Thanks Dad - Lessons in a Tee Box

November 29, 2010, By Doug French 0 comments

One day, when I was 16, my dad threatened never to play golf with me again.

It was on a flat, straight, hazard-free par five, on a course that was ranked among the easiest in the country. I had stepped up to the box, planted my Titleist, gazed down the fairway, gauged a slight right-to-left breeze, taken a few practice swings—and chili-dipped my tee shot into the deep rough on the adjoining fairway. Then I whipped my driver into the turf and let loose with the loudest, most bellowy "goddammit!" my nascent baritone could manage.

A different father might have been mortified by his son’s conduct in front of the other club members. He might have tried to silence me with a withering glare, or grabbed me by the collar and told me to corral my temper. He’d have been perfectly justified to drive off without me and let me walk home with 30 pounds of clubs on my back.

Instead, he met my eyes and said, in a perfectly conversational register, that maybe we should find something different to do together, because he didn’t like what golf turned me into.

That was enough. I kept it together throughout the rest of the round, we got a drink at the 19th hole, and we rode home like it never happened. And yet, that afternoon is as vivid in my mind today as it was almost 30 years ago—not just for the lesson, but also for the way in which it was imparted.

I can count the times I’ve seen my father animatedly upset on one hand. (Two of those times, he even said, “Shit.”) He is one of the most unflappable men ever to tread this earth, and throughout my adolescence I couldn’t for the life of me understand how he could live his life so passively. Because I was a hothead who demanded perfection of himself all the time, and who lashed out when it didn’t come.

As I look back on it, I think my dad wanted me to play golf because of the way the game helps you meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same. It helps you embrace the unfortunate truth that bad shots are going to happen, and that the real test of a person’s character is how you recover from them. People who expect perfection are doomed to live a very unrequited life.

His delivery was so perfect, too. It might have been calculated, or it might have just been his nature, but in saying those exact words he told me he disliked the behavior (which could be changed), and not the person. He was saying, “You’re better than this,” and he knew the implied message would resonate with someone who had become way too adept at tuning out lectures.

Thanks, Dad, for being patient with me when you had every right not to, and for teaching me that even the subtlest message can command a lot of respect. I keep that lesson close to me, and I try to live up to it whenever my sons’ tachometers zoom into the red.

Thanks also for letting me realize on my own that beneath that placid exterior beats the heart of a man who might have known what he was doing all along. You must be doing something right, since you have so much more hair than I do. You big jerk.

We all thank dad for different reasons ... check out more Thanks Dad from the Man of the House team.