A few nights ago, we were eating dinner and I mentioned to Jen that the guys and I were thinking about going to a midnight showing of a fantastic new movie coming out. She immediately caught my not-so-subtle allusions to the new Twilight movie, and said “that’s not funny!” Matthew piped up and said, “I go to movie too!” Keeping up the charade, I told her that Matthew and I could go to the movie together and have a guy’s night out. Before Jen could respond, Matthew replied, “I wanna go golfing with Daddy instead.” Talk about a proud moment for a Dad! That’s my boy!
So a little bit of background on Matthew and golf to set the scene for that comment and the adventure that soon followed. From before Matthew was one, he would sit on my lap for hours and watch golf. Elmo was great; Dragon Tales had its day in the sun; and Mickey is the current reigning champion of children’s shows in our home; but none of them keep his attention for as long as watching golf with Daddy. He has some of my golf magazines tucked away with his story books, and will often choose to read those for his bedtime story. He can identify several of the clubs – driver, putter, wedge, iron – and even knows some of the more popular golfers like “lefty” (Phil Mickelson) and, of course, Tiger Woods. He’s even seen Tiger Woods a few times at the grocery store, behind the counter at McDonalds, or some other “who knew” type of location. Fortunately for us, nobody seems to have understood exactly what he was saying just yet.
Matthew received his first set of plastic golf clubs in February (a birthday present to me from Jen), and immediately set the ball on the ground, grabbed a club with two hands, and smacked the ball. He’s completely worn through two sets since.
Well, the inevitable was bound to happen, and for his second birthday I bought him a real putter. It took some time on the internet and a few trips to the local golf stores, but I finally found a 20” putter that was small enough for a two-year-old. It’s awesome! When I took it out from behind my back to show him his surprise, his expression was classic. There was more excitement rolled up into that face than in all of Manhattan after this year’s World Series. When I told him he was going golfing with Daddy, it was just the icing on the cake. He was practically bouncing off the walls as he helped me gather the necessities, “Daddy needs his golf shoes!” or “Big boys wear golf hats like Daddy!”
We got to the range, and for the first hour Matthew sat in the stroller and watched me hit balls. He’s done this a couple of times in the past, and loves to just sit and watch. He’s getting more vocal now with his “oohs” and “Daddy missed it’s,” so we made our way down to the end of the range. He wanted to hold some balls this time, and after several hits, a golf ball rolled up and hit my foot. He just grinned, and so I hit that ball next. Sure enough, another ball was tossed my direction. Pretty soon we had a pretty good system – he was involved in the “game,” and I had an automatic ball dispenser. After a while, I handed him my four iron, and he lost interest in watching me hit, as he now had the goal of hitting balls himself. Mind you, he was still strapped into the stroller, and the club was about one and a half times his height, which made for a comical situation at best. Remarkably, he still made contact quite regularly. He also reversed the dispenser system, and I found myself “reloading” him whenever he’d inform me that he needed more balls.
The crowning event was when we made our way over to the putting green. It took a while for him to get the idea that you don’t swing a putter like you’re trying to hit a ball to the moon, and he wasn’t so good at the whole notion of “control,” but he definitely had the concept that the ball was supposed to end up in the hole. He settled on a brilliant technique of placing a ball about an inch or so outside of the cup and then using whatever part of the putter (or body) he thought would land him the best odds of getting the ball into the hole. I know my scores would dramatically improve if I were to implement a few of his ideas. Anytime he was successful, he would turn to me and give me as big a grin as his face could handle. I was having so much fun taking pictures and helping him putt, that I didn’t do hardly any putting myself in the hour or so we were out on the green.
I finally had to drag him away (literally) to get home for lunch and a nap. We’ll undoubtedly go again. The only question is which one of us is looking forward to it more.
