Practice Balls And A Vacant Lot

My eleven year old son's Boy Scout troop helped out at our St. George's Cup Golf Tournament last weekend. Crisply attired in their Class A uniforms, they showed up bright and early Saturday morning to help put up sponsor signs, distribute goodie bags to all the players, move furniture, man the drink carts, and generally provide desperately needed manpower in a wide variety of emergency situations.

My experience with the troop taught me three things. Number one; even Boy Scouts have no energy at 6:00 am Saturday morning. Number two; given a specific task, the Scouts will work tirelessly. And number three; if you give Boy Scouts unlimited access to sodas and Snickers bars, you will run short of both toward the end of the day.

At some point during the day, while I was out participating in the tournament, my son hawked a full bucket of errantly struck range balls. He had carefully hidden them away so he could hit them himself after lunch and the awards ceremony. As we headed toward the parking lot he asked me if he could hit them. I told him sure but all I had was right-handed clubs. His left-handed set was home in the garage.

I thought this might deter him. I am a fool. He didn't care at all. He just wanted to hit balls. So we hit them. The whole bucket. Toward the end of the episode, I mentioned that he'd have a lot easier time with his clubs.

My son was apparently inspired by his brush with competitive golf. He spent the bulk of Saturday afternoon and evening whacking whiffle balls around the front yard with his set of clubs. He also sorted through a 5 gallon bucket of practice balls from my trunk. He removed the brightest and shiniest for his personal use since the plastic whiffle balls were denting rapidly. I had to squash that particular initiative for the safety of the neighbors and the integrity of my homeowner's policy. I did promise my son we'd go hit real golf balls the next day.

On Sunday afternoon we headed for the sports complex here in town. It's a sort of white elephant of a baseball stadium with an immense grass parking area dotted with the occasional concrete light poles. The perfect spot for economical and solitary practice. On the way I thought about how I practiced golf in a big vacant lot while in college because I couldn't afford to pay for range balls.

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