As for my score: One of the game's great milestones is shooting one's age. A lesser-known triumph (which I'm inventing now) comes when a golfer shoots the day's temperature. It is an ignoble mark, especially on a hot day. I matched the ninety-two-degree high, carding eight odious double bogeys.
My dad laughed when I called with the bad news: "You need a little practice." We did a brief postmortem and decided I might have to settle for breaking par only once in my life.
Sadly, it wasn't long after that—just six days before movers were to pack up my parents for the long haul to an apartment near my new house—when my father fell and broke his hip and wrist. Complications set in, as they often do with people his age. Finally, after three truly horrible months, he was released from the hospital.
We hope to move my parents north as soon as he's ready. At long last, he and I will be spending time together, remembering the great courses he took me to when I was a kid (Pebble Beach, Spyglass, even Cypress Point once) and maybe polishing the runner-up trophy we won at a local father-son event. We may not have matched up well on world events back then, but when we teamed up for best-ball tournaments, we clicked. And if I play Santa Rosa again, I hope he'll ride along, and perhaps together we'll figure out how I can master that fancy new driver.
