Why I Do What I Do (Riding a different kind of white horse)

Okay, I know what you're thinking. "What the hell man! You promised us an insanely personal story about the whole lot of good and that personally crushing thing that happened to you in Los Angeles during that stupid trip you took last fall! Why are you leaving us hanging? What an asshole!" To which I am going to reply, "Hey, it's been a busy year." I'm actually almost done with that story and hope to have it up in a few days. But something happened to me today, and it hit some weird spot in my brain and I just had to reflect on it a little bit. Because it cuts to the absolute core of who I am, what I do and why I do it. So for you guys, and the shockingly strange amount of readers I have from Eastern Europe and behind the Iron Curtain, here's your chance to get inside my head for a second. I'll finish that travelogue soon, and maybe dust off The Dorm Days later this year. 

Not enough tacklin' fuel.

Anyway, on to the meat of this blog entry. Growing up I was a total Mama’s Boy. Not Waterboy bad, but my momma and I were pretty close. Like it should be, I guess. When I was a little kid, my dad owned a trucking company and worked from 6 AM to 8 PM every day, so he wasn’t around too much. She drove me to various sports practices daily, served as president of my Little League and Babe Ruth leagues, helped me with my homework and did all this while holding down a full time job, and attended college! Total Superwoman growing up, a strong, take-no-bullshit kind of lady. Eventually my dad sold the company, and took another job giving him a little bit more time to be around, but I was always closer to my mother.  

What a bunch of reprobates.

My dad and I butted heads constantly. It seemed like I could never do anything good enough for the guy. My grades were never good enough. I didn’t work hard enough in the yard. Hell, I think I was the only “coach’s kid” in all of youth baseball that didn’t have an easy ride. I’d hit a home run to the opposite field and as I’d be rounding first, all I’d hear is “You were a little late getting around on that one.” One of the reasons I got into golf in the first place was that it was something he’d never done before so he couldn’t criticize me about it. To be honest with you there was a period there where I thought the dude was a total asshole. We just didn’t get along, even threw down a couple of times. Believe me, I'm not proud of this, and I'm glad we're good now. Get along with your parents kids, you'll thank me later.

About a month and a half before high school graduation, my folks split up. I never did see it coming, but at the same time, I wasn't around home very often back then. I pretty much lived over at my buddy Wischer's place back then and the local golf course. In a baseball parlance, I was just "playing out the string" until graduation when I would maybe force myself to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. A wiser person than I (not exactly distinguished company, that's probably 95% of the world) once said "whatever you take for granted, you lose" and you could definitely say that at the time, I took my family for granted. And when it blew up, mentally it threw me into a tailspin. I pretended to hold it together for my Dad and little sister, but even they had to have known I was pretty jacked-up. Sure, the circumstances kind of forced my Dad and I to get along for the first time pretty much ever, but I was still lost, spending what time I wasn't in class or at work crawling into a bottle of Jack Daniels that an older buddy would pick up for me once a week. 

There used to be a lot more weeds to the right.

One day though, the following summer I was out by myself playing golf at good ol' Carbon Country Club. As was typical at the time I was thinking about what a mess I was and probably feeling sorry for myself. It was late in the day, right around dusk, and the course down home seemed completely deserted. I striped my tee shot down  the 18th fairway and walked to my ball. When I reached it, I had a good look around and something weird happened. I noticed the grass was the most beautiful tint of jade that I'd ever seen. The sand in the trap seemed pearl white, even though it was the same shitty sand we'd always had. The clouds in the sky looked to be on fire as the little remaining light cast what seemed to be the air around me in the most surreal shade of blue with streaks of warm orange light almost illuminating a path towards nirvana. The scene gave me pause, and then for the first time a sense of total calmness came over me as all the chaos and strife in my life seemingly lifted away. It was almost like something else was there standing next to me letting me know that everything was going to be all right. Then I stepped up to my ball, and hosel-rocketed it straight into the weeds. But you know what, I didn't care, because I was in a good state of mind. Things were going to be all right.

A monster is chained in all our hearts, waiting to be set free by obsession

Now, I'm not particularly religious. I grew up that way, hell, I was even an altar-boy at my church. I grew out of it and let's just say it's probably not in the cards for me to head down that path again. Nowadays I dabble a little bit in the Tao, and meditation, but that's more for personal enlightenment. I fucking hate rules. But I felt something that day, and I've been chasing it ever since. I competed at a fairly high level in the game for years, and I thought the charge of being in contention in a tournament might've been that feeling. But it's a whole other ballgame entirely. What I've been chasing is that sense of calmness that I can only describe as being one with the vibrations of the universe. I don't mean to come off sounding like a two-bit Rust Cohle but golf happens to be my particular tool for finding that greater sense of being. For the rest of you, it might be (and probably is) something else entirely and I can't tell you what that might be, but I encourage all of you that might be reading this to try and find it. You'll know it when you do. It's better than drugs. It's better than booze. And you'll be chasing it like a junkie taking the spike until you find it again. Hopefully what it is for you, isn't actually heroin. That shit kills people.

