Home Alone

There’s an old golf joke that’s popular in my family. Two men are playing a round together when one of them turns to the other and says, “Excuse me, but ‘why do you have four caddies? “The other fellow replies: “My wife wants me to spend more time with the kids.”

Telling this joke always draws a hearty laugh from my parents because it bears a distinct resemblance to our own household. There are four children, all girls, and our father loves to play golf. Our mother is an equally avid golfer. They have played golf almost every weekend for the past 37 years, from the time they met and married to their current retirement in Florida. Today, they play at Suntree Country Club near their home in Brevard County, and every conversation on they have seems to revolve around the country club, the recent tournament, which of their friends played terribly, and who owes whom five dollars. (They both have a bit of a gambling habit.)

Growing up, my sisters and I didn’t give two hoots about clubs, balls or what we viewed as those dorky-looking clothes.

Unless Mom and Dad could convince us to spend the day caddying for them (“slave carrying the clubs” as my sister Mary put it), the four of us grew up as weekend orphans to the game.

Let me clarify. ‘We weren’t orphans in the Charles Dickens sense: neglected, unwashed, hungry. “We were well cared for, well fed and very much loved. But come Saturday morning, the following routine unfolded like clockwork: My parents would be up and out the door by 8 or 9, the time we were rolling out of bed. They would play their round, have snacks and cocktails, and come home around 4, whereupon Dad would promptly head to the backyard and hit more balls into his practice net, paying us later to pick them up. Sunday, same thing. We were left to amuse ourselves-which was fine with us.

While golf rewarded my parents with relaxation and a shared passion, it gave us kids plenty of unstructured, unsupervised time. This seemed like a win/win situation.

Given our parents’ obsession with golf, most people seemed surprised to find that we had no interest in the game, sort of like finding out that a strict Amish couple was raising a gang of Hells Angels. “Do you play?” their friends would ask. “Nope,” we’d reply with a shrug. My older sister Mary theorizes that our lack of interest was generational. “Golf was something parents did, not kids,” she says. “And the kids that did play golf when we were young were precious nerds we didn’t like.”

Of my golf-crazy parents, Dad’s obsession came first. He grew up in small Midwestern towns, where his father instilled a passion for the game ill him at an early age. Dad was playing regularly at 10, later starring on his high school team. He debated turning pro, but played in college instead.

My mother grew up on the other side of the world, in Australia. Dad moved there in 1967, after college, to write a guidebook called Bachelor’s Guide to Sydney. (My mother laughingly refers to this book as How to Get On Top of What’s Down Under.) One of the first things he did was join the Bonnie Doon Golf Club near Sydney. He met my mother at a party there; after six months, they were dating and my mother was learning how to play. After another six months, they were engaged and my father was writing home to tell mother that he had met a very special girl who was “learning to play golf.”

“Smart girl!” his mother replied, being a golf widow herself.

And so my parents’ love affair began, quite literally, with golf. They married and moved to Phoenix, where Dad studied for his MBA while Mom worked at a bank. Then Dad got a job working for Libby’s, the canned goods company, and they relo­cated to London. My oldest sister, Claire, was born there; over the next four years she was followed by Mary, myself and Stephanie. When Claire was 6 weeks old, my parents brought her to St Andre’s with them; she took her first steps at Stoke Poges Golf Club, their home course near London. On her first birthday, a family friend glued thumbtacks to the soles of a pair of baby shoes as a joke. We still have a roll of pictures of her wearing them, clad in a diaper and clutching Dad’s 9-iron. The caption reads: BABY’S FIRST GOLF SHOES.

A family friend glued thumbtacks to the soles of a pair of baby shoes as a joke.

From London, my family moved to Puerto Rico, where Mary was born. They lived near the Dorado Del Mar Golf Club and would take Claire for long walks among the tees and greens using a baby leash. A year later, they moved to Louisville, where Stephanie and I were born. Dad was working in marketing for Brown & Williamson, the tobacco com­pany. His salary didn’t go far-especially with four young kids and a mortgage but he and Mom made it a priority to join the Audubon Country Club, conveniently located just down the street from our house. “Sometimes we had our electricity cut off,” my mother recalls, “but we were never late ‘with our club dues.”

As was their habit by now, my par­ents played every weekend, usually twice. Occasionally, they would pay a local teenager to watch us, or other moth­ers would share babysitting duties. The club had a com­petitive swim team, and we four girls became cham­pion swimmers. The third hole was near the pool, and when Tom and Dad came by, we’d run over and shout hello or wave from the shallow end after they called out to us. After seven years in Kentucky, Dad’s company transferred him to Brussels, where my parents joined the Bercuit Golf Club. “Golf was a great way to meet people,” Mom explained recently. “You make friends immediately with golf, because you have a common interest.”

During those years in Belgium, they cajoled us into coming to the club on week-ends. But playing with the ball washers, raking the bunkers and filling waxy cone cups at the watercooler stations got bor ing after about an hour. My parents were serious players (Dad was a 4-handicap, Mom was a 19), and our goofing around irritated them. They would send us to the clubhouse, where we’d eat croque monsieurs and practice our broken French on the local kids. If we were truly bored, we’d sit in the car and read or do our homework until they finished. When Claire was 10, they decided she was big enough to baby­sit her three younger sisters; from then on we went willingly to the course only if they offered to pay us for caddieing.

Once our parents stopped dragging us to the club, we suddenly had weekends free to do as we pleased. I could read in bed until 3 in the afternoon if I wanted, quickly jumping up and pretending that I’d been productive when I heard the key in the lock. On Sundays, when our classmates were in church (the only thing more boring than golf), my sisters and I made pancakes and went for walks in the woods together. Had there not been four of us, I doubt ‘I’ve would have enjoyed our free­dom as much. We were close Siblings (and still are), save for the fights, which sisters are apt to have. There was no one around to break them up.

