Pro Lessons from My Father About Golf and Life

One "If It Were Easy, Everybody Would Do It" "Golf is hard!" Dad used to lurch forward with his arms out as he made this proclamation. While a little less than six feet tall, Dad was always big, a thick man with broad shoulders and a wide neck. When he lunged to make a point, he looked like a blitzing linebacker. His hands would go wide as if he were about to make a tackle. Then he would say, "Golf's hard. Good golf is damn hard, and championship golf is so hard only a select few ever comprehend it. It's a cruel game. Think about it. A hundred and forty-four people play in the tournament, and a hundred and forty-three of them are going to lose. That's tough. The game chews you up, spits you out, and steps on you. It's those who get up and dust themselves off that make it. But that's how it should be. If it were easy, everybody would do it." Dad pounded this point home to me and my brothers on more occasions than any of us can remember. He didn't always use the same words. One of his favorite expressions, for example, was, "Show me somebody who is practicing for today, and I'll show you somebody who has no chance of getting better tomorrow." This was another way of saying the same thing. Golf is hard. It takes a lot of work. If you want to play good golf, you had better be willing to put in long, hard hours, for an extended period of time. And in many cases, you have to get worse before you can get better. My brothers and I knew he was right. To say "golf is hard" is like saying "the sky is blue" or "the world is round." It's axiomatic, which made Dad's passion for repeating it seem odd at times. I wanted to say things like, "Yeah, sure, Dad, okay, it's hard, so what does my spine angle look like at impact?" But he would never let us forget the point. Dad made sure we understood that golf was not a game you ever perfected. The moment you thought you had golf whipped, the game slapped you down and embarrassed you. Conversely, whenever you were ready to quit forever, a good thought and a good round came along and sparked the smoldering ember of hope. He also drummed the message that golf was not a game of steady progressions. You don't get 10 percent better in the first six months and 10 percent better every month after that. Nor was it a game where results tied directly to one component, like talent or repetitions. One golfer might hit five hundred balls a day for a decade and never break par, while another might put his clubs away for months and shoot in the sixties in his first outing. Champion golfers were those who had talent on top of spending endless hours on the practice tees. I knew all of this--all the Harmon boys did--but knowing that the game is unyielding, unfair, unpredictable, unsympathetic, and unaware of who you are and what you shot yesterday, and accepting such truths are two different things. Plenty of times, I wanted the quick fix, the magic potion that would make my game better by noon. My father had little patience for those, like me, who looked for easy answers. "The tip-of-the-day pro is the one I want to be playing against," he would say. He also had little use for anyone who thought the golf swing had to feel "good" or "natural." My youngest brother Billy, who as a teenager was one of the best junior players in the country, used to argue with Dad about how a change "felt." When Dad tried to change Billy's grip to keep him from hitting an occasional hook, Billy said, "Dad, it doesn't feel right." My father snatched up the ball and club and held both within inches of Billy's face. "You see that ball?" he barked. "Yes, sir," Billy said. "And you see that club?" "Harmon, Claude is the author of 'Pro Lessons from My Father About Golf and Life', published 2007 under ISBN 9780307338044 and ISBN 0307338045.