We all have moments in our lives that we point to as to why we made choices, took certain directions and plotted our own courses in life. As time passes those moments take on a significance that can make you wonder what life may have been like had they never occurred. I never interpreted the moments as forks in the road but more like bends that encouraged me to lean into people, places and things. I hit my first golf ball in the mountains of North Carolina at Boone Golf Club under the watchful eye of my dad. Forty years later April 11, 2011, my dad witnessed me hitting a golf ball for the last time on the 6th hole at Pinehurst No. 2. His life was rapidly and alarmingly coming to an end at the hands of something as hideous as it sounds, transitional renal pelvic cancer. Of all places our last experience together on a golf course would be at a place that means so much to me and meant so much to both of us.
I possessed the dexterity to do most everything as a kid and that was genetic. Dad was an elite collegiate baseball player at the University of Florida, and I got a healthy dose of what he was given. I liked all the sports, and the team competitions were to my liking, but golf gave me something the others didn’t. The game gave me him, uninterrupted, for hours on end and sometimes for days. It was our space and sharing the game and all it provides took us everywhere, together. We won a father son golf tournament at Pebble Beach in 1993, we got paired in the final round of another father-son in Ireland in the spring of 2001 with a dad and his son, who was the 199th pick in the NFL draft the previous year. The son would quarterback the New England Patriots to the Super Bowl the following season and the two fathers and sons would arrange golf in the ensuing years following Super Bowl parades. My first rounds at the Old Course, Pine Valley, Royal County Down, San Francisco Golf Club, and Pinehurst No. 2 were with dad.
I loved Pinehurst as a kid and attended Pinehurst golf camp when a very young Hank Haney was an instructor on the staff. July 4, 1983, I returned to my room in the Carolina Inn after a glorious day of instruction before embarking on some twilight golf to turn on the television in the infancy of ESPN to learn from Bob Ley that Dave Righetti had tossed a no hitter for the Yankees against the Red Sox. I proceeded to run up and down the hallway of Pinehurst’s historic hotel. When dad retired, my parents moved to Chapel Hill from northern New Jersey and playing No. 2 with dad on Christmas Eve became our new tradition. The drive from Chapel Hill on highway 15-501 was filled with conversations that covered the gamut. The sand hills at the holidays are particularly charming and sleepy especially on Christmas Eve. Seeing dad’s silhouette across the rugged terrain of No. 2 against the softer light of a late December day is indelible. After all the years, all the holes, all the rounds these days remained what they were from the outset, precious. No. 2 was our #1 at a time in my life when I was making real decisions about career and marriage. Two days before my wedding in Chapel Hill a group of us ran down to No. 2 and Peter Kiernan, a lifelong friend, made an albatross on the 10th hole. He lived in Manhattan, and I wanted to alert the New York Times of the deuce but Peter said no way since he was taking an extra day off from work just to play No. 2.
When I spoke the night before my wedding as I tried to explain the impact of experiencing love as an adult, I spoke about a day dad and I shared at Muirfield in September of 1994. The 36-hole extravaganza that one can experience at Muirfield is punctuated by the brisk alternate shot round in the afternoon. I was hitting our second shot on the 8th hole and as I looked back at the sight of my father set against the backdrop of the Firth of Forth, I experienced a sense of love and gratitude that was foreign to me as a 28-year-old man. Why then and why there? I’m certain that I was finding purpose and casting aside the numbed-up aspects of early adulthood. The game and that man had given me so much already in life that the confluence penetrated me beyond any prior experience, and it was the game that gave me him so significantly.
When I was asked to play with Ben Crenshaw in April of 2011 for the grand re-opening of No. 2 after the provocative restoration of the course by Bill Coore and Ben I was humbled. I aspired to cover sports for the performances not so much for the people. I have never professed to really know any of the athletes I have ever covered and it’s not that I know Ben particularly well, but he was the ONE. The only golfer, let alone athlete, that I lived and died with starting when I was seven years old. His major championship anguish was mine, his affinity for places like Crystal Downs and Palmetto Golf Club fueled mine. That April day in 2011 was too much for me. My dad had been diagnosed only three months earlier with stage 4 transitional renal pelvic cancer and his right kidney had been removed just four weeks earlier. He was terminal and a car ride to Pinehurst to see me play No. 2 with Ben Crenshaw was not reasonable, it was a borderline impossibility. But he did what he did for me, and my sisters are entire lives, he was there. The night before we had dinner in the Ryder Cup bar and he ordered a margarita and told the waiter, “Lets test out this one kidney”. He sat on a bench next to the 5th tee talking to Ben about mutual friends and the image overwhelmed me. My advocate and guiding light next to the only athlete I truly invested in emotionally in my life. A hole later dad was on his way back to Chapel Hill, the pain too extreme and three months to the day later he was gone. His last words on earth being, “I love you” to my mom, my sisters and me.
