First love. Fell in love with the first golf course I ever stepped on -- Inwood CC, Long Island, and to this day I'm not sure if what I fell in love with was Inwood or just A golf course.
From then on I would gaze out of the back seat car window and see imaginary golf holes everywhere. When I started caddying at Woodmere Club on Long Island I quickly became enchanted with the old layout of the place, before RTJ's early 1950s renovation of the grounds, and by the end of that first summer looping had effectively reconstructed many of the old holes and would often point them out to the people I was caddying for -- who probably thought I was nuts, but since I didn't care i never bothered to ask them. It was immediately obvious to me that a lot of people were not interested that the old 18th green sat in the middle of what became the parking lot. Hey, it was important to me and told me a lot, not only about the course but about traffic patterns and club utilization if the old small parking lot sufficed back in the 1920s.
Part of the reconstruction process of the course in my head was hindered by housing and a fence that had subsequently gone up on land the club had sold off. But I could still readily see the old teeing grounds, bunkers and green fill pads in the ground.
Strange world we occupy.