The Thrill of the Chase

My Long-Enduring Obsession with Breaking 80.

I say this humbly, but at 10 years old, I was an athletic superstar.

For me, fourth grade was the stuff of pre-adolescent dreams. As a football player, I was the “two-way” quarterback at Roxboro Elementary School recess. As a baseball player, I was one of the few (and widely renowned) local kids who could clear the right field fence at Forest Hills Park. As a basketball player, I threw a behind the back pass. In. A. Game. 

Pretty fucking impressive, right? 

Sadly, like the 10th at Augusta, things went downhill quickly from there. 

Over the next five years, as my body slowly transformed from cucumber to eggplant, my visions of athletic grandeur faded rapidly. In eighth grade, I transferred from my public school (an arts magnet) to an all-boys private prep school. When I arrived, I went from two-way to third-string quarterback in the span of half a practice. In basketball, my flair for the dramatic was met frigidly by my new coaches, who permanently benched me for trying (and wildly failing) to throw a pass off my elbow on a fast break. Baseball was the most crushing of all, as I discovered my days were always numbered as an increasingly plump, left-handed, weak-armed second baseman. In 9th grade, morning weightlifting sessions became mandatory for all three sports. By 10th grade, I was writing for the sports page of the student newspaper. 

However, at this sports-obsessed school—where the prevailing belief was that edification of all manners occurs most naturally in the context of athletic endeavors—quitting was not so simple. Regardless of aptitude or desire, every boy was required to engage in an extra-curricular athletic activity each fall, winter, and spring. 

What was a blossoming eggplant like me to do? Like generations of eggplant-men before me, I turned to golf.

In the spring of 2000, as my final baseball season wound to a thud, at my dad’s insistence, I got my first job caddying at Cleveland Heights’ Oakwood Club (now a Walmart Super Center). At the same time, my mom and then-stepdad joined a new club, which happened to have—in my opinion—one of the Best Golf Courses No One Has Ever Heard Of (Kirtland Country Club in Kirtland, OH). That summer, I spent my mornings looping, my afternoons on a driving range, and my evenings playing nine holes. Whatever downtime I had I spent mostly watching golf on TV. Tiger’s birdie putt on the first playoff hole at Valhalla is especially scorched in my brain.

In three months, golf had gone from afterthought to obsession. All of the energy I previously channeled toward football, basketball, and baseball was now focused on golf and golf alone. More specifically, it was focused on one thing: breaking 80.

From a long before the time I could break 90, the number 79 took on a mythological significance for me. As I absorbed the golf chatter that surrounded me—from the caddyshack to the men’s grill—the guys that could break 80 seemed to be members of an unspoken fraternity. From the perspective of a wide-eyed 15-year-old, they had what I can only describe as an aura. They just seemed a little more at home on and around the golf course than everyone else. Maybe it was the sense of loss and embarrassment I felt from flaming out of other sports, but I wanted desperately to feel those guys’ same sense of belonging and ease.

Over the next eight summers, as life changed rapidly for me, the quest to break 80 was the rare continuous thread. At first, I tried to act the part. I dressed like a good golfer, walked like a good golfer, fixed my pitch marks like a good golfer, pulled pins like a good golfer, squatted to read greens like a good golfer, and even bought a set of heavy blades like a good golfer. Except I wasn’t a good golfer. In fact, I was a pretty bad golfer.

When mimicry failed, after a couple summers, I tried force of will. During this stage of my golfing life, each round felt like a psychological combustion oven. I swung hard, tried to do things that vastly exceeded my skillset, and most consistently, threw tantrums. I’d throw clubs, curse myself, and always make sure that everyone in my group understood that this was the worst I had ever played. I became so intolerable, my mom once made me take my clubs off our cart on the fourth tee box and walk myself back to the clubhouse “before I ruined the round for everyone else.”

Though my inept quest to break 80 generally left me feeling miserable during this time, it never diminished. In fact, the more of myself I invested in the quest to break 80, the more important it seemed that I eventually succeed. (At 17, the sunk-cost fallacy eluded me.) Finally, the summer before my freshman year of college, my moment arrived. One Monday in August, not long before I was set to ship off for a new chapter of life, I arrived at Oakwood by myself for a quick staff-day spin around the track.  

