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Route 53 – Enjoying Life's Joy Ride

Tag Archives: Harding Park

What Did Your Kid Do This Summer?

11 Saturday Aug 2012

Posted by route53 in Route 53 - Life is A Highway, San Francisco - Sports & Life

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First Tee, Fleming, golf, Harding Park, Life Skills, NCGA, parenting, Patience, Perseverance, san Francisco, Youth on Course

Every once in a while your kids surprises you.  I am currently two weeks away from becoming the parent of a teenager.  Like every other parent we spend a lot of time trying to prevent our kids from sleeping in and watching television all summer long. At the same time, camps and other activities are costly.  My kids?  They set up achievement goals with major objectives and a plan for achievement.  They were a mixture of academics and athletics.

Unbeknownst to us, my son had a golf improvement goal that also required him to write a 500 word essay to renew his Northern California Junior Golf Membership card (You have to love a sport that requires your kids to work on his writing skills).  The essay asked him to write about his experience with golf, why he enjoyed the sport, and how life skills from the sport and the NCGA translate into other parts of his life.  He chose to write about perseverance and sportsmanship.  Needless to say, when he gave it to me and my wife to proof, we were moved.

Sometimes teenage boys don’t tell you everything, but it was good to hear what is going on in the back of his mind and that the game of golf has helped him to put life in perspective.  Below is his essay (nope, I didn’t get his approval to publish!).

Sportsmanship & Perseverance  – My name is Nicholas and I am a 12 year old entering seventh grade this Fall.  Golf is one of my favorite sports (I also play basketball and baseball).  During the summer, my dad and I go out to the golf course almost every weekend to play Golden Gate Park or Jack Fleming in San Francisco. We have been doing this since I entered Kindergarten and it will be one of the things I remember most about my childhood and father when I grow up.  I think golf is special because it is different than all the other sports as it is the only sport I know of where you can go out by yourself and just play a game. With other sports you have to gather a team, and that can be hard.  I live just down the hill from The Presidio Golf Course and this summer I have been able to go three or four times a week to the driving range and putting greens.  This has been really fun for me because it teaches me that hard work and diligence can make oneself better, even if you have to work through bad weather or blisters.  Golf is also a very social game as I can go out with friends to a course and just have a good time and encourage and complement each other; this has been fun because in the classroom all we see is everybody studying and working, but out there, it is different, in a good way.

One thing that I have learned playing golf is perseverance. Perseverance has helped me on and off the golf course.  In baseball for instance, I wanted to hit a home run, which I had never done before, and after a lot of practice, it paid off and I hit one towards the end of the year.  In basketball, we had a great team, and after close victories, and bad calls, we won the championship.  Another thing that I have learned is sportsmanship.  In golf we don’t say ‘Don’t make it’, or ‘That was a bad shot.’ We say ‘Good shot’, or ‘Nice putt.’  In baseball, I have seen some bad sportsmanship, kids yelling at each other about who made the team lose, or saying when someone strikes out, ‘That will be the first of many.’  It doesn’t help to be a bad sport; it takes all the fun out of playing.  So if you are friendly and supporting to others then you will enjoy yourself better and friendships will grow both on and off the course.

Recently we had a school tournament out at Fleming to qualify for an inter-school event to be held at Harding.  I shot a 44, which was a personal best for me, but I didn’t make the team of four.  This got me motivated.  This summer I set a goal to lower my score so that I can make a score that will qualify. I recently reached my goal shooting a 39 and beating my score by five strokes.  It took a while to complete it but through patience, perseverance, and constant visits to the driving range up at the Presidio, I succeeded.  Now I will keep trying to improve that because I know that other kids have gotten better too.

I have come to realize that you can think of a golf course as similar to the path of life.  We go shot-by-shot, stroke-by-stroke, and patiently through life’s thick roughs and deep bunkers, through life’s open fairways and tap-in putts.  Only I can change my path, and only I can take my path.  Only I can say how much honesty and truth is put into my life and my game. Only I know if I have done the best that I can do.  It is the true test of one’s integrity.  Life and golf both have something alike, it’s important that you have fun, but you also must be serious about some things and respect that.  Overall, I have really enjoyed golf and I will continue to enjoy it for a long time.

Golf has been a part of my life ever since I started playing courses at age 5.  Being a member of the NCGA Youth On Course Foundation has allowed me to play more often with my dad and with friends. Just like playing catch with my dad, playing golf with my dad is always something we get to do together and I enjoy the quality time together.  For the past 7 years we even play as a team in the Northern California Family Golf Tournament held at Golden Gate Park.  It is the same tournament that my dad played in with his father when he was my age.  I am proud to carry on the tradition.

I started the First Tee at about age 8 at Harding Park; at first it was a little tough because all I wanted to do was hit balls, but I eventually learned that it was more than just a game.    I want to keep playing golf, because I feel that it is a game I can play as I get older.  I feel that through the NCGA, Youth on Course and the First Tee organizations I have learned to appreciate the game of golf and the life skills that it offers.

