You don’t have to play golf to chase big dreams. But for boomer author Jamey Wolf, making the PGA tour is a big dream, “right up there,” he says, “with playing second base for the Chicago White Sox, winning a Nobel Prize for discovering a cure for cancer, and solving the ‘meaning of life’ riddle. Oh yeah, and lowering my cholesterol.” That’s why he wrote “Little Balls, Big Dreams

It’s one hell of a hole. The par three sixth at the Riverside Golf and Country Club starts on an elevated tee and ends 155 yards away on a small, kidney shaped green. The Fox River winds behind, a great lagoon encroaches the right front of the green. Sand traps guard the left and deep right sides. Out-of-bounds lies beyond the trap on the left. The only safe place to land is on the short grass.

Number six, the course’s signature hole, scared the bejesus out of Matt. It is harder than the differential equations course he took while majoring in Aeronautical Engineering some twenty-five years ago.

Henry and Ralph’s shots were already on the green, safe but not close to the pin. It was Matt’s turn since Ernie, Matt’s partner, had a snowman on the fifth hole. That’s with sinking a twenty-foot putt. Not the longest hitter at the club, Matt chose a seven iron. Running through his usual checklist, stance and grip, slightly bent waste and knees, hands forward, left heal firmly planted on the ground, Matt finally took the club straight back SLOWLY.

Henry cleared his throat midway through the back swing.

Adrenaline surged through Matt’s veins. He executed what felt like a pretty decent swing, if maybe a little harder than he intended.

The ball rocketed into the sky and hovered for what seemed like an hour and a half.

“You’ll be dancing,” Ernie complimented even before the ball reached the apex of its journey.

“Right on it,” Ralph, the better half of the opposition, announced as the ball hit the ground four feet behind the cup and bit like a Tiger Woods lob shot. Cutting a half-dollar sized divot out of the grass as the back spin did its magic, the Titleist hopped softly, then gripped and rolled slowly backwards into the cup.

“It’s in the f**king hole,” howled Henry, the sleaseball partnered with Ralph, sounding more amazed than happy about the shot. His high-pitched voice reminded Matt of fingernails on a blackboard. Henry chucked his floppy hat at his golf cart in disgust.

Ernie’s bear hug felt like the Heimlich maneuver he learned in medical school. He was much stronger than his short, skinny, forty-nine year old body appeared. “Hell of a shot, Pard.” Gasping for breath, Matt smiled at his wife’s boss and his good friend.

Ralph offered a hard, slapping high-five. “Will wonders never cease, you lucky bastard. That’ll cost you big-time in the lounge after the game.”

“I can’t freakin’ believe it. I’ve played this hole seventy-five times a year for fifteen stinking years and never got an ace.” Henry climbed into the golf cart as Ernie chili-dipped a pop-up into the lagoon. Slamming the pedal to the floor, Henry hollered at Ralph holding on for dear life, “Why do the hackers always get lucky? What the hell’s the matter with the golf gods? Matthew, stinking, True for Christ’s sake.”

Overhearing, Matt assumed Henry was referring to the fact that Henry’s handicap was six, five strokes less than Matt’s. Believe it jerk, Matt thought, watching Henry race by the lagoon. He did not know exactly what it was, but Matt knew the shot was not lucky, not a miracle. It felt like a gift, like the way he felt receiving a special birthday present. Grateful, humble, appreciative.

Matt retrieved the ball from the cup with the fore and middle fingers of his right hand without removing the pin. He gave the Titleist a kiss and held it high in a V, for victory, pose. Henry’s ball was thirty feet above the hole, resting against the fringe. With a straight face and a tinge of sarcasm, Matt asked, “Want me to tend the pin or pull it?” When he got no response other than what sounded like a growl, Matt pulled the pin and walked to the edge of the green.

Lighting a Marlboro, Matt realized he was calm and totally focused, not the least bit surprised he bagged an ace, even though it’s as rare as a winning Power Ball lottery ticket. How do you explain it? Pure chance? Destiny? Skill? The feeling included a vague sense of entitlement, like Matt was waiting for it to happen. The feeling was one of accomplishment. Being rewarded for a job well done, like graduating from college. A gift for sure, but he felt entitled because
of his devotion to the game.

Sometimes a guy is not the master of his fate, in control of his destiny. Every now and then an improbable phenomenon intervenes in life and everything changes.

Yesterday Matt’s goal was to lower his handicap into single digits. Six, like Henry’s would be nice, but he would settle for a nine. With one shot, his goals took a dramatic leap. Maybe this was the start of something big. Maybe the childhood dream of professional golf could be
dusted off.

