Golf Fore the Good

On our early morning drive to the course, we pass a solitary runner with head lamp glowing in the half-light. “It’s really dark out,” my husband and I both say, to each other and to no one in particular, as if to question why we’re up and dressed for golf at this unearthly hour. It is technically not yet dawn in Southeastern New England. Shortly before 7 A.M., going on the end of October, with the temperature well down into the 40’s and a stiff north east wind blowing, we are up because there is golf to be played.

As we pull into a bustling parking lot we spy a bundle of red and black. It is our good friend, barely recognizable, huddled in a stocking hat and wind pants and heavy sweat shirt, his cheeks already glowing in the cold. “Is this where we sign up for crazy?” he asks, his clubs on his back. Apparently, yes.

The weather is changing; summer has long left us. Up north the foliage is well past peek and they are readying for ski season. Here on Cape Cod, where the ocean buffers us from early frosts and the leaves still cling in reds and golds, we hope for a snowless winter. Already, we are taunted with damp and frigid winds that cut through even the best of our UnderArmour and Goretex. Yet we head to the golf course, to play.

The concessions are stocked with blackberry brandy and hot chocolate and peppermint schnapps. Our golf bags are bursting with winter gloves, wool hats and Hot Hands. There are only a very few serious tournaments left on the schedule, but even after they are through, we will play.

We walk a fine line now for our tee times. Too early in the morning and you’re among the diehards, up before dawn only to huddle in the clubhouse waiting out a frost delay when you could still be tucked in bed. Too late in the day and you’re caught in long, dark shadows, with greens laid flat by gray light, impossible to read, cutting short the chance to play eighteen.

For the majority of us, our golf is slower paced now, in many ways, though our tees are open and fairways far less crowded. There is no crush to grab a tee time. We are nearly guaranteed a four hour round, with no bottle necks or backed up tee boxes, those seasonal scourges of our municipal existence. There is no pressure to shoot a number, to practice daily, to grab a match. We choose to play – or not - when and if we can, if the weather and the mood both suit. They often do.

The only urgency we feel is to grab a final round with those friends that will leave us for the season, perhaps for longer.

A special few have passed on, their love of golf etched forever on our own games. We can often feel their spirits near, hovering like the early morning fog or the frost upon the greens, almost tangible before all fades away.

Some meander south, clubs in tow, leaving us to play our hearts out in our silly season in the north, to return when the days grow longer and the sun much stronger.

Another will take a break for a much needed surgery, postponed – of course – until after the best of the golf weather is gone. His discomfort has not meant disabled. Is there any sense in letting a little pain interrupt a summer of golf? While we’ll miss him on the course, he, at least, will be cozy and indoors this coming winter while the rest of us play away in the low, cantilevered sunshine, striving to stay warm. I see a method in his madness.

Others will move away, and will be truly missed come spring. Our daily band of regulars will sport a gap on the practice range, an open hole on the putting green, a place on the tee where a familiar face should be.

The winter is closing in. We want a few more warm and sunny days, another round, a longer season. We will take what we get, and grab our clubs when we can, grateful for all the golf that we’ve played, with new friends and old, and for the rounds yet to come.

Our passion is not gone, it is just tempered, like a comfortable friendship that picks up easily where it left off at any given moment. Our season evolves. Life goes on. There is still golf to be played.