I am blessed to have great friends and many of those friends had a relationship with my dad. He possessed an extraordinary ability to identify the things that tickled people and he carved out very special relationships with my friend group. One of those friends in the last chapter of my dad’s life was Sean McDonough. Sean is one of the elite sports broadcasters of all time and he is also wickedly quick witted. Dad had great affection for Sean and when dad passed Sean was all too familiar with the loss having experienced his own father’s death, the legendary Will McDonough, a few years earlier. Sean said something to me upon my dad’s passing that in its delivery appeared harsh and unnecessary. He said, “Gary, it will never get easier”. Sean was preparing me for the agonizing reality that had become his own. It may have been the most truthful thing I’ve ever learned to understand. After all these years, 13 in July, it’s still right there. I don’t live life in sadness, on the contrary, I celebrate my dad’s life regularly, but his loss while living deep inside me is right under the surface. It blew a hole in me I will never fill and that is the cost of love. It’s simply the most profound loss in the human condition.
I never wanted to be my dad, I simply wanted to possess and exhibit so many of his qualities. My dad was not a public figure, but he was famous for his ability to allow people to feel their total worth. He was an only child but left the world with countless brothers and sisters because he found touch points that fostered deep relationships with people of all ages. He saw the game of golf as a beautiful metaphor for a good life, competition amongst friends. He loved a little action. Super Bowl weekend in Vegas, a triple crown horse race, The Masters Tournament, Dad loved to be in the mix because people were his oxygen. The last chapter of his life he was an admissions director at the Kenan Flagler School of Business at the University of North Carolina. The interview process for young professionals trying to gain admission into an elite MBA program can be stressful and dad’s interview style was unorthodox. His research was on the person. He knew the academic record was exemplary otherwise they wouldn’t be sitting there. Who are you and what do you love? How often are you ever asked two of the most important things? He knew one candidate had a baseball background and he started that interview by pulling a baseball from his desk and having the young man show him how he gripped the ball to throw his two seam, four seam, slider and curveball. That young man received his MBA for the University of North Carolina. Dad studied the stock market and charted countless trends, and I received cut out articles from the Wall Street journal almost every day in the mail regarding companies I worked for in my career like CBS, SiriusXM, and Comcast. But he made his biggest investment in other people to help them reach their greatest potential. I was not trying to satisfy him although any son wants their dad to be proud of them. I was seeking and pursuing achievement because he instilled in me an unwavering belief in myself. What a gift to bestow on others.
In July of 2019 I returned to Pinehurst for a few days to experience many of the new things that have been added since the last U.S. Open in 2014. The new dining experiences, the Cradle, the redone Pinehurst No. 4 and I stayed in Donald Ross’ home, the Dornoch cottage. I played with fathers and sons, fathers, grandfathers and grandsons. I took walks at sundown and at sunrise absorbing all of it with dad firmly in the center of my thoughts. I did not have envy or jealousy of any of the dads with their sons but rather a melancholy appreciation of what they were sharing. The game gave me the gift of time and it was bestowing the same on so many others, younger and some older than me. The U.S. Open has found a semi-permanent home at Pinehurst, and it will conclude on Father’s Day as it traditionally does. My first U.S Open was with dad in 1980 at Baltusrol. We saw Tom Weiskopf, newly enshrined in this year’s hall of fame class, shoot 63. Jack Nicklaus shot 63 several groups behind him. I saw Ben Crenshaw and Seve Ballesteros for the first time in person. We saw Tom Watson make a hole in one on the 4th hole on the lower course at Baltusrol. I was turned on to the game that week in a way that fueled my passion to make it a part of my life. All of it, however, was only memorable because I shared it with him. I still do.
Happy Fathers Day.