A farewell of sorts

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When I failed miserably to qualify for the U.S. Open on Monday, one of my friends consoled me. "You work for a living now," he said. I guess that's right. It doesn't make it any easier to swallow, though.

John Maginnes

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I had wanted to write something funny about the qualifier like I did last year. I wanted to write about the fact that I was surrounded by kids with big dreams and their whole futures -- both in and out of the game -- ahead of them. They were everywhere, too, with their tube sox pulled up like the '82 Lakers. It would have been funny, but the time and the place were wrong.

This qualifier at the Duke Golf Club, a course that I grew up playing as a kid, brought back more nostalgia than I anticipated. While walking those familiar fairways in the shade of tall Carolina pines, I was taken back to the days when dreams filled my head and 40 seemed ancient. I was repeatedly jerked back to reality by the unfamiliar golf swing that now possesses my body like a fungus where once music was born.

Nearly every Saturday morning when I was a junior golfer my father would get the first tee time and my brother and I would join him and one of his friends. We had to play quickly and we did. We had to behave and we did. We looked forward to it all week. Later, in high school, I picked the driving range by day and washed carts at night. So my trip to the Duke Golf Course on Monday was more than a failed attempt to qualify for the U.S Open. It was a farewell of sorts, not in a sad way but a farewell nonetheless.

While I was churning through the memories -- and the rough -- I was brought back to the things I miss most about the game that once occupied every waking second of my day. It inhabited my dreams, as well. I miss the aspirations of that boy trailing behind the older men with his Bobby Jones bag. Moreover, what I miss now extends into a more philosophical place.

It is easy to say that you miss competition because in the real world the waters are often too cloudy to navigate. What I actually miss most about the game, though, is the rhythm and the motion. Golf at the highest level is more than scores and results. Those are merely a way of determining the size of the check. But competitive golf is felt and it moves in a way that only those who have sustained it can appreciate. Stepping away brings a type of clarity that may not otherwise exist.

The game moves at a different pace and occupies a different corner of the mind for the best players in the world. The ability to not just hit the fairway but to place the ball in the fairway at precisely the right distance and angle to attack is an element that can only be experienced. So is the feeling of a shot that leaves the club in a manner so predictable that you know from contact it will be spectacular. Good players play the game; great players maneuver through it while putting together the pieces of a puzzle.

Mostly, though, I miss the feeling you get when you overcome your fears and emotions and perform better at your highest level at the most important moments. That feeling is unmatched because no matter where you are in the game, there have been too many times it has gotten the better of you. When you finally get tired of chalking things up to a learning experience and unload the baggage that comes with it you are free, if only for a day.

It is not often in life that you get a blatant reminder of just how lucky you are. I was slapped in the face with that realization while walking the Duke course on Monday, deep in memories, with a close friend carrying the bag and picking on me with every bad shot. I probably needed it. We all do from time to time.

I was slapped in the face by a few tree branches and a divot or two as well, but now I am just complaining. On the ride home from the obligatory postmortem that included wine in a courtyard with more friends and lots of laughter I heard an old Garth Brooks song. It somehow seemed appropriate as I pulled into my driveway singing the chorus at the top of my lungs: "much too young to feel this damn old."

After school today I am taking my children to the driving range. They are the right age, 9 and almost 7, and I hope they will find a place in their hearts for the game that has taken me all over the world and back again. It still does to this day, although armed now with a microphone and Microsoft word.