The Last Round
As we putted on the practice green before our tee time, my dad, my brother, and I were just plain giddy. We had actually made it to Pebble Beach. Ten years earlier, Dad had received what he thought was a once-in-a-lifetime invitation to play Pebble. He turned it down to spend his summer coaching our all-star baseball team in the Virginia heat. As we grew older, my brother and I appreciated Dad’s sacrifice even more and wondered if we would have made the same choice. Life was now giving Dad a mulligan few people ever get.
Our regular threesome had a fourth that day because Pebble doesn’t like to send out incomplete pairings. Our playing partner was a bar owner from Muscle Beach who had driven the 300 miles up the coast the night before to play that morning. He walked with a caddy, drank Long Island iced teas, and spent a good portion of the round on the phone with his mechanic discussing his Lamborghini’s engine leak problem. I think that he sensed something special was happening and gave us the space we needed.
The three of us pull our carts around to the tee box and stare out at No 1. Par 4, dogleg right, 346 yards. It’s a picturesque Monterey day. Mid-70s, partly cloudy, with a light wind that brings in the smell of the Pacific. Dad would’ve loved to walk the course, but he’s sicker and weaker now than when we had booked our tee time a few months earlier. The cancer in his legs is already so bad that the walks from cart to ball and back are going to be hard enough. Cart-path only today takes away much of the advantage of the cart, but we’re here and ready to play.
Golfers and tourists turn to watch as we take the tee box. First up, Muscle Beach. Not the prettiest swing in the world, but it finds the rough far enough down to have a look at the green around the bend. My brother, Ryan, the future general manager of a golf course and the best golfer in our group by far, steps up next. He wastes no time over his ball and hits a bomb on an aggressive line down the right side, but it’s leaking fast. OB right in someone’s back yard. His provisional is in play. My turn. I sit over the ball for about 30 seconds before hitting the biggest top of my life that rolls right up to the ladies tees. It’s actually pretty decent distance for almost missing the ball entirely. I hold my finish for an unreasonably long time. Not out of admiration, but because I don’t want to turn around after that shot. The affable caddy offers up, “Two off the first. Everybody gets the jitters their first time here.” I knew that I liked that guy.
Finally, Dad steps up to the tee to take a look at a wide open fairway. Smooth swing. His ball bounces softly in the middle of the fairway. He turns to us boys with a grin and says, “I’m missing a kidney, survived brain surgery, and playing on two legs full of cancer. What’s your excuse?” He’s funny and right at the same time. We have no obvious excuse. Well, maybe just one. Both of us are confronting the inescapable truth that this may be the final round that we ever play with our Dad. Our teacher, our coach, our hero. Even in the most ungenerous company, that’s probably worth a stroke a side.
In the life of every regular golfing group, a day will come when they go out to play together for the last time. Few recognize it in the moment. My brother and I either have the blessing or the curse of this foreknowledge. The bone scan, the results, the tone of the doctor’s voice, the rest is just noise. We know the score. We’ve all become amateur oncologists over the last two years and know what multiple metastasis means. Kidney cancer. Surgery. Brain tumor. Brain surgery. Chemo. Radiation. More chemo. In the bones. He could beat all of that, but not this, it was just too much. A few months later, we would have to get used to talking about a husband, father, and friend in the past tense, but, at least for today, we were just playing golf.
It was a dream round. One preceded by hundreds of rounds together on our local tracks. This round was the culmination of a life of playing golf together. After a shaky start off the first tee, we fell into our easy rhythm. My brother knocked it long and far. I spent the day getting into trouble and scrambling to get out of it. Dad was steady as always, playing a smooth game with a Freddie Couples’ sense of ease. The rest of his round went about like his fight with cancer. A few bad breaks, some lucky bounces, a couple close calls with trouble, and big swings between dizzying highs and deep lows. All taken in stride with his usual good humor and a grin.
For 16 holes, we forgot about bones riddled with cancer and five-year survival rates. We just played golf. Like we’d always done. Good days, bad days, hard days. We’d go play golf to celebrate, to get through something, to work some stuff out, or just to be together. We just played.
