By David Donner
I had to play a sport. It was simply stated as that, or so I remember, from my mom when I said that I wouldn’t play basketball in ninth grade. So as a rail-thin, awkward, nerdy freshman, I obliged as only a kid could: with a lackluster “OK.” My mom threw out golf as a spring option — and as someone who didn’t grow up ever swinging a club, real or plastic, it seemed like an odd choice. But I went to the first practice — without clubs or anything else that I needed — and started a journey that I never would have seen.
Our golf coach was also one of my favorite teachers, Mr. Henke. He had a dry sense of humor that shined in math class that I was immediately drawn to. Math was always easy for me to understand, so he was always good for a laugh. Somehow, coach Henke had a left-handed set and bag, and some random balls left over in the pocket from who knows when — and I was officially a golfer.
Our home course was a nine-hole muni with army helmet-style greens and tree-lined fairways. It sat adjacent to the small airport runways, so you always got a great view of small planes landing and taking off. It had a range, putting green, a clubhouse with one big room, and cart sheds. It wasn’t much, but to someone that never stepped foot on any other course ever, it seemed like the norm.
I still remember the first practice session after school. I wasn’t 16 yet, so my mom dropped me off, and I gathered with other classmates and upperclassmen that I didn’t know at all. Most seemed to have a total understanding of what they were going to do, or at least knew how to swing like a normal human being: making practice swings and putting on funny looking shoes with metal spikes in the bottom.
I waited until everyone was sent off to the putting green and range, and Coach took me and a couple other newbies to some snow fence posts stuck into the ground. We took out our 9irons, and Coach showed us a grip, a stance, and a small chipping motion — and we were off. I’m sure we only chipped at the posts for a half-hour, but you could have told me it was for four hours and I would've believed you. I was lost in the process. Why doesn’t the ball go where I’m aiming? Why isn’t it getting in the air? If I do this, then it does this, and so on. And that is how it started, my love of golf. It wasn’t from watching Tiger or Phil, it wasn’t playing my first hole with a parent and it wasn’t blasting plastic balls around a backyard. It started with a math teacher/golf coach who shared his love of the game to his students.
Coach Henke took time and effort over the beginning days of the season to add more and more of what the game was about to me and the other members of the golf team. Our town was home to around 3,500 people, and the golf team was such a small portion of that. It seemed like a cool club that I never would have thought existed, yet alone be a part of. My continued education of how to play golf involved going to the course on the weekends, grabbing a shag bag of balls from Coach’s golf cart stall, and heading to the range. It was a pattern: empty the shag bag, hit balls all over the place on the range and nearby creek, go pick them up, and repeat. And it was amazing. I didn’t have a membership to the club, and the $15 or $20 it cost to play the nine holes wasn’t a part of my budget. But I took in every little comment Coach made, whether he realized it or not. And I thought I could figure this maddening game out in the first month of playing, if not sooner.
Through every practice, every van ride to golf meets, and back and to do it again every season, Coach Henke was there providing guidance, support, and a laugh. After four years of high school golf, I had a sport that made me think about patience, created structure on how to plan, and at times frustrated the hell out of me. The game never left my hands or mind for too long — maybe a short stint in college, and a time with my first career job when the schedule couldn’t fit it in. Even when it wasn’t a weekly or even monthly occurrence to get out and play a round, golf was always in the back of my mind. It has given me endless friendships, buddies’ trips, and an addiction that doesn’t show any sign of vacating the space between my ears.
I have never gotten the chance to truly thank Coach Henke with the appropriate words or expression that would fully describe the everlasting gift he gave me all those years ago. He’s enjoying retirement from teaching and coaching, as he should. As I’ve entered a fourth decade on this Earth and reaching 25 years with a golf club in my hand, I know that this silly game is synonymous with my persona as much as anything else. My family, friends, wife, and boys would all probably list golf as one of my attributes quite quickly when asked. They wouldn’t be wrong, and I’d be utterly surprised if they didn’t.
It was Coach’s willingness to teach a lefty how to swing, try to fix swing faults as they arose way too often, and share the secret of how great this game is and how it can be enjoyed for a lifetime.
A recent trip to Gothenburg, Neb., with family and the opportunity to play nine holes at the newer, grander-in-scale, and overall greater Wild Horse Golf Club with my 9-year-old and 5-year-old boys made all these prior thoughts re-enter my mind. Watching them tee off from my drive and try to learn how the undulations and speed of the greens send their balls in directions they did not expect had me reliving my first chipping and putting lessons with Coach.
I’ve already had the great fortune of spending hours of pure joy with them on the range and par-three courses in our hometown. Their enjoyment of the game has ranged from wanting to go every day to passing on the chance weekends at a time. Maybe it’s only nostalgia in its purest form from being back in the town I learned the game, or having my oldest say on the way home that it was his favorite course to play. But I know none of those feelings or any of those that came before it would have been as sweet or kept me coming back if it wasn’t for Coach.
David Donner is a hospitality professional in Nebraska, who attempts to survive two young boys and is in constant amazement of his irreplaceable and beautiful wife. He still thinks golf can be figured out, even if in short intervals, but will be the first to laugh at his bad shot that is certainly to come. You can follow his current adventure to break 80 right-handed on Twitter @ddonner80.
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