Author: Wayne Lawrence

     HI ! My name is Mike. I want to thank Wayne for permitting me to tell my story.  It is a story about my once in a lifetime experience.  First a little background of my self.  Unlike some of my friends who lived in the city, I was raised on a farm.  Where work came first.  While they began to play golf early in their life; heck for some of them the golf course was their baby sitter.  Their parents paid for a family membership at the local club.  While the parents worked the kids played golf all day.      I was in my twenties when I first picked up a golf club. I was a carpet and tile installer, (then we were called floor covering mechanics), one would spend a year or so as an “intern”, which meant I helped carry the carpet, linoleum, or tile into the house for the journeyman installer.  As time passed I was given more responsibility.  I learned how to sew a seam in the carpet that was invisible, how to cut a seam in linoleum that was very hard to see, and how to install tile on both floors and walls.      One day after work my boss asked me if I played golf. I told him I had played some miniature golf.  He said, “No, no, real golf”, heavily stressing real.  I said, “Never, why would anyone want to hit a little white ball, carry a heavy bag of clubs, about 200 yards, hit it again, and repeat the process for a couple of hours. He handed me a used Byron Nelson 6 iron and took me to the field behind the shop.  He hit a couple of balls and seemed to marvel at its flight. He told me the 6 iron was the easiest one to hit.  He told  me take the club and showed me how to hold it.  He dropped a ball and told me to try it.  I missed the ball about ten or twelve times.  (More instructions).  Finally I made contact and I was amazed as the ball took flight.  Before that session was finished I was hooked.      My Uncle who was an avid golfer gave me an old set of clubs and a handfull of used balls.  I found myself behind the bosses shop sometimes before and after work, just hitting balls with the various clubs.  Then came the day my boss took me to the city golf course and he began to give me putting lessons and he never seemed to tire of telling me how to stroke the ball, read the greens, and relax.      One day my Uncle told me his employer, was having a scramble, family members were invited to play.  My Uncle was a pretty good golfer and so were the other two golfers.  I agreed to play.  It was kind of a downer.  We never used a single one of my shots.  UNTIl the 18th hole. It was a par 5. We were on the green in 3, but we had a about a 30 foot putt.  “Go ahead”, my uncle said,” show us the line”  Can you imagine the surprise on all their faces, and mine when the ball somehow found its way into the cup.  I made a keeper on the last hole. (the only one we used).      We made our way to the clubhouse and sucked down a soda, while waiting tor the results, which didn’t take long as we were the last team to finish.  Soon the announcement was made that our team had won by one stroke.  My team mates were patting me on the back saying  “It was that long putt you made that won it for us”.  I knew better; if it hadn’t been for their play all day we wouldn’t have been in the position to win.  As it turned out we each got club bucks to spend at the pro shop.   Because I didn’t have golf shoes I spent some of it on a pair of white wing-tip golf shoes, and the rest I purchased a driver and 3 wood. This was before the metal clubs came out so they were wooden woods.  I still use them.  I have used that same set of clubs, the Byron Nelson 6 iron included all my life.      From then on I was totally hooked. I moved on from my job at the floor covering shop, and soon made a friend who loved to play golf, (actually he played to get out of doing his honey-do list at home).  We played nine holes about every day, maybe 36 holes on Saturday, Sunday, and holidays.  Actually we seemed to spend more time in the woods surrounding the course as well as on the course and when it wasn’t busy around the water hazards hunting golf balls. (When he moved to a different house he had about eight or nine 55 gallon drums of balls. In fact he actually paid for his club membership by giving the club a drum of balls, each year.  We joined a league where we were way outclassed.  I finally established a handicap in this league of 14.  Occasionally I would win a sleeve of balls for long drive, or closest to the pin, and sometimes for low score with handicap.      My friend and I would enter local tournaments, we didn’t win any but sometimes we would finish in the top ten.  But we always had fun.  Our group from work every Wednesday would have a choose up we had enough for about 4-5 foursomes.  We played if you got a bogey you got 1 point, par was 2 points, birdie was 3 points, and the rare eagle was 4 points.  High score won a share of the money we chipped in.  Low gross got the rest. Although we played as foursome it was an individual thing, every man for himself.     Then as my children… Continue reading My Week Playing as an Amateur in the Masters Tournament of 2024