Paired Up at the Muni: The Triangle of Life
“I was just about homeless, man. I got fired from a restaurant, and I called my landlord and was like, ‘Hey, I just got fired and my unemployment should be coming,’ and he was like, ‘Ok, just keep me posted at what’s going on.’ A few weeks later he hit me up and says, ‘If you don’t pay the rent this time around I’m going to need you to move out the next week,’ and the next day my money came through. I was getting like $240/week, which was just enough for me to barely live on. It was motivating to never let it get like this again.”
Strung out, stretched too thin, flying by the seat of my pants, juggling ten-too-many things at once, and days and weeks running together with no real identity. That’s the best way I could describe my winter. Have you been there before?
D.A., my playing partner from the only nine holes I played this winter, knows the feeling well. Addiction, hustling, eviction notices, a firing—he has seen it all. On an unseasonably warm day in January, this random pairing at my local muni told me his story, a story that had the antidote to my strung-out feeling baked into it.
Oh, the weather outside is… actually nice?
I believe it was Old Tom Morris who said, “If you live in Tennessee and happen to get a sunny 60° day in the winter and don’t go play golf, then you’ll receive seven years of bad luck.” Well, it was either Old Tom or a chain email from Myspace Tom.
Either way, on a Sunday in early January I found myself with a 60° forecast and a long to-do list at my house, but not wanting to let either Tom down—Old or Myspace—I grabbed my sticks and made my way to the local muni to get paired up with some fellow Nashvillians.
The closest muni to my house is McCabe Golf Course, which opened in 1942 and features 27 holes, nine of which accommodate walk-ups on the weekend. It isn’t Nashville’s premier course by any means, but it is the only one located in a high-traffic area in the city, so it gets an unbelievable amount of play. McCabe is the Jimmy John’s of golf—a decent option when nearby, but you’d never go out of your way for it.
After circling the parking lot three times in search of a space I realized I wasn’t the only one avoiding back luck from a 2003 chain email. With each lap I knew I was looking down the barrel of a three-hour round of nine holes, which is expected on a day like this in January. It’s kind of like how you know you’ll feel like shit after eating Five Guys, but the thought of a grease-soaked, brown paper bag overflowing with fries just hits the spot sometimes.
The Pairing
“You’re welcome to walk down to the North nine to see if you can get on, but good luck because there are eight or nine groups ahead of you,” was the reassuring message I got from the pro shop while checking in, so I walked to the first tee hoping for a miracle. The line was longer than one you’d see in front of a Nashville mural full of wanna-be Instagram influencers trying to get their likes up. As the only single walker in a sea of carts, I decided to quietly walk past every cart towards the first tee box—like the asshole in traffic that merges into the crowded turn lane at the last second—and that’s when I first met D.A.
“If you’re a single then hop in with us because we only have three, and we’re up next,” he said, helping me avoid what was surely a 60-minute wait. D.A. was a middle aged black man with his clubs resting in a pushcart. He saved my golfing life that day much like golf helped save his actual life, but more on that later. “Our other two are over there,” he added, pointing at a couple in a nearby cart.
The couple in the cart were Korean, which gave me the rare—but refreshing—experience of being the only white guy in a golf pairing in the South. The husband’s name in the cart was B.H., and the wife introduced herself as L.W., making D.A. say, “Welcome to the initials party.” I told them to call me J.W. to further confuse everyone. After introductions, it was our turn to tee off.
Since D.A. and I were both walking I knew most of my conversation would be with him, because you really only see the riders on the tee box and green. You’ll talk to the fellow walker the entire day like you’re old buddies, but you’ll just have small talk with the riders like they’re someone you just bumped into that you haven’t seen since college. However, due to an in-theory drivable second hole, I had plenty of time to get to know the riders.
The Wait
Delusion knows no greater ally in golf than a player’s maximum distance off the tee. Ask 100 random golfers at your local muni how far they hit their driver, and the majority will inflate their number by 15-20 yards. Being able to hit a ball 300 yards with your driver is somewhat of a badge of honor in golf, so because of this, way too many people think they are capable of hitting the ball 300 yards “if they really catch one.” For non-golfers, it’s like how people think everyone in their current city are the worst drivers, but everyone in their hometown are true savants behind the wheel.
The second hole on the North Course at McCabe is a 319-yard par 4—catnip for the “if I really catch one” crowd. As the initials mafia and I walked off the first green, we saw five groups waiting to tee off on the second hole, each waiting for the green to clear so Joey Delusion could try to drive the green. I’ll give you one guess at how many people reached the green. Yep… big fat zero.