Anyway, today, I threw some new irons in the bag, gave them a good shakedown on the range, and blasted through eighteen holes in about two and a half hours, firing the best round I've shot all season. Afterward, I taught my golf for women class (beginning golf session 1 starts in just a month, sign up!). Tonight they learned a very difficult shot, and at the end they all had hit a bunch of shots they could be proud of. Professionally, nothing satisfies me more. Once class wrapped up, I sprinted back out for nine more holes. I work mostly evenings these days, so rarely do I get some dusk golf in, and this is my favorite time of the year to do it. I didn't hit the ball as well as I did earlier today, but that's okay. The great thing about the game is you can still have a great time, even if things are struggling. 

These days I struggle finding a balance between work and life. For the first time ever, I feel like I have my health, and mentally I'm in a pretty good place, but we didn't get much of a break this Winter and it seems like we've been grinding pretty hard since January. I'm down to one day a week off, and I'm filling what free time I've got with lessons. I enjoy being busy, but it's left a bit of a lack of time for other things in life, from relationships, to creative pursuits, to hell, even just keeping up with my yard! My work-life balance is way outta whack, but I guess it's what I signed up for all those years ago when I got into this crazy business in the first place. 

I didn't have a camera all those years ago.
Today, I did, and this still isn't as brilliant as it looked in real life.

I got to the last hole, as the sun was hanging low and found myself with an approach shot out of some heavy rough after shoving my second shot about thirty yards right of the fairway. I pulled the club out of my bag, took a couple practice swings and just before I took a stance, I took a good look around. And for just a second, that sense of balance and calm and brilliant color washed over me like a gentle flood. The only sound I could hear was a couple sprinklers in the distance as I drew my wedge back and fired a smooth dart to about five feet from the pin. The smile and daze I was in didn't leave my face as I walked up to the ball, hearing an imaginary gallery going crazy as I approached the green. I lined up my putt and slid in my eighth birdie in twenty seven holes. Pure bliss, until I remembered that I had taken a cart and left it at the spot from where I hit my approach 120 yards back up the hole. Sometimes getting caught up in the moment can make you feel like an idiot.

Tales From The UGC Part 1: The Commute

I might be possibly indirectly
 responsible for THIS GUY

Good god! Seems like it's been a hundred years since I've put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard so to speak in service of entertaining you, my dear readers, who if my usage stats are to be believed are mostly from behind the former Iron Curtain. Hello Russia! Anyway, Winter is setting in, which means I might have a little time on my hands, so like I've said at least ten times in the past, I'm planning on getting a little more frequent with my posts, because I feel like I've got a few things to say. Now, before I get started, I just want to say, I appreciate you guys' support over the years. I recently undertook a major lifestyle change. No, not that kind of lifestyle change (not that there's anything wrong with that) but I can promise you, this blog won't turn into one of those "My Journey" type of deals. Yeah, I might dedicate one post to that when I'm done, but that's it. I'd much rather just spin some hopefully entertaining tales from this crazy life I've led.

The Mighty UGC! No longer exists!

That leads us to today's story. It's kind of a quick one. I worked for seven and a half years at the University of Utah on what used to be a little nine-hole executive-style golf course, right in the middle of campus. I started out as a guest instructor for some junior camps in 2003, and by the time the powers that be decided to drop a building on top of us and shut us down in 2009, I'd worked my way into being the last ever Head Professional of the UGC and pretty much the last man standing. They were some of the best times in my life with friends I still have today and the stories I have are innumerable, so much like my "Dorm Days" series. today will be the first post in an occasional series I'd like to call, "Tales From The UGC."

"The Commute"

A fine place for vagrants to read newspapers on
a rattan cane and masturbate to Internet porn!

