheap right-handed clubs. But we learned to golf, and some of us got pretty good.

I was the oldest, and started about age 10, pretty nearly 60 years ago. My early memories were dropping mom and the rest of the kids off at home after 8 o’clock Mass on Sunday morning, riding to the golf course with Dad in his 1959 Pontiac station wagon, which was about 20 feet long and had plenty of room for golf clubs in the back, where he met his three golf buddies, at least a couple of which had also been at 8 o’clock mass.

Then I stood on the tee box while they teed off. When they got to the first green, I was allowed to tee off and follow them around the course the rest of the way. I remember that once in a while, just to show off, I would hit a shot a little too soon and dribble a ball alongside them. That got me a stern warning from my dad when I got to it.

In high school, I took a bit of a summer job raking the sand greens once a week to soften them up, either after school on Friday or early on Saturday morning before the weekend golfers showed up. Before I got my driver’s license and inherited a 1949 Plymouth Special Deluxe from my Grandma Fuglie after she died, I rode my bike the three miles out to the course, to play golf or rake the greens. Joe Manning, who owned the golf course—with advice from my dad and a couple of his buddies, he had converted about 80 acres of his cropland, complete with shelterbelts, into a golf course when I was in grade school, I think—paid me five dollars, I think, to keep the greens soft, and he let me keep my clubs out there in a little room just inside the door.

Hettinger High School started a golf team when I was in high school. There were a few of us kids—Donnie Peterson, Don Clement, John Bartley, and a couple others whose names I forget now—who were good enough at it to be competitive with the kids from Mott, Lemmon and Bowman, the other small schools around us which had golf courses and high school golf teams. We had a few “tournaments” every year. Our coach was Jerry Pederson, the high school basketball coach (no need to say “boys” basketball coach—there was no girls basketball then) who met us at the course and played a round of golf with us after school every day.

We had arranged our school schedules so that our last class ended at 3 o’clock, so we could get in a “practice” round of golf before supper. Many, many years later I ran into Jerry in Phoenix, played a round of golf with him, and he told me the best thing he ever did was to become golf coach, because it got him out of school every day at 2:30 to get ready for his “team” to come to practice. And play a round of golf. All the other teachers had to stay until school let out at 4. He had in 5 or 6 holes by then.

So why am I telling you all this? Well, it’s fun to reminisce, but this was an eventful week in my life. My golf career came to an end.

I’ve been plagued with back problems for about 30 years, ever since a teenaged boy ran a stop sign and T-boned my car, causing some injury to my back. I’ve had 7 back surgeries over the years to deal with it, but as I get older, it’s become more troublesome again. But no more surgeries. Not at 78. Tylenol, Manhattans and a hot tub are my preferred treatment now.

But late last summer, on a trip to the course with my buddies Steve and Tracy to play 18 holes of golf, I only lasted 9. I was in so much pain I had to quit halfway through the round. It was nearing the end of the summer, so I just quit for the year.

Then this summer rolled around, and I didn’t even bring my golf clubs up from the basement. Until last week. They talked me into playing 9 holes at Tom O’Leary, and, as far as my back went, it wasn’t too bad. My golf game, was, however. But I agreed to play again this week, and we went up north to Pebble Creek to play another 9 holes.

We got to the first tee. Tracy hit. Steve hit. My turn. I had actually gone to the practice range and hit a few balls prior to our game, and it felt a little better. But when my turn came, I really yanked one into the trees on the left side of the fairway. I heard Tracy behind me say, “Hit another one.” I’ll never forget those three words.

I teed up again, hit one in the fairway (although not very far), and reached down to pick up my tee. And when I did that, I took a bad, bad, tumble.

Because, you see, in the last year I have developed another problem common to old men—balance. I walk with a skinny walking stick now to keep from swaying from side to side and even tipping over. It works.

But I didn’t have that stick with me there on the first tee box. And when I leaned down to get that tee, I tipped over and landed really hard on the middle of my back. Embarrassed, I jumped up and climbed on the cart and took off down the fairway to my ball.

But by the time I got there, I realized I was in so much pain I wasn’t going to be able to hit the ball. So I picked it up, followed them down to the green, watched them putt, and bid them farewell. But not before I said, good naturedly, “Gee, Tracy, thanks for telling me to hit another one.”  I drove back to the clubhouse, dropped off the cart, grabbed my clubs and drove home, where I took two Tylenol, mixed a stiff drink, climbed in the hot tub, soaked for half an hour, grabbed an ice pack and sat in my recliner until Lillian got home, ate a little supper, then spent the evening in the recliner with a heating pad on my back, which with assistance from some more alcohol, really, really helped.

That was Thursday. I woke up Friday morning and, nursing my sore back, drank coffee and pondered my future. Later that morning I reported to Tracy and Steve that my golfing days are over. Luckily, I told them, I fell onto some soft grass, but if it happened again. and I landed somewhere else, it could be dangerous. Rocks, or a cart path.

See, my balance is so bad that I even use my stick in the raspberry patch, just to make sure I don’t fall into the bottom of that scratchy pit.

Now, I don’t feel too bad about not playing golf because summer is coming to an end anyway. And this fall I might talk to my doctor about the balance thing. But frankly, I think it is just part of growing old, and I don’t want to take any more pills. The counter beside my bathroom sink already looks like a drugstore. So we’ll see. I did tell Steve and Tracy I’d meet them at the 19^th hole on occasion.

I’ll get some exercise walking and swimming at the Y. The swimming part is really good for my back, which hurts less today than it did Thursday. But I’m probably going to say goodbye to golf. Which brings me back to the first sentence of this story, which has gotten way too long: My college athletic scholarship.

As my senior year in high school came to a close, Coach Pederson sat me down and asked me where I was going to college. I said I thought Dickinson State, just 70 miles up Highway 22, because it was pretty inexpensive and close to home, so I could come home on weekends and see my girlfriend, who hadn’t graduated yet.

A few weeks later, he called me in again, “I’ve arranged for you to get a golf scholarship to Dickinson State. I told them I thought you were good enough to play on their golf team.”

And so I did. The scholarship was $75 per quarter (the small colleges were on the quarter system then). Now that doesn’t sound like much, but tuition was just $115 per quarter in 1965, so with a little money working as sports editor for the college newspaper and a little inheritance from Grandma (God bless you, Sadie Fuglie), I had enough to get through my freshman year.

Oh, and that golf team was quite something. Some of my teammates are names you’ll recognize, starting with Tracy Scott, Bill Ebeltoft, Wayne Mattern, Jerry West, John Campbell, and a fellow named Dennis Burr, who I believe went on to win the National All-Indian Golf Tournament one year. I don’t remember if we won any tournaments that year, though, but Tracy and Bill and Dennis might have been among the low scorers. And our coach was the legendary Harry Weinbergen. Remember him? The campus’s Wienbergen Gymnasium is named after him now.

I won’t bore you with the rest of my college career. This has gone on long enough. For now I’m just going to focus on walking straight, taking care of my back, and sharing a beer with Steve and Tracy on the 19^th hole from time to time.