At the Walker Cup (and in life) it is about enjoying the moment

Pebble Beach, California – I am here for the Walker Cup, on Cypress Point, a good course and a nice one, but let’s not go crazy here. There are other good and beautiful courses nearby. Pebble Beach. The two courses at the Monterey Peninsula Country Club. The rear nine – the nine on the ocean – on the Pacific Grove Muni. PG has the filth that I consider as a core value of the maintenance of a golf run. There are people at Augusta National who would not agree. I have a Superintendent-friend course who understands the importance of filth, but also the importance of retaining your work: “Try to sell brown a membership,” he says. In the United States? You can’t sell Brown. Our golf year starts with Augusta, wall-to-wall in the green carpet. Everyone nowadays has a color TV.

I appeared in the Pacific Grove Pro Shop at 6 pm and was on the 10th T -shirt, with a rental set in a comically stiff cart on my shoulder, about 10 minutes later. Sunset was 7: 30ish. The guy behind the counter asked me if I needed golf balls. I did it. I bought a sleeve Srixons, the cheapest ball he had. I played the nine holes in 90 minutes and did not lose a ball. Nobody was behind me. Instead of waiting for T -pieces, I broke and threw and put and put it until the coast was free.

Ninety minutes of golf nirvana. No inactive chatter. Some blind photos. Bouncy Fairways. Broke air. No headcovers. (Leave them in the store.) In this area your life is all mixed: your youth, your student years, finding your way in the world afterwards, marriage and upbringing and golf if you can; Whatever you mention this next phase. I am 65. My friend Sam Reeves, a youthful 91-year-old, likes to say if you don’t know if you are middle-aged or old, you are old. He also says that Golf is a connection.

My Spirit drove back nine on the Pacific Grove: I am on Bellport on Long Island, where I started the game; Many great games and times on national golf straps, further east in Suffolk County; Golf at Elie and the Old Course and Machrihanish and other jobs in Scotland; The shame of wealth that Golf is in Greater Philadelphia, where Christine and I have raised our children, all during my 1930s, 40, 50 and 60s. The personality traits and golf fluctuations of hundreds of golfers have been deposited into my head over the years. At the moment I am thinking of a man named Tommy Blue, my age exactly, 65. He is a retired roofer in Machrihanish, in Scotland, and once worked on the roof of Paul McCartney and once played the bass drum on a McCartney recording. Had a memorable game with him. We rides around. We both had metabolism for fast wave.

A friend, Sharon Harrington, died last month. She was 65. I captured many rounds with her husband, Stevey Hags, a former Yale hockey player and a Hoganophile. Sharon raised two remarkable daughters and a son, completely engaged to her family life. She was also a golfer, a bridge player, a gardener, sharp as a tack and fit if possible. She went to a hospital for a kidney stone, developed complications and died on August 22. Who would have guessed she would not see on August 23? Not her husband, not their three children, not nobody. Hundreds of people came to her backyard memorial service. Sharon connected all of us and Golf connected many of us. Golf is a connection.

I travel a lot in the summer, as many of us do, and I find golf games here and there, as many of us do. In one round this summer I played with a retired man a few years older than me. He played with the forward T-pieces and had a beautiful no-glove handle and made a good turn through the ball. His good shots were good and if he beat a series of shots that he had recorded in the right way. He ran like I was, and his pace was fine.

“What was your handicap at its lowest,” I asked the guy.

He pointed to a divot hole on the Fairway among us and said, “Just about.”

He was not humorous. I then realized that he didn’t really understand the question. Everyday Conversation, the ordinary processing of words and information that we often take as a matter of course, was robbed of him. He held golf as long as he could. It was moving, painful and inspiring.

I do things too quickly. I am a slow, careful reader and a slow, careful runner, but for the most part I am BA-PA, BA-PA, BA-PAon to the next. I recently went to a restaurant and told the young server while he sat me: “I don’t need a menu, only two eggs on medium with WholeWheat Toast, please.” The food arrived quickly and this young man said, “No hurry, enjoy your meal.”

Omg. He nailed the whole thing. No hurry. Enjoy your meal. What is the hurry?

This Walker Cup is funny. It has a funny pace. The 20 players and the two captains have been here all week and play nine holes here, nine holes there. Long meals. Long ping-pong sessions. A slow, beautiful week, and then comes the competition itself: Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon; Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon. Bam, Bam, Bam, Bam. It goes too fast, but the children, winning or losing, will have lasting memories.

They may remember the days prior to the competition and everything. Ian Poulter talks to the GB & I team. George W. Bush at the opening ceremonies. The evening chocolates in the rooms of the player in Spanish bay every evening, exactly there on the pillow. I mean, that’s great life. You are a university child (most of them) and you represent your country in a team competition and you stay in a super deluxe room (in Spanish bay), and every night, during the Turndown, They give you a free piece of chocolate!

I do not offer this as a pro tip, but it works for me: you remove the chocolate from the wrapper, place it on your tongue and let it melt there. Your teeth should not touch it at all and the chocolate, the smell and the taste and the texture are everywhere.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments on michael.bamberger@golf.com.