Random Shots from a Grassy Knoll
by Dennis Van Norman
Hi, my name is Dennis, and I am an addict.
Every addict has a back story. Here is some of what I can remember…
He was a nice man. He was our neighbor, Mr. Van Tassel. Even though I was underage, about 12 years old, he invited me to join him and his friends at his club. He bought me my first round, and we started taking shots.
We stayed for hours, and what little I can recall, he and his friends took a few shots, and I had way too many.
Van Tassel and Van Norman. This was the Dutch Connection. The fact that we were a newly formed Netherlands partnership is not insignificant. Consider the meeting as a young innocent’s first exposure to his Dutch people’s never-ending negotiation with the boundaries between land and sea. It’s not the sea now; today it’s called a penalty area; and I learned that it’s not just one hole we are trying to plug, there’s 18 holes, and they are spread all over the countryside.
The countryside was called Phalen, the olde Phalen. That was over 60 years ago, and I have two memories. As a kid I recall being introduced to a new phrase that morning, and how funny it was at the time, “frog-hair.” And I still remember the early morning dew covering the green velvet landscape. Beautiful.
Turn the clock ahead a few years and what had started as a nice walk in the park was taking a seductive turn to the dark side.
In the early 1960’s, my lifelong friend, Dennis Smith, and I got reintroduced to the wonderful game as teenagers. In keeping with the golf era then, Dennis Smith grabbed Julius Boros (JB) for his moniker and I took Gary Player (GP) as my namesake. We kept the JB and GP names in play for over 45 years.
While Jack Daniels, Joe Camel and Mr. Coffee might take a while to set their hooks in the unsuspecting; the Golf Jones grabbed us both right from the first tee. We golfed addictively for a lifetime until JB’s tee-times got canceled by a pretty bad case of terminal cancer ten years ago.
My name is Dennis, and I am a golf drunk.
This Anonymous Program has twelve steps, but I can’t recall them all. Like in golf with its 18 holes, I want to remember only a few.
Step One says, “I admit I am powerless, and that my life has become unmanageable.” True!
Step Two: “I came to believe that a Power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.” Over the years this step has proven to be helpful for me. I call it my Power of Weakness. Here’s how it works. If a buzz-bomber like Steve Date powers his drive 285 yards, but pushes it just a bit to the right on Gross’ sixth hole, he finds himself up against the fence or even OB. If I weakly push my drive, I see my ball slowly rolling just past that lone tree in the right rough and I have an open shot to the green. …the Power of Weakness.
Step Eight: “Make a list of all persons I had harmed and become willing to make amends to them all.” I will offer just two examples. I have harmed my four-ball partner of 30+ years, Jim Steinmueller (Steinie). It was in a match against our vaunted opponents, Dennis Dale and KJ Milhone. In our third overtime hole I chipped to 18 inches. Making the tap-in would win the match and end a years-long drought.
It was now my partner’s turn, but in my hubris, my hunger for the spotlight, fame, and fortune I jumped in and proclaimed, “I’ll keep going and finish this off.”
I don’t have to tell you how that ended.
The second example of others I have harmed due to my addiction occurred in Texas. I was on a business trip to Dallas in the 1980’s for a conference about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (a personality preference inventory that has enjoyed some popularity in the human resources arena). While in Texas I discovered the Arnold Palmer-designed Golf Club at Fossil Creek in Fort Worth. It is my favorite of all the hundreds of courses I have ever played. The conference would start at 1:00 in the afternoon so I could sneak in a morning round.
After the morning round at Fossil Creek, and not being familiar with the area, it was taking me longer to drive to the conference than I had planned. The only reason I flew to Dallas was for the conference, and now I was stuck in traffic. I finally did make it to the conference, but I was 30 minutes late. The sad part is I was the scheduled presenter. I apologize to the fifty people who had to wait while I enjoyed another round. Addiction is not pretty.
I have struggled with this addiction for a lifetime. “She is a cruel mistress.” Sums it up in five tidy words.
As my fingers grind out my golf sentiments on this keyboard I realize these are the same fingers that have held thousands of stubby little pencils, trying to squeeze tiny numbers, too may 6’s, 7’s, and 8’s, into tiny little boxes. These are the same Vardon-gripping fingers that have wrapped themselves around hundreds of golf sticks, from my dad’s wooden-shafted, leather-gripped driver, to my own Patty Bergs and Tommy Aarons, to today’s over-engineered, most-forgiving hybrids. It has been a journey, from laughing at the first time I heard “frog-hair” to trying to figure out the new WHS’s latest ESC conversion. “Oh, I can take an eight on hole number 12.”
Is it a good thing that I can give a two-word answer to the question, “What did you do last week?” …or last summer, …or with your life? Father forgive me for I have sinned. “I golfed.”
I will close with the most important of the 12 steps, Step Three: “I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understood Him.” You have seen this step popularized and reduced to bumper-sticker format “Let Go, Let God.”
As I try and type this phrase the golf gods are channeling their collective will and have invoked their auto-correcting powers. As I strive for “Let Go, Let God,” the phrase morphs magically into “Let’s Go. Let’s Golf!!!”
(A note: Just in case you are wondering, I missed the tap-in putt on our third sudden-death hole against Dennis Dale and KJ Milhone. It never even touched the rim. We lost the match on the next hole, and we never did beat them in countless attempts. Sorry, Steinie! Mea culpa.)