25 Year Anniversary – Father’s Day

17 Sunday Jun 2012

Posted by route53 in Route 53 - Life is A Highway, San Francisco - Leaving your heart, San Francisco - Sports & Life

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dads, Father's Day, golf, Harding Park, Olympic Club, san Francisco, U.S. Open

Fathers Day Memory

25 Father’s Days ago, my father shook me out of bed and asked me to go play golf at Harding Park which is located just across the street from the Olympic Club which back in 1987 was hosting the US Open.  25 years later I will be thinking of my dad and that awesome morning as the US Open is played again at the Olympic Club.  You see, on that Father’s Day 25 years ago, my dad hit a hole-in-one on the 11th hole at Harding Park. The smile and embarrassed laugh my dad gave will never be forgotten.

 

All I could say was “Happy Father’s Day”.  His comment, ” Thanks, for the great day”.  I like to think it wasn’t about the hole in one , but sharing it with friends and family.  Golf will always be a Father’s Day sport as long as the US Open takes place over Father’s Day weekend.  The US Open, golf, and that day 25 years ago will always make it more than a Hallmark Holiday in my book.

 

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there.

Solidarity in Death and Love

14 Wednesday Oct 2009

Posted by route53 in Route 53 - Celebrity Sightings, Route 53 - Life is A Highway

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Tags

Chesley Sullenberger, death, family, fear of flying, golf, Grace Cathedral, Harding Park, love, planes, President's Cup, Star Wars, Sully

“Funerals and deaths are the departed’s message to remind us to go out and live life” – The Very Reverend Alan Jones, Grace Cathedral
 

It has taken me a day to settle down from my harrowing plane flight.  I’m not afraid of flying, but flying in the high winds that hit the West Coast of the US yesterday was not a joy ride I enjoyed.  I was sitting there in seat 12F mentally writing my own obituary about how I was rushing back to Northern California to my cousin’s funeral, my second of the week, when my plane went down in the SF Bay.  It was one of those flights where you hear that whistle.  You know the sound.  It’s the one you hear in the movies where the plane makes that soaring screech before it hits the ground?  We had to abort our landing twice as our captain told us that the wind shears were too violent to provide us with a predictable path to the runway.  Inside the plane, we slammed against each other with each turbulent drop and rise of our plane, trying not to act worried.  The woman next to me grabbed my arm subconsciously and I didn’t even want to look at her  for fear I’d get scared too.  I tried to distract myself with the newspaper only to read about the great confidence we should have in the pilots of today, an article about Chesley Sullenberger, a local hero, and someone you would have wanted at the helm of our plane yesterday.  We eventually landed and everyone rushed to the men’s room full of relieved tension.  Even the pilot came rushing in to a bunch of smiling and relieved faces.

The quote for this post is a  thought provoking one from the Reverend who presided over my first funeral I attended this week.  I just wish I didn’t need these reminders.  Seriously, so far two funerals for dads under the age of 55 this week and I get the message. I get it , I get it, I get it.  I sat there yesterday listening to my son’s classmate singing “100 Years” by 5 for Fighting and I just about lost it.  I could not see my son singing next to my casket like that.  Every other dad in the church must have been thinking the same thing.  I looked around and I’m sure people were thinking “That could be me”. 

Kids with C-3PO

Kids with C-3PO

I stopped myself as I asked myself if I would rather have more time to plan my death or go quickly in my sleep.  What?  I can’t live life like that.  I need to live life every day for the sake of happiness.  As soon as these recent deaths came in fast sequence last week we didn’t need to say anything.  My wife knew how I was feeling, “There is solidarity and certainty in death.  We’ll all die some day, but let’s not live to die, but live to live well”.    For the first time I can ever remember, my kids came to visit me at work and all of us went out for lunch.  Just so nice to see your family together to break up the day.  It was just the beginning to the start of a great family weekend.

Saturday was our normal soccer Saturday as a family followed by the President’s Cupgolf tournament.  The President’s Cup was chilly but a great way to see the best golfers in the world in an intimate setting on our local home course.  Golf is unique because of how close you get to the players and the fact that you are actually walking around on the playing surface with them, not like most sports where they look like gladiators in a pit.

Tiger Woods

Tiger Woods

My 7-year old daughter doesn’t play golf yet, but I loved it on Sunday night when we ask everyone in our home what was their favorite part of the weekend and she chose to say that seeing Tiger Woods in person while snuggling close together as a family sipping hot cocoa was the best.

Sunday was followed by early morning Little League baseball again on a cold and blustery day.   It was another coffee and cocoa morning. The evening was finished with a trip to see Star Wars in Concert.  This was my son’s favorite event as he got to see all the costumes from the movies and watch the movies unfold to an orchestra which played the famous score that won many accolades and the Academy Award.  Seeing his eyes light up and his feet tapping to the music reminded me of myself at his age.  My wife and I caught each other watching our son and smiled that knowing smile that he was having a good time and enjoying himself.  It was a long day, but he was so excited to watch that he didn’t want to take a break to get food because he didn’t want to miss a thing.

Yes, the Reverend Alan Jones was right in saying that funerals and death bring us together to reflect and remember on those who have left us and to help celebrate their lives.  He was also very right in saying that love binds us too.  Spending a wonderful weekend with my family and exposing my children to some great experiences that they will never forget is something I will always cherish.  It is love and great times spent together which bind a family in experience and spirit.  It is those pleasant memories which we will use to grow and to help us remember the best of times at the worst of times… like when we are sitting on a plane with some crazy stranger grabbing on to your arm so tight.

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