Not long after I was hired at the UGC, my beloved giant 1982 Chevy Blazer, affectionately known to my high school buddies as "Sweet Ride" partially exploded on me during a trip to my hometown to see my buddy Rat for a haircut. That truck was legendary, especially during the "Dorm Days" as the most reliable way for my roommates and I in room 302 to get around, safely and in style. There was no mistaking who was pulling up when it's diesel-ly growl approached. But she'd finally given up the ghost and since I had about $500 to my name at any one time (THE LIFE OF A GOLF PRO, SO GLAMOROUS!) my options for getting to and from work (and really anywhere else) were limited to public transportation. Thankfully, I lived in a not-so-horrible condo about a block and a half from the Salt Lake City Library and the light rail station adjacent to it. Riding the TRAX train every day to work was amazingly convenient (No gas! A drop off right next to our 5th hole! A semi-convenient schedule!) and provided me with endless people watching opportunities.

One early Fall day I boarded a train for my normal afternoon shift. There were about seven stops between the library and my drop-off point on our 5th Fairway. The car was about half full as I thankfully rarely had to commute during the busy parts of the day. I popped in the ear buds, cranked up a little "Heartbreak Boulevard" by Shotgun Messiah and settled in for the fifteen minute ride. 

Two stops in a guy boards the train and sits in the seat across the aisle from me. Out of the corner of my eye, I could tell he bore striking similarity in appearance to a certain long-time Carbon High School football coach, who in turn was the spitting image of long-time WWF wrassler, former Governor of Minnesota and current underground bunker-resident Jesse "The Body" Ventura. As a matter of fact, I thought it actually WAS Coach, so rather than just staring out the window, like I usually did, I actually popped the ear buds out when he motioned towards me that he wanted to say something.

"Hey man, lot of pretty girls on this train."

"Well yeah, it's kind of the main artery up to the University," I said, a little apprehensively. 

"Yeah, the State is making me take a bunch of classes up there, so I can get out of the halfway house. You grow up around here, man?" He asked.

"Naw man, a few hours south of here. A little town on the high desert called Price. How about you?"

You can trust me to get you
 the good shit, Gorilla!

"Kansas City, had to split town though. A few hombres were bringing the heat down on me," his eyes starting to dart back and forth, "I've been to Price. Got busted down there, a couple years ago."

Here we go, a good story, maybe! "What did they nail you on?"

"Dealing Crank. The market down there is goddamn great these days!"

"Yeah, that's what I hear." The economy was tanking in the early 2000's, and my hometown's drug issues were getting pretty gnarly. But his comment was making me wonder if there was a magazine like Investor's Business Daily for the drug trade. 

"We were making money hand-over-fist! Then one day, a new guy started hanging around. Goddamn narcs. Next thing you know, I'm in County getting hosed down and they were breaking out the rubber gloves." He said grinning, way too matter of factly for my comfort level.

"Well, at least it seems like you're getting your shit together man. They eventually let you out." This dude might be Heisenberg.

Had to jump a fence, to get to work,
 but damn it was convenient!

"Yeah man. These classes have been great for getting some new connections! You guys are sitting on a gold mine up here."

I just kind of gave it a snicker. Time to pull the plug on this conversation. "Good luck to ya, pal."

He nodded and grinned, "Lot of pretty girls on this train."

I punched the button and jumped off the train a couple stops early. Hiking clear across campus to the clubhouse. It was already a weird day.

Coach Nickas! I kinda like the sound of that...

Earlier this past summer I received a phone call from an old college acquaintance She had heard about some golf classes that were being offered by our alma mater, Westminster College; and was wondering if I was the one they had tabbed to teach them. I wasn't even aware they were teaching classes down there. Now, I do teach some classes at the University of Utah, but up until that point, I was completely unaware that Westminster was offering any classes. Three days later I got a call from the Athletic Director from Westminster asking if I'd like to go to lunch and discuss a few things. I'd been working during the winters as a public address announcer for the basketball teams ever since I got out of school and I assumed that they were going to talk to me about teaching some of their golf classes.So we sat down and talked a little about basketball, and how awesome the teams are going to be this year when we were joined by the women's basketball coach, JD. He'd also been the men's and women's golf coach on the side ever since my old college coach, Coach DP quit. The team had recently risen up to become pretty successful, placing 2nd at the NAIA regional tournament just 2 years ago. So imagine my surprise when he said that he wanted to scale back his involvement in the golf program and concentrate on basketball full time. I asked him why, and he replied, "Because we think you can get them to the next level." Without any kind of a formal interview or application or anything, they offered me a coaching job. I don't even think they got the actual sentence out before I said I'd do it.