Walking to the seventh tee, Matt assumed his mind had climbed into the back seat and his body took over steering. Golfers talk about muscle memory, the result of practicing your ass off until you don’t have to think about techniques anymore. Jocks in other sports call it playing in the “zone.” On the sixth hole, his body internalized everything the brain had learned over the years. Instantaneously! The ace catapulted Matt into the zone, not for one shot, not for one round, but permanently.

At least that is what Matt hoped.

But why now? After twenty-five years of zeal for the game? Perhaps Henry was correct. It might have been a gift from the golf gods. Maybe these gods, with a little g, hide in the bunkers, behind trees, do the back stroke in the ponds, creeks and lakes. You can’t see them hovering in the clouds, lurking around the tee box and in the bottom of the cup, but maybe that’s where they hang out. They don’t demand idolization and adulation, only some simple respect. For the course, the rules, the sportsmanship, the aura of golf. Matt felt rewarded for his love and devotion to the game.

There would be ample time for reflection, but for now, that was explanation enough.

Jamey Wolf’s new book, “Little Balls, Big Dreams,” was published by Windstorm Creative and is used by permission of the author.

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That’s what a new poll of baby boomers tells us: we like it more, and do it more, than Gen X or when we were younger (even though that might be hard to believe).  Want to see if you’re part of the trend? Check it out, and a lot more about boomers’ love lives, in this news story from Reuters.

Share what you think … leave a Comment.

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There are century bike rides each summer in Colorado. “Century” means, a hundred … as in, a hundred miles. But by the time you’re anywhere near the hundred mile mark, especially on century rides in a state where the altitude of mountain roads rises into the quintuple digits, you’re counting not just every mile but every single foot, which is why I’ll go to pains to point out, the total mileage usually comes out to more like 102, 103 … I remember one that ended up at 108 miles.

The earliest century ride in Colorado comes the first weekend in June; it’s called the Elephant Rock. It begins and ends in the small city of Castle Rock, a bit south of Denver, and every time I’ve ridden it, it’s made enduring memories. Some aren’t so sweet, from the route near the end that takes you up a hellishly steep hill I have nicknamed “the wall,” to the fierce southbound wind that makes the final northbound stretch along I-25 feel like a whole century ride itself!

But none is more memorable than my Elephant Rock ride in 2001. Why? Because I was just 54 years old but had a heart attack!

In retrospect, I’d had a couple of smaller heart attacks in the preceding week, while training my winter-idled body for the Elephant Rock on a small mountain called Bergen Peak in Evergreen, Colorado, where I live. I thought the burning sensation in my chest was heartburn or acid reflux, neither of which I’d ever had before, but there’s a first time for everything. So I kept riding.

Then, riding with a friend in the Elephant Rock, I had the same kind of burning, but stronger. So not long before the first official rest stop, I stopped. I told my friend what I was feeling, but being as ignorant as I am, he didn’t recognize the signs of a heart attack any more than I did. After being still for 10 or 15 minutes, we got back on our bikes … and finished the ride.

When I got home that night and told my wife what had happened, she was smarter than my friend and I were, and said, Get yourself to the doctor! … which I did, and when I had yet a fourth attack right there in his examining room, I barely had time to clutch my chest before he had me in an ambulance and, not long after that, in surgery.

The thing is, I asked my cardiologist — none of us has a cardiologist on standby; I met mine in the emergency room — whether my bike-riding had caused the heart attacks, or saved me despite them. His answer was something any bicyclist needs to know: because of the time I spend on bikes, my heart, which is a muscle, was strong. Strong enough to withstand the blood stoppages that blocked arteries were causing.

What caused the blockages was heredity — a propensity to develop plaque, which plagued both my father and his father with bad hearts. What kept me going, was biking.

And that’s why I ride my bike nowadays more than ever. Including a couple of Elephant Rocks since my open heart surgery in 2001. I don’t worry that it’s going to stress the heart; I’m confident that it’s going to keep it strong!

One immodest postscript: in September 2006 I was on the east coast for business, and at a friend’s urging I flew to New York City for the annual NYC Century Bike Tour. It begins in Central Park, cuts south through Manhattan, then goes through and around Brooklyn, and Queens, and the Bronx, and ends back where it started. I’m a leading-edge boomer, 61 years old, and ought to have been at the rear of the pack. But instead I kept riding forward from every pack I joined. Why? Because you can pedal your bike every day of the year in New York City and you won’t develop legs or lungs like a Coloradoan’s. And where do we get those legs and lungs? On rides like the Elephant Rock!

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