We waited 45 minutes to tee off on number two. To put that in perspective, here are nine things that could’ve happened in that amount of time:
1) You could watch the “Benihana Christmas” episode of The Office.
2) JB Holmes could play two holes.
3) You could watch the last two minutes of a college basketball game, complete with five replay reviews.
4) You could watch the Teeless Driver commercial 90 times.
5) You could have a pointless conference call at work where each person starts their sentence with, “And to piggyback off of that…”
6) I could order dinner at a restaurant and explain all of my food allergies to the waiter.
7) You could listen to 45 ad reads for Blue Apron by your favorite podcast host.
8) B.H. could—and did—smoke 4 cigarettes.
9) I could’ve re-gripped my clubs, let them dry, and then used them on the second hole.
On the bright side, I used this time to get to know B.H. and L.W.
The Olympics of Traveling
“So, do you play here much?” is the most generic, copout question you can ask a random pairing. It’s like talking about the weather with someone on the elevator—they know you just want to fill the air. So to kick things off with B.H. and L.W. I asked, “So, do you play here much?” Couldn’t help myself.
“We used to when we lived closer and before we had kids,” answered L.W., who did most of the talking for them—partly because she had a better personality, and partly because B.H. was busy chiefing down cigarettes. “Today we dropped our kids off at a play date so we could come play golf.” I really hope they lied to the other parents, telling them they needed to make an uninterrupted Costco run.
L.W. and B.H. were born and raised in South Korea, and they moved to Nashville 10 years ago for B.H.’s job. I asked how often they go back to visit. “Every time the Olympics are on we go home to South Korea for a month. The next year my parents come here for a month, then B.H.’s parents come the year after, and then we all take a year off,” L.W. answered.
“Is it hard not to see family on the off year?” I asked.
“Hell no, we need a break after all that,” B.H. chimed in while lighting his next cigarette. Feel free to tell your parents about this routine the next time they bug you about not visiting enough.
We filled the rest of our 45-minute wait by creating a chipping contest near the tee box, and knowing that my playing partners couldn’t drive the green, I hit a 3-iron off the tee for the sake of the groups behind us when it was finally our turn to play.
My favorite moment from B.H. and L.W. happened ahead on the fourth hole. B.H.’s approach shot was just a few feet off of the back of the green, but the rest of us were on. During one of his practice swings he accidentally hit his ball with the toe of his club, sending it fifteen feet to his right into the rough. We all laughed and told him to drop another ball down to play. He took a few much-more-careful practice swings and then bladed his next chip all the way across the green and back out into the fairway. After a couple of expletives he started towards his ball, but as he walked by L.W. she quietly said under her breath, “I think your first ball is closer.”
I laughed, causing B.H. to look over at me. “I’m sorry, but she’s right,” I said. Not finding it nearly as funny as I did, B.H. made the long walk to his second ball to play that one, maybe as a way to stick it to my laughter. He then bladed that chip right back the spot of the original chip, silently walked back across the green, picked up his ball, and walked to the 5th tee. I felt it was best to not mention that he left his first accidental shank in the rough behind as a sacrifice to the golfing gods.
Due to the slow pace of play, L.W. and B.H. had to leave after the 6th to go pick up their kids from the play date. I hope they showed up late, clearly in golf attire, and said, “Sorry, Costco was really crowded.”
D.A.’s Story: A Hustler’s Ambition
The beauty of a random pairing at your local muni is that it challenges you to not make snap judgments about your playing partners, even if they arrive dressed like a tour star but can’t make a single par. There’s always more going on with each person underneath their golf swing, and D.A.’s story was no exception.
A 52-year-old Nashville native, his slow, smooth backswing and methodical stroll down each fairway behind his pushcart did not reflect the complicated life he left behind. “I’ve always been able to hustle,” he told me, and hustle he did.
On the seventh fairway he told me that he spent time as a mortgage broker, even moving to South Florida to do that for a while before the housing market crashed in 2008. “You ever seen the movie The Big Short?” he asked, “It was exactly like that. I would see strippers who owned three houses. It was a wild time.”
After the market crashed, he moved back to Nashville and brought his hustle with him. “I was partying, not really thinking about anything. I was waiting tables at a place, but they moved me over to this other cafe, which was a great gig. You can make $1k cash a week if you hustle, so I was making good money, but I was making awful decisions with alcohol.” These decisions, he told me, took him to his lowest point in life.
