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- A Final Round with My Dad
The fifth green on Baltusrol’s Lower Course
Hey Everyone,
I got back on Wednesday from an insane road trip to New Jersey to play both the Upper and Lower courses at Baltusrol. I had a seven-hour drive home in apocalyptic traffic, and I still couldn’t wrap my head around the two days and 36 holes. I have a ton of video footage and some average iPhone photos; it was foggy and overcast. Looking foward to sharing in the next couple of weeks.
On the way down, I stopped and played at Veterans Memorial in Springfield, Mass. Paid 28 bucks to walk 18 holes. It was pretty good and a solid value for the conditions and the quality of the golf course. It would probably cost twice that amount closer to Boston. I guess the tornado that ripped through Springfield in 2011 did a ton of damage to the course and a lot of trees were removed, opening up the back nine, and mainly the last six holes, a lot.
This week marked the fifth anniversary of my quest. I played Thorny Lea on June 17 thanks to my friend and former college golf teammate, Matt. I think I made the most birdies on the quest in that round. Poured in four that day…
Bay State Golf has come a long way in those five years. It was initially “Stay Home Husband” until 2022 when I was given some frank advice from Matt and our Holy Cross golf text chain. So I named it Bay State Golf, and here we are.
It was kind of a bummer that I wasn’t playing golf in Massachusetts on June 17. However, it was cool that I was playing Baltusrol with people from the golf media to showcase the Upper Course restoration. A benchmark in the quest, even though it wasn’t in Massachusetts.
I had a Snickers bar at the turn on Tuesday, remembering my dad, who passed away on June 17, 2014. He loved a Snickers at the turn, or anywhere else for that matter. More on him in the main section of this newsletter.
Thanks for all your support, whether this is your first newsletter or you’ve been here since it was Stay Home Husband, you rock.
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🥂 Get $15 off the Supporter Tier ($35) for a year. Link here.
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News and Notes
Pro Golf
⬇️ When pros come home and play a non-tournament set-up, they go low. Chris Francoeur lost TWO golf balls and made an albatross on the 19th hole at Renaissance GC (Haverhill, Mass.) to shoot a 59. If you check out his Instagram, his most recent post before this one is after shooting a 58 at Point Judith. (h/t to Ryan for sending his along in our group chat).
🏌️♂️ James Imai sits in second place following a first-round 66 in The New Hampshire Open at Brentwood CC. Dave Pastore shot 65 to holds a one-shot lead. Live Scoring
🌽 The Wichita Open is this week’s stop on the Korn Ferry Tour. Live Scoring
Amateur Golf
🏌️ Preston Stout shot a 61 (-8) on Thursday, leading the Northeast Amateur after 36 holes. The final two rounds will be held on Friday and Saturday. There will be a cut after the third round. The low 60 scores and ties will play on Saturday. Attendance is free and open to the public. A pretty incredible opportunity to walk a private course with some exceptional Donald Ross greens while watching some of the best amateurs in the world. Live Scoring and Massachusetts golfer standings 👇️
🇺🇸 A U.S. Junior Amateur qualifier was held at Ledges in South Hadley this week. Three boys and two girls locked up spots in the national championships later this summer. Tyler Creavy (Orlando, Florida) shot a 67 to earn medalist honors. His grandparents live in Orleans, Mass. AJ Bodnar (North Andover, Mass.) shot a 68 and Lukas Schleyer (Westminster, Mass.) shot a 69 and survived a 3-for-1 playoff with a birdie on the first playoff hole.
On the girls’ side, Daniela Paez Rodriguez (Colombia) shot 71 and local standout Carys Fennessy (Dover, NH) shot a 73 to edge out Maddie Smith for the final spot. Smith is the first alternate after shooting 74. MassGolf recap of both events.
Mass Amateur Qualifier Results:
June 17 marked the 11th anniversary of my dad’s death. June is an odd month. He was born on June 7. Obviously, Father’s Day falls right around this chunk of the month and my sister and her husband also have birthdays in June.
I am sharing this essay that I have shared in the past about my final round with him.
A Final Round with My Father
It’s rare to know when we are experiencing something for the last time. Usually, those moments pass us by without fanfare or attention. Sometimes, those moments blend into other memories, leaving us chasing a vivid story to hold on to.
Firsts are easier to remember.
I have a memory of the first time I hit a golf ball. I was seven years old, on a family vacation in Palm Desert, California. Our house was on a golf course. My dad, who didn’t play golf, found a putter in the rental house and handed it to me. We snuck out onto the course in the twilight to hit a few putts. I recall my dad encouraging me to “hit” the ball instead of sweeping it into the cup. I never did have a penchant for putting.
