LETTERS FROM HOME: MOMENTS OF SPLENDOR & REDEMPTION IN THE GRASS

May 11, 1995

Dear Julie,

At 12, I fell in love with golf and a pretty girl in my class who was a foot taller.

She was kind of untouchable for a short shy boy. But when my clubs arrived on Christmas Day, I looked at them for a long time, then ran my hands over the dimples on the irons and the unbelievable smoothness of the woods, and squeezed the soft grips.

Infatuation is powerful, sometimes sweeps you away.

Every golf book in the public library was hungrily consumed, and with spring a piece of pipe appeared in the ground next to the house for practicing chipping and putting.

Arnold Palmer's book was my favorite, so I ended up putting like him, all knock-kneed. "You can't learn to play golf out of a book," my friend Brad would say. And he was right.

I only remember going to the golf course twice back then. The first time, Brad and I hacked our way around all day long. Dinner in the clubhouse was one of those frozen cheeseburgers that are defrosted and heated in a toaster oven all at once. That night I was extravagantly sick.

The other time, Brad made a date for us to play with two girls from our class. Hitting a golf ball is hard enough without being 12 and trying to do it while two girls are watching.

For some reason, the love affair with golf was quickly over and stayed over until a couple of years ago. On impulse I bought a cheap set of clubs at a yard sale and began marching -- not riding -- the fairways before work a day or so a week.

Human beings need outdoor activity that puts us in beautiful surroundings and satisfies our souls. Golf teaches me about myself and the people I play with.

Brad was right. If you want to learn, you have to play the game.

But I still read books about golf. One of my favorites is "Harvey Penick's Little Red Book." It's not a step-by-step guide, more a distillation of the golf philosophies and techniques that, at age 87, he finally believed to have met the test of time. He'd kept these ideas in a little red notebook through the years, only letting his son read them.

When most people practice chipping onto the green, they line up a bunch of balls and hit one after another. But when Penick taught a kid to play he had her or him chip one ball onto the green at a time, then putt it into the hole.

Chipping a bunch of balls at one time doesn't teach the reality of golf, which is that you have to pay for your mistakes.

That's golf. That's life.

In golf and life, there's no one to blame except yourself. And you're better off once you learn to forgive your mistakes.

If you hit a bad shot, make a bad decision, your next will be even more difficult -- but not impossible. Redemption is always possible.

I talked to my friend Leslie today, the reporter in Southern California. She said the most amazing thing had happened. Leslie's grandson's biological father showed up at a child support hearing after being the invisible man for six years.

He agreed to take a blood test, and Leslie handed him a packet containing a letter she'd written him and pictures of the little boy's babyhood and birthdays.

The little boy has another picture of a young man on a motorcycle he knows to be his dad, the letter said, and accepted the inextricable tie this child had created between people who barely knew each other. The young man was welcomed to become more than a photograph.

I told Leslie I admire her magnanimity, that she'd made a rapprochement more possible.

She just laughed.

The young man asked if he could see his son's room.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.