The hitch though, I didn't exactly inherit that awesome team from a couple of years ago. In fact, only two players from that Men’s team remained, and they were both graduating in December. There were only three returning ladies from last year’s women’s team! We actually had to do an on-campus recruiting drive to fill the rosters! It was not exactly a moment that most of the big-time programs have to deal with. Anyway, we managed to find five more guys that could shoot reasonably well for that side of things, but the women's team is a different story altogether. 5 out of the 8 gals on the roster had absolutely no competitive experience whatsoever! And 4 of those had been playing for 4 months or less. I always had a desire to coach the program, and I’ve been pining away for the gig for years, but in every vision I've ever had I was inheriting an established team. They were asking me to basically build the thing from scratch and we had less than 1 month until our first tournament at Montana Tech.

To top it off, I didn't quit my Assistant Pro job at the University of Utah, I've been doing both. But what that meant was that every moment I wasn't in the shop or teaching private lessons, I was basically teaching the bulk of my team how to play golf. Which is a gargantuan task compared to just making a few swing tweaks. But for a solid month, those kids worked their asses off, probably slacking off on their studies to learn how to play the game properly. They practiced hard almost every day and I put my social and professional life on hold to get them ready. They were primed to take on the world, and as we rode the same bus I never thought I'd ever thought I'd ride again six years ago, I couldn't help but beam with pride.

So they competed, and I coached my ass off. In fact, I seemed to be about the only coach that was out on the course with the players. I had always hated the fact that I rarely ever saw my coach out on the course, so I made it a point to spend at least a hole per round with every one of my kids. Actually I pretty much decide that my coaching strategy was to do pretty much everything the opposite of what he would’ve done. While the other coaches were holed up in the clubhouse watching football, "waiting for scorecards" I was out reading putts, getting yardages and delivering snacks and drinks for the kids. And the end result of my awesome coaching job? The Men took 7^th out of 9 teams and the women took 8^th out of 9 teams after the first tournament.

That was pretty punishing to the old ego. There was one bright spot, one of my guys won the individual! But overall I was kinda down on myself. But then I remembered the words of my old Junior College coach, the only coach I've ever really gotten along with, when he said, "you can't hit the shots for them." I flashed back to when I was in school and how I never really felt like I played up to my potential because of the weight that class, work and relationships had on my mind. And I realized that those kids were going through the exact same stuff that I was going through a few years ago. So on that long-ass bus ride home from Butte, Montana, I talked to the kids about what they felt that I was doing right, and what they thought I could do better. Together, we kind of re-designed our practice sessions to make them more efficient, and by the end of the ride home we were talking about just about everything BUT golf. Damn, I felt like I was back in college again!

The next week the men managed to improve by one spot in the standings, and while the ladies didn't move up, they dropped a full ten shots off their stroke average as a team! And the following week, at the Rocky Mountain Invitational, at the Peter Yegen Club in Billings, MT, they gave me what might be my finest hour as a golf pro. Going into the last round at the same course I once littered with vomit (see tomorrow’s “Dorm Days” flashback story for the full skinny), the men trailed the hated Carroll College by nine shots for 5th place (the top-4 teams are unbelievably loaded this year). Carroll had been taking us out behind the woodshed all season long, and had been doing a fair amount of shit-talking along the way. I really wanted to beat those guys, so I gave a couple of the guys my first f-bomb laden pep talk of the season. I was trying to channel Al Pacino from "Any Given Sunday" but sounded so ridiculous that we were all cracking up! It must've loosened them up a little bit because those guys ended up breaking one of my old teams' single day scoring records, 4-under par as a team! We also edged Carroll by twelve shots on the day and 3 for the tournament! The ladies, well it's not important where they placed, but out of the fifteen rounds (3 apiece) that the 5 team members played, there were 8 personal best rounds recorded! Their team average was now down by 30 shots better than the 1st tournament. Pretty insane! I don't even think they realize how proud of them that I am.

The Fall college golf season has concluded, but it picks back up in the Springtime. But unlike in previous years, I'm not going to break this team up. We're going to keep working at it through playing and practice until the snow flies, and I’m going to try to hire a trainer to write them up a weightlifting and cardio program for when there's snow on the ground so we can hit the ground running come April. I'm also setting to work on recruiting, which is something I've never done before. It's out of control, but I've got to say, the last two months have easily been the most rewarding of my entire career and maybe my entire life.. Our Sports Information Director is a little swamped, so our team website hasn't been updated in a hell of a long time, but here's an article about us. It's a .pdf file so it might take a few minutes to download. Scroll down to page 6:

http://www.westminstercollege.edu/pdf/forum/Issue%204.pdf

Here's a few photos of myself and some of the kids from this past fall season:

The team stuffed into a little bus (a short bus if you will) on our first trip

Throwing out a little encouragement to one of our men's team, Nick CruzDiscussing a little strategy with one of my ladies, Jesika Hilton

Go Griffins!