Perhaps it was this moment that gave my mom the brilliant idea to purchase lessons for me and my dad the next Christmas. My dad was a globetrotter, and my mom has admitted that the gift was a nudge to get the two of us to spend time together.
So we learned to play golf. We’d go to an indoor golf facility every weekend for lessons. We’d leave with VHS recordings of the session, which I recall my dad reviewing as he tried to figure out how the heck to make that little white ball go where he wanted. Between lessons, we’d visit a local driving range to hone our skills. I’d lash at the ball as hard as I could, hoping to hit the range picker; my dad stood still over the ball as a million swing thoughts ripped through his mind. The game humbled my athletic dad, who had run the Boston Marathon in under 2 hours and 50 minutes and had played Gaelic Football for county Mayo in Ireland.
Over the course of 22 years of playing golf with my dad, we collected many memories. We traveled to play far away places with friends. We’d play matches and haggle over his handicap, or we’d just enjoy the time together. When the shadows grow long on a golf course nowadays,
I’m always reminded of my old man and his refrain that twilight was his favorite time of the day to play. It’s mine, too.
Sadly, the memories of golfing with my dad have a bookend that came all too soon and all too fast.
James Dodson’s book, Final Rounds: A Father, A Son, The Golf Journey Of A Lifetime, depicts a lovely, mindful trip aching with sadness as he and his sick father play golf in Scotland one last time.
My experience was different.
The final round with my dad came and went without any fanfare; we didn’t know it was the final round. However, it ended the same way our love affair with golf began, with my mom watching. A stroke of genius from the golf gods.
I’ve scraped the edges of my memory and cannot remember a single round of golf my mom watched me play. I don’t even know if she had really ever seen me hit a golf ball beyond that time on the green at Palm Desert. She drove me to the driving range and golf course and returned to her life. As a middle child, that makes total sense.
Why was my mom there on this particular evening in Vermont?
Having fought off cancer at age 63, road running, my dad’s first love, was no longer possible. So he’d go on walks through the neighborhood with my mom in the evenings. When they were up in Vermont, where the winding roads weren’t as friendly to walkers, my dad convinced my mom to walk the golf course with him while he played nine holes.
I visited my folks in Vermont for a weekend in 2013; unbeknownst to either of us, it would end up as the last round I played with my dad. Even though my dad had survived cancer four years prior, there were no signs that the cancer was about to return. And it wasn’t the last time I tried to play golf with my dad.
In May of 2014, I asked him if he wanted to play golf over Father’s Day weekend. He said he couldn’t, that he was having some back pain. It was weird that he so quickly turned down the invite; six weeks later, my dad was in a hospital bed. The cancer returned and took him on June 17, two days after Father’s Day.
On that late summer evening in Vermont, my mom joined us for the twilight round, 22 years after watching my dad and I experiment on a putting green in California. She wandered the edges of the holes and then would join us on the green to watch us putt.
As memories go, it isn’t a vibrant one aside from the addition of my mom to the story. It was one of hundreds of rounds of golf I had played with my dad. I imagine my dad hit plenty of his patented power fades, and I imagine I grumbled a bit as I helped him locate his ball in the right rough as he stood just ten feet away from it. I imagine he hit a few long putts for par and paired his little fist pump with a smile.
What I do know is that my mom, dad, and I shared this last round together without any sense that it was the last one. And while that leaves a ping of sadness because there were the perfunctory moments that might have been honored a bit more had we known it was the last, the ignorance of not knowing makes the memory sweet. We enjoyed the walk as we always did at twilight, and we capped it off with a hug. Like we always did.
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When I’m not golfing…
I’m reading…
💪 I started listening to Winning on the drive back from New Jersey at the suggestion of someone I met down there, as we discussed Tiger Woods and Kobe Bryant. It’s good. It might be a better read than listen. However, they do something interesting in the audiobook. They break up the chapters with a small discussion between the authors Tim Grover and Shari Wenk. Spotify audiobook.
🎼 I thought this was a nice review of Paul Simon’s concert at the Beacon Theater in New York. I saw him perform in Boston last week. NYTimes
I’m listening to…
🎵 Used Viva la Vida by Coldplay to get me through a chunk of the Merritt Parkway on Wednesday evening.
I’m drinking…
🍺 Baltusrol Lager was delicious after battling A.W. Tillighast’s Upper Course.
I’m eating…
🧊 Frozen Snickers at the turn…
🍠 We went to Waverly in Charlestown after some Bunker Hill festivities, and we shared the sweet potato croquettes—one of the best menu items in Charlestown.
I’m watching…
🔪 We finished Dept. Q last night. Excellent stuff. Highly recommend.
🏌️ I don’t consume any Bar Stool media, but these Riggs vs. Hater matches are pretty great. He takes on an oyster farmer who plays his golf at North Hill in Duxbury…
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