Rick Reilly - So Help Me Golf: Why We Love the Game

WHEN I WAS ONE , my family was staying at a mountain cabin in Evergreen, Colorado. Apparently, my dad had hit a rough patch with work and we had no place to live, so we stayed in my grandfathers vacation cabin until things turned around.

One day, the radio said a crazed killer had escaped prison. Thats the way my brother, John, always told the story later: A crazed killer. He said Mom locked all the doors and windows, gathered all the knives from the kitchen, got a big pot of water boiling, and stuck the knives in.

My older sister cocked her head at her and finally asked, Why are you boiling water, Mom?

Well, honey, Mom said, if were going to stab the man, we dont want him to get an infection, do we?

Very thoughtful, my mom.

Thats about when my dad came back from the car with his weapon of choicethe 3 wood from his golf bag.

The crazed killer never came, but golf became something I grew to fear more than any knife. Thats because my dad wasnt just an avid golfer, he was an avid drunk.

You knew when he went off in the morning to play golf, he was going to come home drunk and mean. When he opened the door, we kids scattered. My mom shouldve, too. Hed yell at her, shed yell at him, hed get rough. One time he broke her nose.

Late one night, when I was about nine, he was yelling at her and I got in between to try and protect her. He didnt see me and our feet got tangled and he fell right on top of me. He and I almost never even touched and now, horribly, all his full-grown man 180 pounds were on top of me, all hot boozy breath and Aqua Velva and cigarettes. I vaguely remember my mother screaming and me crying and him laughing, because he was too drunk to get up. I remember running to my room and shoving the dresser up to the door to keep him out.

Whatever golf was doing to him, I hated it. If he was really drunk, hed forget to take off his spikes and you could hear them clicking on the sidewalk leading to the door. That spikes-on-concrete sound still makes me a little queasy.

One day, when he was out playing golf, Mom gathered us around and told us how to defend ourselves if he ever came at us. Unplug the lamp and hit him, she said. The rolling pin. Lie on your back and dont stop kicking.

My defense was different. Id try to make everybody laugh, so thered be no arguing and no fighting and no lamps. The smallest kid in an alcoholic family is the mascot, the little one everybody can giggle at, the one with funny stories and stupid impressions, the one who distracts Dad from braining the rest of us.

On the surface, that worked well. I made a career of telling stories, of making people laugh. But underneath, I was scared and mad and terrified.

I blamed golf for all of it.

Once, in a single afternoon at the Irish seaside course Lahinch, four people made holes in one on the blind par 3, 155-yard fifth, a practical mathematical impossibility.

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And so it was on the famous Day of the Four Aces that the Lahinch bar became New Years Eve in Times Square. They say you could barely get your last free Jameson drank before somebody was offering you another. Word was out around town and the joint was packed with locals, ribs-to-elbow packed. An accordion, fiddle, and banjo were slapping out Irish drinking tunes, and the rosy-cheeked waitresses were getting their rents paid in a single night.

But then, through the front door, came the bartenders wife, holding the ear of her freckled, redheaded seven-year-old son. She marched him up to the bartender and yelled the following into his ear: Have you any idea what your rascal son did this fine day?

The big bartender was trying to fill 100 drink orders at once, so he said without looking, What?

The boy looked at his mother, who nodded. The boy said, I was puttin golf balls inta the hole.

The bartender pulled his head back, stared at the sheepish boy, then again at his angry wife, all the while starting a Guinness with one hand and making change with the other.

Well, she yelled, still holding the imps ear. Are ya not gonna do sumtin about it?

Yes, the bartender said. Then he swept the kid up in his arms, kissed him on the forehead, and yelled, Good lad!

The first time you play with Tiger Woods, you can hardly breathe, much less hit a tee shot. For one thing, Woods is much bigger than you think6-2 with a 32-inch waist and shoulders like a Coke machine. For another, he has a stare that could drill a hole in titanium. For a third, hes Tiger Freaking Woods.

Now, imagine youre barely five feet high, your voice hasnt cracked yet, and its the first time youve ever played the course. Now imagine its the first time anybody has played the course.

Thats what faced 11-year-old Taylor Crozier that day in 2016. A junior golfer, his name was drawn out of a hat to play the very first round at the Playgrounds at Bluejack National, a short family course Tiger had just built near Houston. It would be the first round ever played on it.

Imagine! He and another junior, a girl named Cici, would play an entire round with THE Tiger Woods. True, Tiger had just had surgery, so all he would do was putt, but whoa.