A personal essay about being terrible at golf.

Golfweek.com sponsored an essay contest about golf. They encouraged you to write about playing or visiting the Masters. I wrote instead about my family and how I don't fit in as a golfer. Still, golf has been formative for me. Here's what I wrote:

Golf runs four generations deep in my family. It soars like a long drive through the family tree, then lands on the green, rolls, and stops abruptly at me. I am the one who grew up around the greatest game ever played and chose instead to write.

My family owns St. Louis’ most popular driving range and I’ve worked there my whole life, filling baskets, judging yardage, and helping customers pick the right driver. But don’t ask me to swing the club.

My greatest golf memory does not involve playing. It’s a memory of an entire night hand-picking golf balls out of thick mud. Because I love my dad and my dad loves golf.

Squirp. Squish. After a week of rain, we couldn’t run the ball picker across our 390-yard field. Doing so would press the thousands of speckled white orbs into the goop, losing our family’s investment in other people’s recreation.

The last of the night hitters gone, my dad and I walked into the wet field, each with a scoop on a club shaft and a bucket in hand. It was after midnight and we turned off the range lights so we could see by moonlight. I never knew a golf ball was so bright by night.

My dad’s rhythm mesmerized me. Scoop a ball, flick it up, hear it whir into the basket. Scoop, flick, whir. My rhythm was more like scoot, scoot, plunk, as I shuffled the balls around, tossed them into the air and missed the basket.

But I did help, dad said. We dumped basket after basket into the back of a truck, until the field looked like a row of cotton picked nearly clean. The night turned into a pale pink sunrise, and dad shouted to me that the first hitters had arrived.

We drove the balls to the washer and our night’s labor meant brimming baskets the rest of the day. Our customers could practice and my family could earn a living.

Dad handed me a $20 bill over our pancake breakfast. He told me he had been picking the field by hand since he was a teenager with his dad. Any skill takes practice.

I went home and napped all afternoon while he went back to teach lessons. Dad must have been tired, but he taught me about the work that must be done even if you hear no praise.

I didn’t take up golf like my dad and his dad and his dad. I chose instead to write and report for my career. I don’t include on my resume the summers handing out buckets of balls. I’ll drive a ball every once in a while, but I’m not a player. I’ve always thought of the range as just a family job.

But when I think about it, golf was the first place I learned to pay attention, obsess about accuracy, and value a learning process.

Golf taught me that language is power. If I wanted to get by in my family, I needed to know the difference between a slice and a hook, I needed to understand par, and above all, I needed to be silent sometimes.

When I write an article, I prefer to observe rather than bombard my source with questions. Like in golf, the biggest moments of truth come through stillness.

My memory of golf taught me about characters, about people. There’s the Zen golfer, the dedicated golfer, the retired golfer, and the snuck-a-six-pack-on-the-back-nine-of-a-family-par-3 golfer.

I’m grateful for every one of those characters, even though I was never great at golf myself. I’m grateful that they taught me to observe, to pay attention to the details when I speak and write, to tee up again, and to correct my strokes.

My interaction with the game of golf is not about country clubs and holes-in-one. My memory is behind the scenes, looking at the industry of golf as it shapes the lives of individuals and families across the world.

My family speaks golf: the language that taught me to tell true stories. I learned how to look someone in the eye, have a firm grip, and respect rules even if no one is keeping score. At the driving range, I learned how to wipe the mud off my shoes and keep walking.