Up & Down

He grabbed his golf bag and started toward the door. It was the only thing he came back for, just the clubs. Not to say goodbye to his kids and certainly not to take them with him. Not to say he was sorry. The goal was to move on from his second family to his third, and his clubs were the only thing he considered left behind. (He would, in fact, have his fourth and final family play the Narcissist’s National Anthem, Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”, at his funeral services one day. That, however, is a much longer story.) His wife grabbed the strap of the bag and held on for dear life. Hoping, somehow, that it would change everything. It was 1974, and the hopes of a Mexican American single mother of five living in South Dallas mid-White Flight were dim. In fact, “dim” might be generous. His exit to his concurrent family across town had her and her children up against a wall. So, she held on, but inevitably, he succeeded in leaving. He left with the clubs, the 15 of them headed out into the night leaving six souls in their wake.

That was how my father left. I was a baby, my brother was 10, my sisters were 14, 16, and 18. Of course, I don’t remember how all of that happened, but my sisters told me in fits and starts over the decades that followed. You have to coax a story like that out of people. They don’t want to tell you about the firsthand hurt, especially if it’s painful secondhand. The tale doesn’t make me sad or angry anymore, but it did for a long while, and the thought of playing golf was anathema to me. I grew up hating golf and all that it represented. My father’s favorite thing was automatically my least favorite thing.

It wasn’t until Tiger Woods arrived in the late 90’s that golf registered to me as anything of interest. Tiger, a sleek, powerful, athletic, brown man dominating and utterly remaking golf in his own image, got my attention. I was too short to be like Mike, but damn, I wanted so much to be like Tiger. Still, as a young cook, I didn’t have the time or money to play.

Things stayed that way until I met my wife, Leah. And, by extension, my future father-in-law, Dan Wilson. Confident, sharp, charismatic, and funny, he had served as CEO for a couple of corporations back when being a CEO meant you had climbed your way to the top. Back in the day, there were no self-proclaimed C-levels of start-ups, just a vertical climb strewn with the bodies of the people you’d bested on the way up. He had been an avid athlete in his youth, playing tennis and running races like The Bay to Breakers in San Francisco. Rotator cuff issues had abruptly stopped his fascination with tennis, so golf occupied most of his non-working time. I didn’t meet him until he was more or less retired. On one of our trips to visit Leah’s family, he invited me out to his home course in North Barrington, about 30 minutes north of Chicago. I accepted the invite, but my golf game was non-existent. He must have said, “You can drop by me,” about 18 times that day as I sprayed golf balls like a t-shirt cannon during halftime of a basketball game. He shot a tidy 78. Was it humiliating? Certainly. I think he wanted to see what came out of the drubbing.

Dan Wilson, the author’s father-in-law.

I started practicing. The only thing I wanted was to be better, and by extension, not be embarrassed to swing a club. The gym rat in my blood got fired up, and to Dan’s credit, he encouraged my hunger. He was constantly trying to improve his own game, and his basement walls were lined with testaments to just that. Putters (SeeMores, Scotties, Bettinardis), wedges (Callaways, Vokeys, Clevelands), irons set (Pings, Mizunos, Titleists), and all manner of woods and drivers were arranged neatly in a homemade hitting bay. I started receiving bi-annual stick shipments, part of the Wilson Family’s “New to You” Program. The first package was a set of White Dot Ping ISI’s with the high toe. They were beautiful and got a constant workout down at the range. After those were some Mizuno MP 57’s, a host of well-worn Vokeys, an early Bettinardi blade that I still carry from time to time. They were made of steel, but to me, they may as well have been solid gold. By then, I had made sous chef and had a little time and a few dollars to play on Mondays, my day off.

I was grateful to my benefactor and wanted to show him he’d made a wise investment. He would regularly check in on my progress. We grew closer, and I saw him as a role model and guide. Leah and I visited her parents at their new digs in Scottsdale during the holidays, and we’d play a couple of rounds at their club, Desert Forest. Constructed in 1962, the Southwest’s first desert course ever built, its members were captains of industry and a few pros. For instance, I once met Aaron Baddeley in the short game area, and a former CEO of Kellogg’s played his rounds with Prov1’s imprinted with the smiling visage of Tony the Tiger. The place was 100 percent about the game. There is no swimming pool, no tennis courts, just Golf Valhalla lined with Saguaros and rimmed with a stark and baron beauty. Eventually, my game caught up with Dan’s, and I beat him. He was unmoved, “Well, Andy, if you can’t beat a 70-year-old man, then who can you beat?”

If I’m being honest, there was only one person in the world I wanted to best at golf. Unfortunately, he left us in 1974 and died just when I had started getting serious about the game. It’s a childish thought: You can show someone your worth with a game. Silly, I know, but people struggle to let things go. I know I do. My tenuous and spotty relationship with my father had always plagued me, but time, love, children and fulfillment has helped that wound become a scar.

Dan passed a few years back from a long fight with cancer. He was as close to a “Dad” as I ever had and there’s not a round that I don’t exit 18 green thinking “I should call Dan.” He taught me to love the game, and I am indebted to him. In reality, he taught me many things, but he mostly allowed me to let some things go.

Golf, like life, is about redemption. No rounds or lives go perfectly. They all have their good and not-so-good moments. In fact, sometimes they start with absolute disaster, but the whole thing is about what you do with what you’re given, not knowing if it’s all going to be ok. How do you recover? How do you move on? Can you make things right or at least not make them worse? That’s the gift Dan gave to me. The perspective to see “now” and to be grateful for it, even when it is not ideal. Sometimes, even when it’s an honest-to-goodness clusterfuck, unfortunately, the weight of life is unlike the weight of golf. Once you take off the shoes and put the clubs in the car, you are free to consider what you might do better next time out. Life is for keeps. The good news: In life, unlike golf, we don’t have to be alone to figure things out. Sometimes, people show up to help and they make it all worth the journey.

Author - Andy Gonzales is a NewClub Atlanta Honour Member. He lives in the Lake Claire neighborhood with his wife and two twin boys. He is the Chef and Owner of The Companion and a crafty 4.3 handicap with a prodigious wedge game.