Who remembers their first time...

[Mark Molyneux]

... on a golf course?

Just because I'm feeling nostalgic, I wanted to share this with the group. In April of 1961, I was 11 years old. I had hit balls at a golf range (Tom Gola's) but never on a real golf course. That's partly because in Philly you had to be 12 to play on the munis AND you didn't pay a golf pro or a kid in the shop. You paid a Fairmount Park police officer. They were the cops in blue and white (not red and white) cars but they were cops and in my preadolescent mind, I had loads of irrational beliefs like I could probably walk out on Walnut Lane GC and shoot 70 or that lying about my age to a cop could net me 3 to 5 years in county detention.

Anyway, I was feeling bold so I took my $1.25 to Walnut Lane, walked up to the little shack where the Park Guard sat, stretched up like the opposite of what you did to pay kids' prices for movie tickets, and paid. The guy never even batted an eye.

So I turn to walk to the first tee with a tartan plaid bag filled with my dad's MacGregor Tourneys that he won in an East Falls event some time in the 1940s. I even remember the putter was a Billy Hiner blade. There's this huge guy standing on the first tee swinging his left handed driver. He looked like he knew what he was doing so I wanted to avoid him but he called me over and asked if I'd like to play along. I was scared to death. The I realized (and this will probably only matter to people from Philadelphia), this wasn't just some big guy. This was Bill (Wee Willie) Weber, a kids' show host on TV back when TV meant one of three channels in black and white (okay and 50 shades of gray). Think Mr. Rogers but much bigger and a different sweater. He shook my hand and we were off. I didn't shoot 70 but Wee Willie never said a single word that was less than encouraging. For 18 holes, I had a feeling in my heart like if I were playing today with Phil Mickelson. I kept the scorecard.

I always keep scorecards, which is how I know that I've played 659 different courses in the ensuing years. When I was about to play #500 in October 2008 (Okay it was Bala CC.), I wrote to Wee Willie, who was in his late 80s to tell him that we had played together many years ago and his manner, his encouragement meant so much to me that I've always tried to grow the game by playing with everyone and anyone, while encouraging them to shoot their best... and more importantly to enjoy themselves. He wrote me back. In October 2008, I was going to turn 60 in a month. Wee Willie told me how nice it always is "to hear from one of the kids". He passed away a couple years ago. As one of the kids, I miss him.

MarkMx

[Nigel Islam]

Great story!

[Sam Morrow]

First time I was on a course and played was the now defunct Texas Par Golf Academy in southwest Houston. It was a range and par 3 course, it was a great place for beginners and kids and I wasn't allowed to graduate to a big course until I could prove myself on the little one. My Dad and I played one afternoon after school and wouldn't you know I parred the first hole! I was hooked.

My first time on a real course I holed out from 100 yards for par on the 17th hole.

[Tommy Williamsen]

I was 9 years old in 1956.  My Dad, who at the time never really played golf, said one day, "Let's go play some golf."  We didn't have any clubs so he went to some second hand store and bought two sets of wooden shafted clubs.  We lived on Staten Island and went to La Tourette Golf Course.  I was dumbstruck by the green color and the ribbon of fairways dotted with bunkers and the grass on the greens. I was convinced the grass it was fake it was so perfect.  I never hit a practice shot until I got to the course.  It was late on a summer weekday and no one was on the course so we took our time.  I thought it was the most fun anyone could ever have.  We only played 9 holes but when I got home I needed a nap I was so tired.  I think it was a year or so before my next outing so I savored that day and the time with my Dad until I went again.  Fortunately I had many other days on the course with my Dad but there was nothing like the first day for sheer joy.

[Tom_Doak]

I was ten years old and we were on a family vacation at Sea Pines Plantation, Hilton Head.

I think my dad chose to take us out on the Sea Marsh course for my first round because they told him it was the easiest of the three, but imagine my upset when finding that the tee shot from the men's tee at the first hole required a 100-yard water carry!  The forward tee required no carry, but like any 10-year-old boy, I was not too happy having to play the same tee as my mom.

And you wonder why I don't like to build water hazards?

[V. Kmetz]

That last bit is funny Tom.

I suppose there was some inexorable pre-destiny for me to become enmeshed in the Game.  I grew up literally across the street and on top of a 40 foot bluff overlooking a driving range.  The range also contained a wonderful, classic type MiniGolf courses (you know, with the spiral tire, a ramped, water jump, a castle with a moat and all sorts of mechanical wonderment here and there).  

How much the picnic atmosphere of those tower lights, telephone pole nets and yardage targets ablaze in the summertime evening off our porch has influenced me, cannot be adequately stated.

That range and the near-mystical delight of that Minigolf course and the fact that from the first moment they let me crap alone, my father's Golf magazines were the first literary experience, made for important proteins in my golf-DNA.

But on the course itself, I only had to go up the street two miles to Danbury's oft-conversed Richter Park, where I never played, but scouted for golf balls with my father in the voluminous woods which border that acreage.  

Because of scouting at Richter and its mountain forests, scenic reservoirs and valley glens, I looked at golf as "big," "brawny," and something incredibly hard to do, without losing a golf ball.

cheers

vk