Why Golf Is Important To Me.

It is not just that I like golf. No...golf is important to me. Here's why: my parents divorced when I was in grade school. And a short time later my father got a job that moved him out of the country to Scotland, which for a few years limited our communication to letters and phone calls. Then my sister and I were lucky enough to go and visit him one summer when school was out. I still have great memories of that trip but the one that most marks my time there was; my dad took me golfing. It is likely that he took us (my sister and two step brothers) golfing but I only remember him taking me. I even have a memory of trying to play out of a sand bunker etched in my memory some thirty years later. We did a lot of different things in Scotland that summer but for me this was important. I had spent time with my dad, I had developed some memories WITH my dad and I knew something more about my dad...he was a golfer. Though I did not know it then, I became a golfer that day. Not because golf came naturally to me, or that I demonstrated an amazing aptitude for it, but because my dad was a golfer and every son wants to be like his father. And even though I had no golf clubs back home in Houston, I flew back a golfer. I have thought about this for years now and I am convinced that this is true. Golf became important to me because my father was a golfer and my father; even thought he lived in Scotland; was important to me. The same remains true today, my dad still golf’s and golf is still important to me, because my father is still important to me. When I was separated from my father by the Atlantic Ocean golf made the distance shorter. And now that I am a father myself I am learning just how important it is to have something that I can share with my son, something that makes the distance of growing up in a United States that is, in many ways, much different from the one I grew up in shorter. As I think about my need for that kind of connection with my son I can't help but smile because...Kyle loves to golf with me as often as he can. And the only thing better than that are the times when we get to go golfing together with my father.

Happy Father's Day,
PB