I might owe my friend KayJay an apology in about 40 years when he is my age.
KayJay is a 10-year-old gem of a boy and one of my newest golf buddies. His mom and tutu thought that it might be a good idea for him to get out of a house full of women for a few hours every week, so after a day at the beach I figured we would give golf a try.
What could possibly go wrong?
We spent plenty of hours whacking balls around the yard before he moved away about a year ago, but he wasn’t ready for a real game anyway.
The first time I took him with me was when he was around 8 years old, and he did doughnuts with the golf cart. I tried again a few months later and he got lost on the beach for about 10 minutes and emerged with a Survivorman-style video on my phone. He probably hit the ball eight times before losing interest.
Things change fast in a young man’s life, and last week he hit the links with a purpose.
Sure, he chased a few chickens thinking that if he caught one he would be able to take it home, but he hit every shot from tee to green. We played for five hours because we let all of the real players play through. That leaves plenty of time to talk about life, which is the real purpose of the exercise anyway.
After collecting gift balls in the parking lot from all of the friends he made on our adventure, the boy made sure to tell me that we need to get to the course earlier next time.
He even wanted to play the forward tees after seeing them referred to as the ladies’ tees on the scorecard. That was a conversation we would never be able to have while he was whooping me at Mario Kart.
He might change his mind about the game and ask to go hiking or throw rocks at cars or something else on Tuesdays. The more I think about golf, the more I think that might be better for him.
It is such a frustrating pursuit, one that you can’t love without hating. One of my regular partners just logged his 100th round in the last year after never picking a club up before.
When his driver goes awry, which it does, you can throw his streak into the weeds with his ball. He hates it and grows sullen until his next flushed shot holds the green.
I assume that the professionals who grind through the U.S. Open have the same thoughts, but they aren’t handing a starter some cash to pay for more abuse the next day.
But that’s the allure of the pandemic’s favorite game. We always come back.
For all of the moments of agony, golf teaches valuable lessons in humility, honesty, cooperation and patience. The class is held in some of the most beautiful tracts of land on the planet, and Oahu offers some of the best. For every Ewa Beach Golf Club or Turtle Bay Palmer, we have five muni courses and other inexpensive outstanding layouts like Olomana Golf Course or ragged but fun Hawaii Country Club, where the soundtrack is music from nearly every golf cart and the laughs that come with it.
If my young friend sticks with it, he will learn that some of the best holes on the island are owned by the city. No. 13 at Ewa Villages is one of the hardest par 5s around, and Ted Makalena and Pali feature the longest par 4s anywhere. Add in Robin Nelson’s nice work on West Loch and the possibilities are endless.
I am optimistic we can keep it going because the boy is off to a good start on two fronts. He is a wiz at math and counted every stroke for both of us, even though I skew more toward Donald Trump than Barack Obama when it comes to score-keeping. He even got his first taste of frustration that has sent more than one set of clubs to a watery grave. His best shot was a 3-iron into the water on the ninth hole at Bay View.
“Oh, FUDGE,” he screamed. “Oops, I didn’t mean that, but it could have been a really bad word. That was my favorite ball. It was purple!”
Welcome to golf, kid.
So, if you find yourself tooling around timeless (I pray) Kahuku Golf Course in 2062 and see me trying to do a Dave Shoji and break my age and KayJay attempting to shoot the temperature, feel free to ask him how much money and stress he has poured into this silly game.
If he answers with an F-word, order me to apologize immediately.
