A Little Slice of Fife – Part 1

What is it about golf?

By Marshall Carder

One senses a magical anticipation just before a round of golf. It’s much like that feeling you had as a child on Christmas Eve, wondering what your presents would be, hoping for the perfect gift, even seeing yourself holding it, and yet all the while knowing that you could end up with a bunch of ugly clothes from Grandma. And I guess that’s why the game has had such an allure to so many for so long. Because you know there’s such a thing as a perfect score, and you can hit every shot, if only in your mind. And even though the game might never deliver that perfect score, there are moments when the shots are timeless and brilliant and would be good on any course, in any tournament. That is the game’s hook. That is what keeps us coming back.
    Golf is also about being together. Solo walks on the links have their merit and beauty, but somehow playing golf means being with your friends, your family. and that straggling single who seems like an old pal by the final green. It is a time-encapsulated journey of its own where dreams can be reality, sometimes nightmarish, but which in the end bonds people through the shared passage and mutual conquest of those 18 holes. Because it does not matter in the end what the score is. Everyone in the group has finished the test, each having once again exposed his or herself completely to the others, and to the gods, for the sole purpose of putting a ball into a hole.
    For non-golfers the idea is akin to a madness. The golf widows of the world can’t possibly understand what drives a person from a warm house out into the driving wind and rain, and across the globe to play a silly game, only to return humbled and mumbling. But the game is literally and figuratively the ground that brings people to find humility, empathy, compassion, triumph, and joy, and best of all, each other. And all within the space of a few hours and a long patch of grass.

To confess, I did not grow up around golf. In fact, until I reached my mid-30s I essentially felt that it was a waste of time…and parkland, done mostly by out-of-shape older cats who rode around in funny carts. Yeah, there was Tiger Woods, you couldn’t miss him or not be awed by his feats. But he was a golf nerd dressed by Nike, and I would rather be at the beach on a Sunday afternoon with the Brazilians, thank you very much. My experience with the game was based on an annual round at the company charity golf shotgun event, where we tried to hit both the beer-cart and the ball as hard as we could, and an occasional dismal Christmas round with family.
    My family did have a history with the game. My mom’s dad was a founding member of his country club in Kansas City and my father, Brooks, had played since he was a 12-year-old in the early ’50s, when Arnie (Arnold Palmer) was King and Jack (Nicklaus) was still fat. But that is not the world in which I grew up. That was a faraway land full of saddle shoes and double knits that I was convinced would never include me. And then one Christmas round, it happened. I somehow came to the conclusion that golf would be a great way for me to spend time with my father. Up to that point, our interactions mostly revolved around watching sports on TV on Sundays and eating too much. Golf would mean weekly walks and hours together with nothing to do but share the time. Little had I known the extent to which the game can draw people in, and together.

Deciding that you are going to play the game and actually playing it are very different things. And to actually play the game well, having started as an adult, is nearly never done, despite what Bobby Jones said. In fact, just getting competent enough to not make a complete mess of the round requires a fair amount of dedication and practice. Everyone starts at the beginning, and if your desire is to play golf well, the beginning sucks. For some the game proves too much of an obstacle to learn, something like conversational Polish, while for others the challenge becomes an insatiable quest for improvement. It was the latter for me. I was in, hook, slice, and stinker.
    I began to play with Brooksie (our nickname for our father, Brooks Carder) basically every week. It proved to be the essential bonding catalyst we had been missing, a point of common ground upon which we could learn about each other. Although I did not have the typical childhood relationship with him that many people might envision – you know, Wally and Ward – I did have a tremendous love and respect for him that I hoped would grow. He and my older brother Bert had always found a shared joy in their mutual love for motor-sports, and they had spent a great deal of time together pursuing those, culminating in a trip to Milan for the Grand Prix, complete with a rented Ferrari. Golf seemed to offer this same opportunity for me, and the trip of a lifetime we would later conjure was a trip to play golf on the sacred land of St. Andrews, Scotland, complete with mounds of haggis for my father and plenty of ales for me. But in the beginning all I knew was that I wanted to learn the game because it would bring me closer to my dad, and that was plenty enough for me. As everyone who has ever known him will attest, Pops is a great person to learn from.