When I was 14, we moved from Brussels to Tokyo. Claire left for college. Even though club memberships in Japan were astronomically expensive, my parents still joined a golf club, Glen Oaks Country Club in Chiba, about an hour’s drive from our home. Dad traveled for business a lot, but when he was in town, he and mom would play every weekend. Evenings found him on the roof of our apartment building, where he had installed a practice net. Mom met a group of expatriate wives at the club and spent weekdays playing golf with them.

The freedom my sisters and I, all teen­agers, discovered in Tokyo was even greater than in Brussels. The subway took us everywhere. We drank, smoked and were constantly getting in trouble, especially when nosy neighbors would mention to our parents that they’d seen boys climbing out of our window at 5 a.m.

I ended up in San Francisco for col­lege and lived there for five years before packing my suitcases and joining Claire, an advertising executive, in New York City. I landed an entry-level editorial job at Rolling Stone and lived the life of a young single woman in New York, dyeing my hair different colors and draging myself to the office after partying until dawn.

In 2005, after 10 years abroad, my parents retired to Florida. I visited them a couple of times at their new home, and wasn’t surprised to see that they had decorated the place in a sort of golfer chic. Antique clubs graced the walls, plaques and platters lined the shelves, and hokey old golf cartoons hung in the bathrooms.

Then, last summer, I found myself almost 30 and going through a painful breakup. My parents flew me to Florida scveral times to relax by the pool and recuperate. As usual, they went out both weekend days to play golf. Yet for the first time, instead of being content to be left alone, I felt lonely. I missed their chatter. I noticed that no matter how cranky my parents had been as they left for the course, they always came home happy, regardless of how well or poor they’d played. They were thoroughly enjoying their life together, a life I now recognized as one I wanted for myself: full of travel, adventure and a shared passion that kept them happy and occupied. They had evolved from golf nerds to good friends, and when 1 returned to New York, I missed them in a way I hadn’t as a kid. I realized I wanted to be closer to them.

Suddenly, I had an epiphany: I would learn to play golf.

I signed up for my first lesson at The Golf Club at Chelsea Piers. I figured I would be a natural, that on my next visit to Florida, my parents would admire my beautiful swing and show me off to their friends.

Despite my pedigree, I was stunned to discover that golf didn’t come naturally.

Yet despite my pedigree, I was stunned to discover that golf didn’t come naturally. Still, I was determined to go home for Christmas and to spend time with my parents on the course.

They, of course, were thrilled when I told them about my newfound interest. “If you practice, we can play in a father-daughter tournament next year,” Dad said excitedly. “We can go to an all-women’s golf camp together,” mom chirped.

When I told my sisters I was learning to play, Claire mocked me, saying that I was currying favor. But that wasn’t the case. I just wanted to have a common bond with my parents. They must have taken my plan seriously, because at Christmas, while my sisters received watches and cute sweaters, I got a DVD, Golf For Dummies, a pink Wilson golf glove and an electronic stroke counter on a key chain. I tried on my glove with forced glee, though I did admire how soft the material was.

Our plan was to play golf two days later, and as the tee time approached, I began to panic.l wasn’t sure I was ready to play a round. I was too nervous to play alone with them, so at the last minute, I begged Claire to join us. I thought my cropped pants and black long-sleeved T-shirt were preppy-appropriate, but Mom was aghast. “Here, wear this,” she said, shoving a collared shirt and a yellow sweater-vest with a SUNTREE logo at me. In the car she noticed my scuffed black Converse sneakers. “Oh, lord,” she groaned.

I’d love to report that w’hen I teed off, the clouds suddenly parted, bluebirds sat on my shoulders and 1 hit beautifully arced balls that landed softly on the green. But no. My shots dribbled along the ground; if there was water to be found, they found it; and my back hurt from “sticking my bottom out” 1 sprayed mud and grass and almost cried several times. At one point I considered bashing the golf cart to bits with my 6-iron. Sulking after a particularly awful drive, I huffed to my mother, “This game is SO annoying!”

“I know,” she said. “I often want to give up on it myself.” “So why do you do it?” I asked. “Habit, really,” she replied. “But also I love being outside, and I love the feeling of hitting the ball.”

I had to admit there was something to what she said.

The sun was out, the air was fresh and we saw gators, hawks and herons. We were enjoying one another’s company. Cries of “nice shot!” were heartfelt, and we laughed as my sister yelled out “Frap!” when she obviously wanted to use another word.

Toward the end of the round, as I was preparing to flub another pitch, Dad told me to try turning my shoulders as I swung the dub back. to and behold, the ball soared into the air, flying at least 150 yards. The rush of joy that came over me was astonishing. “Did you see that!” I cried excitedly.

My score for nine holes was 72, but I felt as if I’d shot a 36. For the first-time in nearly 30 years, I saw what my parents loved so much about the game. It wasn’t the cocktail part, as nice as that was. It was the satisfaction of hitting even one perfect shot, the one you barely feel leave the clubface as your ball goes soaring down the fairway It was about being outdoors in a beautiful place with the people I love, rather than sulking or rebelling or staying in my room to watch TV I felt healthy, happy, and in an infulitely better mood than I’d been when I left for the course.

“You’ll get better with a few more lessons,” my parents assured me. Their encouragement has inspired me to stick with golf. That’s why I’ve spent the past year working on my game: because I understand its unique abilily to brlng-and keep-people together. After all these years, the orphan has finally adopted golf.