Every Shot I Take (eBook)

CHAPTER 1

My Dad's the Pro

I had driven the ball into the trees. This was not uncommon for me. My father used to say, 'The woods are full of long hitters,' so Dad always knew where to find me. Someday, he promised, he would teach me to be a straight hitter, too. But at this moment we were looking for my ball among the tall pines of coastal Georgia, on a golf course owned by the Cloister Hotel at Sea Island, where my father was a teacher of golf -- and some other things, too. I was a guinea pig for a lot of his ideas, his best pupil in some ways, his worst in others.

We found the ball and I surveyed the shot and surveyed my father. He was never one to state the obvious, his eyes, even through his glasses, said all I needed to know: I was dead. The only things between my ball, sitting on a bed of pine needles, and the hole were trees and trouble. I took out a 3-iron, made a big, violent pass at the ball, and hit it cleanly and well. The ball rose quickly, passing one tree on the left, whizzing by another on the right, over a third tree, soaring into the daylight until it reached its apex. There, my ball made a soft righthand turn before landing 20 feet from the flagstick, which stood at attention 220 yards from where my father stood in awe.

'Of all the millions of people who play this game,' my father said to me, 'the two most exciting are Seve Ballesteros and you.'

I was a kid, a teenager. Seve Ballesteros was one of the best players in the world, maybe the best, a winner of the British Open and the Masters. He was one of my heroes.

Analyzed rationally, my father's praise was absurd, there was no sensible way to discuss Seve and me in the same sentence. But my father did, and in so doing he made me the golfer, and the person, I am today. Seve is no longer a hero to me, he's a colleague, a friend, a competitor. He's another guy I'm trying to beat. My late father, for whom I am named, is still my hero. He always was, he always will be.

I wish every golfer could have the kind of golfing education I had. I wish every child could have the kind of father I had. If someone could grant me those wishes, the world would be a better place, and scoring averages would be a lot lower, too. I miss him. Writing this book has made me miss him more. Today, people who follow professional golf in the United States know my name, and that's nice, but to me it was always my father who was the famous one. Everywhere we went, people knew him, people admired him, people respected him, and I knew at a young age that I wanted those same things for myself. As a little kid I'd say to people, 'My dad's the pro!' And they would nod and murmur, 'Yes, son, we know that.' The way he introduced me to golf is the way I plan to introduce my two children to the game. The way he taught me is the way I plan to teach them. The way he raised me is the way I hope to raise them.

One of the things I remember best about him is his hands. Dad had the most amazing hands. He never wore sunscreen or golf gloves and he was outside all day long, all year long, and he always had a golf club in his hand, so his hands were really dark...