“I was just about homeless, man. I got fired from the cafe, and I called my landlord and was like, ‘Hey, I just got fired and my unemployment should be coming,’ and he was like, ‘Ok, just keep me posted at what’s going on.’ A few weeks later he hit me up and says, ‘If you don’t pay the rent this time around I’m going to need you to move out next week,’ and the next day my unemployment came through. I was getting like $240/week, which was just enough for me to barely live on. It was motivating to never let it get like this again.”
When you hit rock bottom, there’s no place to go but up. However, there are many escape routes that bring you right back to rock bottom. D.A. needed a one-way ticket with no return flight, so he looked inward and remembered a passion of his that has always been below the surface: science. That’s when he decided to go to Nursing School. “Was it difficult to go back to school after all these years? Did you feel out of place?” I asked.
“The first class I went to was one of those remedial, one credit classes called Learning in the Dominican Tradition. We’re reading nicomachean ethics and Aristotle, and I’m like what the hell have I gotten myself into? I was 46, and all these kids in there are 19-20 years old, super smart talking about this stuff, and I’m like what are they talking about?”
D.A. wasn’t just starting from scratch, but whatever is below that. (Don’t say it, don’t say it) He was starting from under par. (Sorry)
“I didn’t even have computers the first time I went to school. So the first day of nursing school, we were doing the registration of getting our email and all, and I’m filling out some stuff and I did something wrong and thought oh I need to go back and redo that. This lady says, ‘You can just copy and paste it from here.’ I was like, ‘I’ll just go back and redo it,’ because I didn’t know how to copy and paste. That’s how bad I was.”
Did he ever think that this might not be for him?
“Yeah dude, but I got through it. I actually did pretty well, too. It’s amazing what you can do when you’re motivated. It was a good experience because I learned a lot about myself and what I can do. I was really lucky because I stopped drinking after I got fired. Then early on in school I was starting to see results from the work I was putting in, and I haven’t had a drink since.”
The Triangle of Life
Maybe this is a story you’ve heard before: guy parties, has addiction issues, hustles, loses his job, hits rock bottom, decides to press restart on his life. It’s certainly admirable and moving, but one piece was missing for me. I know that hitting rock bottom had sparked the change, but why did the change have lasting power? He hadn’t really played golf until he hit rock bottom, so I asked him where golf fit into his life.
“It’s part of my triangle of life: Nurse, Golf, Surf. I try to keep things simple now, and if I work my life to doing those three things, I figure that those are pretty good things. It’s in that order. I’m going to nurse more than anything, and then golf is second. I took a vacation to Costa Rica after I completed nursing school and I learned how to surf, but obviously I can’t do that around here as much as the other two. Maybe I’ll change that triangle around as I get older. But it helped simplify things for me,” he told me as we stood on the ninth tee.
That was the key. He simplified his life down to three parts: Nurse, Golf, Surf. They may not seem like simple activities on the surface, but each require 100% of your focus while doing them, making everything else around you take a backseat.
Nursing gave him purpose, a career, and reason to stop drinking. It filled up his schedule, required all of his attention and effort to make it through school, and eliminated the fear of eviction notices. Golfing brought him exercise, a new skill to practice, and it plugged him back in with the community that lives around this golf course. Surfing also brings him a new skill to practice, but it also brings peace while sitting on his board between sets of waves, and time to reflect on his accomplishments. A surfing trip to Costa Rica isn’t on the table when you’re waiting on your unemployment check to cash. I imagine that at the end of the day when he’s sitting on the beach watching the sunset he can see that simplifying his life also concentrated his hustle and used it for good.
What will I take with me from my time with D.A.? Well, I have a tendency to spread myself too thin with ideas, and I end up doing 10 things just mediocre. While it may not be the same three activities for me, Nurse-Golf-Surf is a motto that could help narrow my focus to a smaller amount of things that I truly care about. If I focus more time and effort in these areas, then I won’t feel strung out, and the weeks will slow down and being to have purpose again.
What’s next for D.A.? “Hopefully a trip to Costa Rica in April to the same spot. When I get good enough I’ll go to Santa Cruz to visit a friend who surfs a lot. Then I might go back to school if I can get into the Nurse Practitioner program around here.”
Will he get into the NP program? I don’t know. What I do know is that he won’t let an hour of schoolwork go to waste. Plus, this time he knows how to copy and paste.
[For more photos and videos of this random pairing, head over to @pairedupgolf on Instagram and Twitter]
