Playing the Game
Ripping 5-iron at the par-3 third on the North Course at Torrey Pines.
I’ve come to learn that golf is a game passed down. Often one generation to the next — grandparent to parent, parent to child.
No one in my family played golf. It was an uncommon venture for a young black kid from a poor town in rural Virginia. To this day, my dad struggles to wrap his head around why I chose golf over staying home on the farm. To be honest, it was actually the cow fields that gave me space to hit a ball. I’d start in our yard, pick a target out in the field (often a rusty old car or seldom a cow — I never actually hit one, that I can remember anyways) and swing away. Then I’d hop the fence and do my best to retrieve the few balls that actually went somewhere towards my target.
This was probably around the age of 12 or 13. That’s when I got my first set of golf clubs — $150, Power Built from K-Mart. Thanks mom! I mean that, with my deepest sincerity. She worked hard, too hard. To splurge on those was a lot of money that we didn’t have.
She’d recently began working at the nearby hospital flipping rooms and as an orderly. Prior, she worked for a wealthy family as a nanny and housekeeper. She’d often take me with her on the weekends when she babysat, and I’d watch the fancy parents come down the steps in bow ties and black dresses, smelling of expensive perfumes and colognes as they pursued a night away from their kids (as a father of two now myself, I’m even more envious).
I befriended the youngest boy in the family; he was just a year or so older than me. We’d swim and jump on the trampoline. Play with nitrogen-powered RC vehicles and the latest video game systems. It was a life that felt fake — unobtainable.
One day, the patriarch took me and the son to the driving range at the nearby club. I’d never touched a golf club before. I’d seen it on TV and even played the early PGA TOUR video games. I used to love being Davis Love III and Fuzzy Zoeller (my opinions of them would change later in life). Who knows, maybe it was watching the swing on TV or the game, or maybe I’m just a natural athlete (cough, cough, wink, wink), but I could make contact from Day One. Even getting the ball in the air!
Seeing something, I guess, the father gave me a old TaylorMade staff bag. You know, the Burner Bubble model with the savage copper/brown accents and black leather. The predecessor style of the current BRNR Mini Driver.
I was probably 7 or 8 at the time and, as alluded to, it would be years before I had clubs to call that Burner bag home. Admittedly, no clue where that Power Built box set is these days. But that bag, still resting on the front porch at my mom’s house battling the four-seasoned elements of Virginia.
Anyway, into my teens I played A LOT of golf. Shoutout to the homie Ian Falk, he was a few years older than me and could drive. We spent many a weekend (and even some school days, hopefully my kids don’t read this one day — Sevy, don’t skip school to play golf. And if you do, just don’t get caught) at South Whales Golf Course. It was fairly affordable, something like $40 for a cart and 18. I always worked part time jobs — mainly so I could afford my habit.
Ian used to beat me. Like all the time. Not any more.
“Dude, it’s so cool that we got into golf together, but I didn’t want you to get THIS far ahead of me!” I’m paraphrasing, but he said something like that the last time we played South Whales as adults and I shot 75 to his low 90s.
I left Rappahannock, a county of 4,000 people, and Little Washington, a town of 150, to pursue higher education at Morehouse College — located in the heart of Atlanta. Culture shock anyone? I kind of forgot golf existed for the first two years. I was coming from a town of zero stoplights, to a city with lights shinning 24/7 everywhere I looked. A high school with 26 black kids, to the premier Historically Black College where I was surrounded by people that looked like me who expected excellence from the person to their left, right, back and front.
The summer headed into my junior year, I got my own car. Game changer. I worked an internship in Arlington, Virginia at the NCUA (National Credit Union Association) and saved up for it. My only other expense that summer: A set of Burner Bubble irons to match the bag. Who cares that they had senior flex graphite shafts? I didn’t, mainly because I didn’t know any better at the time. I loaded the clubs into the back of my Mitsubishi Galant and drove back to Atlanta. I started to play again.
I was also working as caddie at Piedmont Driving Club and getting all kinds of golf advice from sage loopers with names like Robo and Michael Jackson (I still don’t know if that was his real name?). They hyped me up and in the spring, I tried out for the Morehouse Golf team.
I didn’t make it. But coach William “June Bug” Lewis was nice enough to let me hang around the John A. White facility to practice and hit balls.
I tried out again as a senior.
I didn’t make it.
Knowing what I know now, I’d like to say it had something to do with those senior flex graphite shafts. What is it that I know? That golfers love to blame anything or anyone but themselves. So, I’m sticking to it being an equipment issue.
I digress. To this day, I can still hear Coach Lewis, may his soul rest in peace, saying in his matter a factually tone: “Tony, you’re just not good enough.”
His straight-shooter personality was appreciated, and I learned something in that moment. It didn’t matter how good I was, I loved playing golf. I was never going to stop playing golf. Wherever life took me, my clubs would be there.
As now someone who’s called golf their profession for more than 18 years, I look back and can’t imagine where I’d be if I didn’t play. It’s taken me places I never could have dreamed of. Hawaii, Augusta, New York, Palm Beach, Mexico, Bandon Dunes and my home of Southern California. Collectively, I’ve spent about seven years working for TaylorMade Golf Company here in Carlsbad before venturing out my own to start IronQuill earlier this year. Yes, that old Burner staff bag motivated me to want, nay, need to work for them at some stage in my career. I’ve had other tenures at PGA Magazine and PGA of America Headquarters along the way, jump started by an initial boost from a PGA TOUR internship back in the fall of 2007.
Today, I’m a 7 handicap that loves teeing it up, and I can’t wait to until the next round.
Most importantly: Playing the game of golf, has allowed me to play the game of life.