I played the back nine first, of which I have no specific memories. I know that I turned in 42—a good but not remarkably good side for me at the time. The round doesn’t come into focus in my memory until Hole #2 (my 11th of the day). Like many Ross tracks of its era, Oakwood was built on a small plot of land in a densely populated suburb. For the most part, it rewarded angles and position over distance. The 2nd hole was different though. It was for Big Boys; a 430-yard par 4 that forced a drive off an angled tee box over the widest part of a ravine and up on to a slanted, elevated fairway. From there, players were left with a blind second shot—typically with a long iron or more in hand—to a deeply sunken green (the ravine menacingly close to the right edge of the fringe). I’ve always struggled with visual intimidation in golf. The harder a hole looks, the harder I make it. #2 was as hard as they came for me.

I remember lofting a good but softly struck drive that floated over the ravine and into the middle of the perched fairway, a touch under 200 yards from the green. This is the point where my memory sharpens. I’d found this fairway so infrequently in the past, the mere act of eyeing down the flagstick had me ecstatic. With my long-since retired chrome Taylor Made 7-wood in hand, I took what to this day remains one of the purest golf swings I’ve ever made. The ball leaped effortlessly off the club face—a sensation I now know is called “compression”—and shot into the sky. I know many people hate blind approach shots, but I find them thrilling. There is no suspense quite like the long walk to see where a well-struck ball finished. Seeing the softness with which that 7-wood fell out of the sky, the top of the flagstick barely to its right, my heart pounded. When at last I reached the precipice of the slope that fed down to the green, I nearly fainted at the sight of my ball just half a putter’s length away from the cup. I (quite nervously) tapped in my birdie and floated to the next tee. The next hour is a blur. A great 9-iron out of the left rough on to the 3rd green. A pounded drive to flip wedge territory on the par four 6th. Cutting the corner to set up an easy par on #8. Hanging on for dear life on the 240-yard, par three 9th. 

42+36=78.

Victory.

It’s neither a mystery nor a surprise that my first sub-80 round came while playing alone. I’ve since learned (and frequently forgotten) that in golf, my desire to seem good is the greatest inhibitor to being good. On my own, apart from the fear of embarrassment and desire to impress, at last, everything clicked.

That was nearly 20 years ago. Since then, golf’s role has changed dramatically in my life. In college, golf remained an obsession, but it also became more fun. My university had a great and sparingly used course with an all-you-can-play student rate of $120 per semester. In September, October and April, my fraternity brothers and I played nine holes before dinner seemingly every day (I’m sure it was less frequent than that, but let a now early-middle-aged man have his precious memories). After college, I moved to Chicago and retired from the game for eight years. Golf was expensive and time-consuming during a period in my life when I had little money and less time. I was working a full-time job, travelling nearly every week, and pursuing comedy with every spare waking moment I could. Eventually, in 2015, as my comedy pursuits settled into a more manageable schedule, with a car at my disposal and more money on hand, the game came back to me. That was five years and about 250 rounds ago. 

While my attitude toward golf has matured and improved tremendously, I’ve never lost my focus on breaking 80. I know that it’s en vogue among the woke golfing world these days to eschew scorekeeping as missing the point, but I respectfully disagree. While I’ve abandoned any hope or expectation that I am or ever will be a good golfer (and also long-since learned that actual good golfers toss 79s into the fire pit), scores matter to me. Especially ones that start with a seven.

If golf ultimately offers us a window into ourselves, then for me, golf is a lifelong instructor in the art of embracing—rather than succumbing to—goals. For me, fulfilling that goal means coming down a back nine with success in sight, resisting negative thoughts, and allowing my mind and body to work together. It happens rarely. Last year, I shot 80 six times and broke it once (*note, sub-80s only count if the course rating is above 70). 

I recognize and appreciate golf’s many magnificent qualities besides the numbers that show up on scorecards. But I can hike trails to see beautiful vistas and walk to my corner bar to shoot the shit with the fellas. More than two decades after my immersion into golf, the thrill of the chase still seizes me. I am determined to overcome my worst qualities, in golf as in life. The close calls and near misses are an invitation to try, try, try again. Because when it all comes together, nothing feels better. 

I’m not sure that will ever change. Frankly, I hope it doesn’t.