I'm back!

I recently returned from a family vacation which resulted in a full month without picking up a golf club.  I didn’t want to jump back in too quickly, especially since I had injured my right elbow playing volleyball just before the vacation.  I started on the chipping green and left a rather large pile of rust behind.  A few days later, I worked up the courage to hit a bucket of balls.  It was probably too soon for that.  My elbow was still tender and I could barely get the ball off the ground.  Stubbornly, I returned to the driving range a few days later and hit another bucket of balls and was talked into playing 9 holes.  Needless to say, it wasn’t pretty.  I hit the ball all over the place and my short game was too rusty to bail me out.  That said, it felt good to be back on the course so a handful of days later, I went right back out and played a round of twilight golf.  I teed off on the tenth hole and promptly made triple bogey.  I noticed the single in front of me waiting on the next tee box even though no one was ahead of him.  As I approached the 11th tee, the single’s golf bag had a high school logo on it.  Sure enough, sauntering back to his bag was a 6-foot athletic 18 year-old.  He asked me to join him and I obliged.  That’s when the competitive juices switched on.  I hit three perfect shots and lipped out the birdie putt.  When I told him that I played college golf, he seemed relieved to know that he was paired with someone who knew how to play.  We ended up chatting about all things golf and school for the nine holes that we played together.  I feel like I really got to know the kid, and I couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for him.  He had just moved to Portland from Texas, where he was born and raised and where he left behind all of his friends and family.  The transition to Portland hadn’t been a smooth one- he had already changed schools once and was almost certain that he’d be changing schools again for his upcoming senior year.  He wants so badly to go back to Texas for his senior year, but seemed to know that it not going to happen that way.  So there he was by himself on a rainy Thursday afternoon.  His plans for the summer- golf all day and all night.  It reminded me a bit of myself when I was in high school.  I struggled with the transition from a tiny middle school to a rather large high school.  I ended up devoting all of my free time to sports.  Eventually, I got to college and was able to sort of hit the reset button and re-establish a social life.  After we putted out on the last green, he peeled off the rain jacket I lent him when it started pouring.  He seemed sad.  I told him I’d see him around and that I’d look forward to reading about his successes on the golf course in the newspaper.  He invited me to come watch him play in an upcoming tournament.  Part of me wanted to let him know that he was going to be fine and that he was going to absolutely love college, but I got the feeling that he would figure that out soon enough.