My father had retained a passion for the game since he was a youth, and he was a decent golfer, reaching a 7 handicap in his 40’s playing Sherwood Forest Golf Club’s course in Sanger, California. As a child, he had grown up playing Armor Fields in Kansas City, which he remembers as a sparse track with few trees, and has since succumbed to the developer’s shovel. He occasionally played at Swope Park, an A.W. Tillinghast design from the ’30s, which was the site of the 1949 Kansas City Open and still hosts golfers to this day. Almost six decades later, my father can still vividly remember the anticipation that he felt in junior high as he traveled to the course for a round with a pal. Such is the power of the game. Speaking of power, Dad learned golf from Ben Hogan by way of Hogan’s book Power Golf, which title Dad mostly interpreted to mean hit it hard. And he did, once carding a 350+ yard drive as a teenager, way before there was Bubba-long, much to the chagrin of the foursome playing in front of them – until they realized what he had actually accomplished.
    Dad recalls fondly the 1953 Kansas City Open, won by Ed “Porky” Oliver, as the first time he attended a professional tournament. US Open Champion Lloyd Mangrum was entered, which was a big deal for young Brooks. But he really loved Arnie, and he hated Fat Jack. And from those humble days, a lifetime of golf would follow. Over the next six decades my father maintained his connection with the game. Sometimes he played more, sometimes less, but he always played as a Golfer with a capital G. By the time I started playing with him, it was Torrey Pines and Tiger Woods. Different names and different places were sewn together by a lifetime’s passion for the game of golf. And now it had brought us together.

One of the worst parts of taking up the game of golf as an adult is that you invariably suck. In fact, you almost always suck so badly that every person on the course is better than you. Mind you, this game is humbling enough when you consider that even a scratch golfer can get whipped by a 10-year-old kid and a not-very-fit-looking 50-year-old lady on the same day. They can be that good, and the game is that humbling. So, every Tom, Dick, and 35-handicapper will offer you advice on every aspect of the game, because they are actually better than you…by far. And that sucks only a little bit less than the fact that you are going to lose every bet for the rest of your life unless you really learn how to play, because a whole new set of people have suddenly become part of your life who have a long history with the game. And although they stand to be on the winning end, your friends always do their best to help you improve and to get better. The game is that way.
    To complete the foursome with Brooksie and me, the golfers that emerged were two friends from childhood: Jared Greene (often referred to as JG, or “the little general”) and Christian Wells (sometimes shortened to Wells). JG and Wells are kind of polarizing opposites, soundly bonded in youth and love of sport and golf, who would probably never cross worlds unless it was in the bathroom line at the pub.

Brooksie and me, at the 3rd Hole at Torrey Pines
(He parred, and I birdied it that day!)

JG and me

Christian Wells and me

    Because the Old Course in St. Andrews is a long, long way from the Meadowlark Ranch, in more ways than one, golf and sport brought us all together. And together with Pops we began to play weekly, bi-weekly, or whatever we could get in. Mind you, this was not your granddad’s foursome. Jared’s smooth, smooth game, Wells’ mouth, Brooksie’s better sense, and my uncertainty about what was even happening. Wells would yell at me to keep up, and his best advice was to just keep your bag in order. JG always offered subtle tips that couldn’t possibly sink in for me because they were way above my level. And Brooksie, well…Dad was the constant tinkerer with a “new swing” for every round. His advice was constant and varied depending on the latest theory.
    So, this became our foursome, two younger cats from my childhood with whom I had not spent much time in years and my pops, whom I had not really gotten to know as well as I would have liked.

Copyright © 2014, 2020 by Marshall Carder Marshall Carder lives in Cardiff by the Sea, California. He is a father, a husband, and writes occasionally about things that inspire him. This story appeared originally on WordPress, posted on July 24, 2014.