We first learned the game by shagging balls for some old timers who practiced at Hanson Park, a large open expanse of grass and baseball diamonds. They paid us maybe a buck to chase all over after their shots. Sometimes they let us hit a couple ourselves. Sometimes they gave us a ball they didn't want anymore. That's how it started.
We learned the game. Except for an occasional piece of advice from a dad or brother, or maybe one of the old timers at the park, we were pretty much on our own when it came to learning the finer points of golf. We tried honing our skills on whatever public grass we could find in Chicago. We didn't live near country clubs, and couldn't have afforded them anyway. Our clubs were mixed sets of woods and irons handed down from fathers and older siblings or relatives. My first five iron actually had a hickory shaft and was my favorite club.
We took our second and third hand clubs to Hanson Park and hit old nicked up balls as far and as straight as we could. We played from one end of Hanson to the other. Our "holes" were sometimes 800 yards long. Baseball diamonds were our greens. Our "putts" consisted of hitting a ball into the back stops. We scored many aces that way.
It was a year or two before we figured out that we needed real golf courses, and that we needed to scrape up enough money to play them. Soon we started trying figure out how to get to places like Columbus Park and Jackson Park on the south side of town, where a round of golf cost 25 cents for nine holes. Sometimes we'd head further out to the Forest Preserves to play Indian Boundary, another inexpensive public course run by Cook County. Occasionally, we could con a mom to wake up early with us and drive us around in her Belair, but she eventually made it clear that we were old enough not to wake her up when we left. We took city buses then.
We would wake at 4:00 a.m. and madly race across Hanson Park to catch the early Central Avenue bus. It never failed. No matter how early we woke, the one bus that took us nonstop to a course would come barreling down a hill about the time we were half way across Hanson's fields. We would dash, waving our arms wildly, hoping the driver would see us in the dim light of early morning. Sometimes he did. Sometimes he didn't.
We'd get on the bus to the bewildered stares of commuters wondering what three young boys were doing toting bags of golf clubs at 4:00 in the morning. It was a different time. Today, those commuters would probably think we were going to attack them with the clubs.
Like all boys, we pretended to be the sports heroes of our day, and when we golfed, we saw ourselves as some of the players of the time. We grew up during the era of Nicklaus, Palmer, and Player. When we golfed, we took on their personas if not their skills. Weasel was Palmer and played the best at first. Nicklaus was large and it was no coincidence that one of us took the nickname "Bear." I was Player and always dressed in black Banlon shirts.
Eventually, we all grew up. We got jobs. We bought our own clubs. We went to different high schools. When one of us became old enough to drive, we abandoned the city bus and traveled farther to play other courses. We could afford some finer places and no longer got strange looks from commuters wondering what some eighth graders were doing on a bus at 4:00 a.m. lugging around golf clubs. They probably felt safer, too.
With growing up, however, there always comes a time of separation of sorts. Other pursuits and interests take precedence. Life and the future become imminent. Guys meet girls and stop hanging around with guys so much. We were no different. What started as a camaraderie of playing almost every day together became a weekend thing.
