The Start of My Quest: Thanks DAD for the Lucky 7- Iron

It all began on a summer afternoon long ago when I was seven years old. I would watch my dad and brother practice chipping in the back yard and I would be upset when they would go off to play golf and leave me at home. It wasn’t soon after however ,that my dad surprised me one day with a 7-iron that he cut down just for me. I would practice swinging that club in the backyard for hours, hitting chip shots and whacking the blossom heads off my mother’s flowers much to her dismay. It was in these moments that the love affair with the game began.

It was one afternoon when my dad realized I might have more than a casual interest in this game. And to his surprise, I was getting better at it too. Much to his dismay, I would sometimes practice in the front yard that was close to the main road. I would try to practice hitting the ball to the end of the driveway. My dad would always tell me not to take a full swing because he didn’t want me hitting any cars driving by. Of course on one particular day I decided, against my fathers wishes, to take a full swing which resulted in me clobbering the ball way across the street nearly hitting an 18 wheeler on its way by. At that moment I knew I was in trouble but a new realization began to surface that anything was possible. I was hooked!

As I got a little older, my dad would take my brother and I to play down the street to the local municipal golf course at 5:30 in the morning. It would barely be light out before we teed off, but at those wee hours of the morning I learned the ins and outs of the game. I played with reckless abandon. It really didn’t matter that I didn’t know what I was doing as my natural ability got the chance to flourish and a passion ignited that would eventually grow. Many more of these moments were to come on the little old municipal .