Spending 12 hours at Dalhousie

Aug. 28, 2003

Dear Ken,

I dabbled in golf a bit as a teenager but didn't become serious about it until my 40s. That left me always wondering how good a golfer I might have been if not for the late start.

Monday, I stopped wondering. Monday I played in a golf tournament with Paul Jackson. He's 82 years old. Paul started playing golf when he was 75. He beat me by two strokes.

After watching him nimbly stroke a tee shot 170 yards down the middle of the fairway, hit a fairway wood near the green, and chip and putt for par or no worse than bogey, I had at first surmised that Paul had been playing golf most of his life.

"I never had time before," he explained. "I was too busy making a living."

The golf tournament was more like a marathon. You've heard of the car race called the 24 Hours of LeMans. We did the 12 hours of Dalhousie.

Dalhousie is the new upscale golf club in Cape Girardeau. A round costs half as much as my first car. Twelve hours is the amount of time we spent on the golf course Monday. The sun was rising when we arrived and set as we finished the 54th hole.

While in a golf shop to buy a dozen balls a few days before the tournament, I mentioned to one of the best golfers in the state that I was playing 54 holes in one day at Dalhousie. He grinned and handed me a second box of balls.

Dalhousie is a jungle land for people like me who drive the ball crooked. The natural grasses grow up to your waist well off the fairway. Closer in, the grass is shorter but just as good at hiding a poorly hit ball. I would need that second box of balls.

Teen Challenge has been sending me invitations to its 100-hole golf marathon benefit for years. I like helping a program that tries to straighten out young men who have gotten into trouble, but never played in the marathon because it offered the impossible: Too much golf.

But when they moved the marathon to Dalhousie and reduced the number of holes to 54 this year, who could resist?

Dalhousie is magnificent. It fits into the land as if it was meant to be there. The fairways are like thick carpet. And the architect, Jack Nicklaus' son, Gary, makes you think about how to play each hole. Each one is strategically defended by deep bunkers and by the way the green slopes. At least one hole toys with your distance perception, a technique golf course architects learned from battle commanders trying to fool artillery gunners.

We played a two-man scramble, an individual tournament and a four-man scramble. Jack Smart, who runs Teen Challenge, teamed my golf buddy Don and I with himself and Paul, who is a Teen Challenge board member.

Paul had an abbreviated swing that stopped almost as soon as he hit the ball. But while some of the rest of us hunted for our balls in the weeds, Paul was hitting his from the middle of the fairway. He beat a lot of people playing that way.

Paul gave me one of the best golf lessons I've ever had. He is a model for the young men in Teen Challenge and old men sitting in coffee shops to heed. Paul Jackson says it is never too late to start. He says you are never not strong enough. He says straight and true gets you where you want to go.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.