January 31, 2005

My sophomore year at Syracuse University, fall semester, I signed up for Golf to fulfill my physical education requirement. The first week, we met in the gym, lined up in a long row, and practiced our swings, teeing off on imaginary golf balls. At the end of the class, our instructors took a few minutes to tell us how the class would go, and that the “final exam” would be to complete three rounds of golf, 54 holes, at the nearby Tecumseh Club.

At the second class, we again practiced our swing, but as we emerged from Archibald Gymnasium, it was snowing. I dropped the course that afternoon; it meant that I would have to take a gym course when I was a Junior, but I could not see how I was going to complete three rounds of golf in mid-December on a snow-covered course.

A year or two later, I learned that nobody ever played the three rounds. You simply went to the bar of the Tecumseh Club, filled out a score card, gave the bartender $10, and he signed your card. How different my life might have been if I had been “in the know” with the leaders of tomorrow, instead of in the dark because I had just broken one of the colored lights over the windmill hole.