By Brett Dixon
There have definitely been times I’ve felt like crying on the driving range. One can only hit so many shanks in a row before an emotional outburst layered in anger and frustration takes control.
But the day I found myself actually letting tears drop on a dried-out Bermuda surface between scattered divot patterns, there had been no shanks or flubs, no skulls or snap-hooks; there was just an ending.
I was fortunate for many reasons to have grown up in a small town — one being that kids played every sport that was available to them. The age of specialization was just not a thing in Trinidad, Colo., where you’d get pulled from summer basketball camp to go play baseball because the team only had eight guys that day. But like most small towns you hear about, football was king at our high school — which made it awkward when I decided to play on the golf team in the fall instead of showing up for two-a-days. I can’t begin to describe the number of times I heard “you can play golf your whole life” from all the football coaches. I’d love to say I did something cool like pin that quote up in my bedroom and use it as inspiration to one day make it on Tour, but…well, here we are.
It’s hard to describe those four years of golf other than them just being stupidly fun. Stakes started out low, for sure. But competitive golf turned out to be a whole new beast. It helped that, somehow, the stars aligned, and four kids who grew up on a nine-hole muni figured out how to shoot around par — which meant we started to win a lot more than we lost. We skipped whatever potential “party” scene our town had to go putt under the lights during summer nights. We talked about our swings together, strategized together using Google Earth the days before going off to tournaments — and in a way I wouldn’t have thought 16-year-olds were capable of, we held each other accountable.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, we started playing for more than just ourselves. People started following us in the papers to see how we did. We’d get recognized out at the course. We, of course, blew any sort of recognition out of proportion and started to assume that the entire community actually cared about how we were playing. But that added level of meaning, whether it was imagined or not, changed my entire perception of golf. During my most formative years, I began to only see golf the way those in competitive golf saw it.
Then I went off to college and attempted to play baseball. You always hear that it never feels like work if you’re doing what you love; but college baseball sure as hell felt like work. I had loved that game my whole life, but suddenly that flame began to flicker, and I could no longer justify the effort and hours required to succeed at that level. Don’t get me wrong — the two years I played were two of the best years of my life. My teammates are still some of my closest friends to this day. I just had this feeling I was missing something (which was probably talent, if we’re being honest). I’d see the golf team around campus for about a year and a half and would experience pure jealousy. If college baseball was the girl from home your parents tried to set you up with, college golf was the girl you met at your first party and couldn’t stop thinking about.
I jumped ship and walked on with the golf team (the perks of attending a small NAIA school). I was now once again playing golf for more than just myself. I was playing for teammates, for a school, for a program’s pride and tradition. Having a logo on the bag meant something. For the next three years, grinding over golf was pure bliss. I joke now when people ask if I played that, “Well, I was on the roster and got the free clothes,” but at the time I cared more than I would like to admit about making that fifth spot on the team. Three years of working on the game, day in and day out, for a chance to be the reason our team won a tournament, a conference championship, a national championship went by in a flash.
So, there I was, on April 11, 2017, in Shawnee, Okla., crying on the driving range. What I knew was going to be my last competitive round for a team had just ended. No, it wasn’t for the top five — it was our “B” team that traveled that week — but the final roster was basically set for the end of that season, and I knew I wasn’t in the mix. It was ending; the world of golf as I had known it for the last nine years was over, and I honestly couldn’t remember what golf was like before that. It was a lot to take in.
I’m not sure a 23-year-old can necessarily go through an identity crisis, but at that moment, I really wasn’t sure of anything. What am I going to do? Will I keep playing golf? Should I go tell those high school football coaches that they were wrong and the game of golf as I knew it couldn’t be played my whole life? Should I grab a dozen golf balls from the equipment room when we get back since I’ll never get free balls again?
I think I ultimately grew up a lot that day. Maybe the impact of competitive golf made things easier to get over. Make your bogey and move on to the next hole. A few hours had passed since the breakdown, but as we drove away from the course that day, like the flip of a switch, my perception of golf changed. Whether it reverted to how I viewed the game with childhood wonder or it matured into perceiving a deeper understanding and appreciation, I’ll probably never know. Somehow, though, it became mystical again. I wasn’t frustrated that it had caused so many emotions that day; I was amazed. I was thankful.
I think it’s great to immortalize those that compete at the highest level, who live a life we would dream of having. What’s even greater, though, is the fact that we get to have this game too, where it means much more than a paycheck. It connects us to each other in ways that nothing else really can. When you hear that people played a favorite course of yours, you don’t ask them what they shot or what place they got in the tournament. You ask them what they felt standing on your favorite tee box, or what hole they loved the most. You get to connect to these golf communities based on emotions and thoughts, not on successes or failures. This is the game that you get to have for your entire life. This is the game that possesses people to travel around the world to meet likeminded people or play courses they’ve only heard about. My relationship with competitive golf may have ended, but this new relationship was better than any I could have even dreamed of having.
A lot of those questions I had that day have been answered. I still play golf. I never told off those high school football coaches. I grabbed two dozen balls from the equipment room (and a few gloves, sorry Coach). No, I don’t play the game for teammates and colleges and communities anymore. Instead, I get to share the game with my dad. I get to experience it with my family, with strangers across social media platforms. My scores don’t get posted in the newspaper anymore. Most importantly, I’m not crying on any ranges.
In this new relationship with golf, I’ve never been happier.
Brett Dixon is a C.P.A. from southern Colorado. He works and plays his golf in Tulsa, Okla. His Twitter handle is @BrettDix15.
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