Ever since I was young, golf has been a big factor in my life. It all started back when I was four years old in Battle Creek, Nebraska. My grandpa lived on a small local golf course called Evergreen Hills. Every time we would go visit my grandpa, my dad would take my older brother Lane and me out to golf. Since I was so young, and the clubs were about as big as me, I probably took about fifteen strokes per hole.
As I kept growing up and playing golf at my grandpa’s, I slowly started improving. And, finally, when I was seven, I got a new pair of kids’ clubs. It came with a driver, 3-wood, 5-hybrid, 7-iron, 9-iron, sand wedge and a putter. Nothing crazy, but it was my first own set of clubs. With the new clubs, my dad also decided to put me and my older brother Lane in golf lessons at the Oak Hills Country Club. On the first day, we got there at 7:50 a.m. as the lessons started nice and early at 8 a.m. There were already a couple of kids there, and they were talking to the coach of the kids’ lessons. He came up to us and introduced himself as Jonathan Mielke, a former professional golfer. He asked us for our names and what part of our golf game we want to improve the most. I said everything since I was young and wasn’t very good at golf, and he said that’s perfect because that’s what we’ll go over throughout the summer of lessons.
In every practice, we would start with either chipping or putting, as he always said that the short game was the most important part of golf; if you can consistently hit it close to the hole, that will lower your scores a lot more than hitting it far. And some days would be just chipping and putting. Otherwise, after that, we would go to the range and work on iron shots or the driver. First, we practiced a preshot routine, as having the same preshot routine lowered the amount of errors you could make in your swing. And after that, we worked on our form, how our mechanics looked. And finally, after learning all of that, we played competitions for practice, showing our new skills in a fun way. We did closest-to-the-pin putting, chipping into a box and a long-distance driver competition. But after all that practice over the summer, I barely played any golf, so I didn’t really improve that much year by year.
I continued this routine of taking lessons through the summer and playing occasionally with my brother, dad and grandpa. Until I was about eleven years old, my dad wanted me to focus on baseball, so I couldn’t golf because whenever I did, it messed up my baseball swing. So, from eleven to fourteen years old, I played maybe five rounds of golf.
However, I was done with baseball now, so I decided that I was going to try out for the golf team. Since I had barely played any golf recently, I played really badly and didn’t make the team freshman year. Over that summer, I played golf a few times, but once the time came for tryouts, I decided to try out for baseball instead, and I didn’t make the team for that either. After not making the team, I decided I was going to go back to golf. Over the summer, my friends and I went out and played golf at least once a week, and by the end of the summer, I was way better than I had ever been.
But, I didn’t continue practicing over the fall and winter, so by the time we were a few weeks away from tryouts, I finally started playing golf on a simulator and realized it was a bad decision to take that break. I went out for the first round of tryouts, let the anxiety get to me, and shot a 60. This score made it feel like there was no chance that I could make the team. I had to shoot below a 50 if I wanted a chance to make the team, and, with how anxious I was, it wouldn’t be easy to shoot a sub-50.
On the second day, I went out and shot 48, securing my spot on the team just barely number nineteen. I stayed in the bottom five for the whole year, but I made the team and was able to play golf all spring. Over the summer, I also played lots with my friends and family. I specifically remember playing golf with my brother, dad, and grandpa right after school ended. We all stepped up to the first tee box, my brother, my dad, and I all hit from the tips. And my grandpa hit the Reds. We went up to our balls, and my grandpa was the first ball we went to.
I outdrove him, something I dreamed of as a kid, but once it happened, I realized what it meant. He was getting older, through all this time, figuring out which sport I wanted to play, the world was still going, and everyone was aging along with me. Now my grandpa was older, and even with a 60-yard advantage from the reds, I still hit it further. That was when I realized what golf is about. Yes, it’s about competing and playing the best you can, but more than that, it’s a sport that you can play your whole life.
