Golf Fore the Good

If it had been Mardi Gras or the Macy’s parade or a home coming celebration, she would have been enthroned on a float. She would have had a crown upon her head and a banner slung diagonally across her chest proclaiming her sovereignty, and she would be graciously effecting the queen’s wave. Instead, she sat, ensconced at a luncheon table at the Ladies’ Golf Invitational. It was no less of an event to observe.

I could not help but be touched by the site of the attention heaped upon her. I was honored to merely sit and watch as my friend - an octogenarian and multi-time winner of numerous golf championships - held court that day.

While she sat at a great, round table in a room filled to capacity with area golfers, players milled about. Above the din, over and over again, someone would call her name and she’d look up and respond with a smile and wave. More than a few golfers made their way through the crowd to give her a warm embrace and fond hello. To each and every one, she would respond, “we’ll play someday soon.”

There are hardly enough days in anyone’s lifetime for her to play all the golf that was promised. Still, it is a fraction of the golf she has already played. Over the years, she had very likely played a round with nearly every golfer in the room that day. Certainly, there were few against whom she had competed and failed to emerge the victor at least once. There was so much admiration shown for her, no celebrity could ever have been more warmly met or more respected.

I did not know her at the peak of her game, but her golfing skills are legendary. These days, she moves a bit slower and her balls fly shorter and still she remains a competitor. Earlier that day, I had seen evidence of her competitive spirit, there at the Ladies’ Invitational four ball golf tournament.

The day had dawned wet and blustery with a tropical storm warning and worsening conditions on the horizon. Ladies arrived with rain gear and without, but few were devoid of complaints about the weather. My friend said not a word about the conditions, yet wore two hats, bore several jackets and rain pants so large I thought I gust of wind might inflate them and I’d watch her rise up and balloon down the fairway. She uttered not one word of complaint or pessimistic thought. She prepared only for the round to be played.

No sooner had we teed off then the heavens opened in earnest, a heavy soaking rain that came in torrents. Undeterred, or perhaps made more determined, I watched as my friend, her game face on, played so far below her current handicap that I could do little but smile with excitement for her, and nearly cry with the realization of the pure, true grit she was exhibiting under the current conditions. She demonstrated a caliber of play I had not witnessed from her since difficult personal circumstances had kept her from the course most of one summer a few years back, a state of affairs from which her game had never quite recovered.

She holed out each par with an imperceptible smile and moved as quickly as her aged legs would allow, on to the next hole. She was a sight to behold, three-plus decades older than myself, playing near perfect golf in the pouring rain.

Unfortunately, as the weather cleared, her streak came to an end. Not a crashing, horrific, the-wheels-are-falling-off end; that just doesn’t happen to my friend, not to a golf game honed as long and as well as hers. While her brilliance was still there, it settled to the familiar, burnished glow of a golf game polished by age and experience.

It was a long round for even the young and the strong; how exhausting it had been for a senior player of my friend’s age, I can’t imagine.

She and her partner finished one stroke out of the money, and though she said not one word, I know how disappointed in herself she felt. Few will really know how well she played that day. When I heralded her play on the front nine, she merely shrugged. Nine good holes was not enough for her; she wanted eighteen holes of championship level golf. She wanted the game that she knew she once possessed.

She was visibly tired, but stayed throughout the long scoring process and announcement of the winners – to show her support for others, she insisted, she could not leave, though others did. She has class, and character and charisma. She embodies all that a champion should be.

I count among my blessings each and every round of golf I play with her. I have always hoped to show her the best of my own golf game. I am thrilled to have had the privilege to see a little bit of hers.