One of the wonderful things about playing Regional tournaments is that the players make friends with fellow golfers from across the country. Year after year they play with many of the same boys and will no doubt continue to see them at tournaments through College – or at least as long as the game provides more joyful challenge and opportunity as opposed to becoming an expensive grind.
Every year we have been up to Pinehurst, NC for this tournament Rob has hung out with a boy from MA and it makes my heart happy to see this friendship.
We played the final day with another boy and his daddy caddy that we played with last year too. I remembered him specifically as he was a subject in last year’s blog entry for this tournament. I had described him as a Marine storming Omaha Beach between holes to make up for the chronic amount of time he would spend coaching his son through every line, shot and break.
Tournament officials were being very strict with pace of play this weekend and I worried that I and the grandfather caddying for the third boy in our group would suffer sprinting from hole to tee in the sun. Indeed, as we left hole 1 he said: It looks like we’re behind already!
Fortunately, as the round played out, it appeared that he had mellowed somewhat.
Yesterday, wanting to rehash the first round with Rob, Max asked me to go through the holes shot by shot – where did the drive go? Greens in regulation? How many putts? What!!!?
So today I took stats for the first time (and frankly can’t believe we haven’t been doing this forever). If this was a game of just driving and putting, Rob would be pretty good!
He improved on yesterday. Always a good thing.
We look forward to next year and all the growing, mellowing, tallying and building that will happen before then.