On the No. 17 tee, the illusion of a normal round was irreparably fractured. As Dad bent down to tee up his ball, the weight of reality rushed back in and snapped what was left of the bone in his lower left leg. His body hit the grass of the tee box and writhed in pain. I had seen him hurt himself all sorts of ways over the years and endure two years of treatments that nearly killed him while they saved him, but this was the most visceral pain I’d ever seen him in. We carried him to the cart with one arm wrapped around each of our shoulders. What happened? How bad is it? Can you play? What do you want to do? Let’s drive back to the clubhouse and get you to the hospital. No. What?
“No,” he said, “we’re finishing the round.” “But you can’t even walk. How are you supposed to hit?” He didn’t answer. He just stared out at the 18th.
Dad could barely stand, let alone swing. We carried him to the No. 18 tee. He wobbled over the ball before hacking at it like a man with one leg, which he nearly was at this point. Recalling this moment at the start of the most famous finishing hole in golf, I remember the hot tears streaming down my face watching him try to gut it out. We carried him back to the cart. He put a few savage, makeshift swings together to eventually make it to about 50 yards out from the green. My brother helped him out of the cart.
“You can pull around,” he said to my brother. “What?” “Go ahead, I’ll meet you at the green.”
Dad has a special relationship with the 18th hole. No matter where we were playing, he always did the same thing on every 18th hole. After his approach shot, he would walk up to the green from the fairway carrying his putter and, if he was still off the green, maybe a wedge in one hand. He’d wave and tip his cap to imaginary crowds. All the while, with a big smile on his face, play-acting famous final round 18th hole walk-ups by Jack, Arnie, Tiger, Phil, and all of golf’s heroes. This short walk is a chance for the victor to soak up the applause of the crowd and soak in the weight of the moment. Dad had done it for years and years on fair to middling golf courses and wasn’t about to pass it up at Pebble. Not just this last hole for the day, but the finishing hole of his life.
Golf is famous for the hard choices it puts on the player. Go for the green or lay up. Play it safe or attempt the impossible. Try for a miracle or play the percentages. Let the big dog eat or just punch it out there. Great courses are designed to force difficult choices. His choice to play No. 18, walk up the green, and finish the round was nothing short of an attempt to walk on water, to catch the wind.
Dad hits his approach shot to the front fringe with a wedge and starts his walk. Well, it isn’t really a walk. Holding the putter in one hand and the wedge in the other, he uses his makeshift Ping crutches to aid in the longest 50 yards of his life. The victory walk is slow and painful, excruciating to watch for us from the green. When he stops because of the pain or just to get his bearings, he frees up one hand to wave and tip his cap to the imaginary crowds before starting again.
He’s moving again, fighting for every step. Press forward. Cover ground. Forge ahead. Don’t stop. Just keep going. Finish.
Dad makes it to the green. Somehow, he had hobbled up the last stretch of No. 18 and joined us on the green. Putting out through blurry eyes is harder than you might think, but we all find the bottom of the cup eventually. As the caddy places the flag in the hole, Dad does what he’s always done at the end of a round. Removing his cap, he shakes each person’s hand, smiles, and says, “Enjoyed it.” So did we, Dad. So did we.
From the 18th green, we race over to the Monterey Hospital emergency room. X-rays reveal multiple fractures in his lower left leg. He left the hospital in a wheelchair. He never golfed again. He never walked again. As summer moved to fall, we learned the news that we all knew already. His spirits remained high as we soaked up final moments together. Winter brought hospice care and long goodbyes. On a frigid January day that spit sleet all afternoon, we buried him in the frozen Virginia soil. He was 46.
My mind always goes back to a moment we shared right after the doctor told us the end was near. As I helped him get up from his wheelchair, he put his arms on my shoulders, smiled at me, pulled me in for a hug, and in a trembling voice whispered in my ear, “I had a pretty good run, didn’t I?” It wasn’t so much a question as a final statement from a man full of gratitude for a life that, even in the face of a painful and abrupt end, had exceeded his expectations.
In its purest form, golf is simply a long walk with someone you love. Our last walk together was a final echo of all the walks that preceded that one. One that still rings. That still brings a smile to my face. When I play now, I think of Dad and our walks together. When I play now, I walk with him again. And that’s no small thing.