Squatting on the low mound behind the eighteenth green at Prairie View Golf Club, I stared aimlessly towards the setting sun as my teammates surrounded me in a futile attempt to raise my spirits. The past two days had been the worst of my golfing career. Suffocating humidity, hellish heat, and steady rain for what felt like forty days and forty nights, all combining in central Indiana in the middle of June? A sensible person would have stayed inside, but, of course, the nightmarish conditions coincided with the Indiana Golf State Finals my freshman year of high school. Qualifying for the state finals was a joyride, but the tournament itself felt more like a massive traffic jam, complete with bad-tempered crowds of people, disastrous accidents, and a generally dispirited vibe. My experience during the competition’s grueling two days covered the entire emotional spectrum: brutal, traumatizing, scarring in the short term; yet meaningful, educational, and inspiring as time passed and the wounds from those awful rounds faded. I finished 96th out of 100. My team finished dead last. …show more content…
My worst ever tournament round, and it had emerged at the worst possible time, like Mr. Hyde destroying Dr. Jekyll’s brightest hopes and dreams. The memories swirled in my head, wearing down my motivation and resolve, sending me into a cloud of melancholy from which I was not sure if I would emerge. The massive traffic jam resulted in a mental car crash, stunning and disorienting the part of my brain hardwired for golf. While in this stupor, I was neither profound nor resilient; I was disappointed, pathetic, hopeless. How could I recover from such a deflating experience? I needed an intervention; thankfully, my father and golf coach readily supplied one, and the path to ultimate success reappeared before me, just waiting to be
6AM. A young man wakes up, showers, and eats breakfast. He then continues to his bedroom, embellishing himself in the simple yet characteristic mixture of white and khaki. He continues to his place of employment, breathing the soft scent of elm and grass. Within the caddie must lay the characteristics of a well-rounded, young adult, embodying the work ethic of those most inspiring before him. Charles “Chick” Evans, who once was a caddy and worldly renowned golfer, appreciates the fine young adults that have endured the morning wakeup call everyday in the summer. To whom that are applicable can ultimately be awarded the Chick Evans Caddie Scholarship. Named after Chick Evans himself because he dropped out of college in 1912 for lack of money, the scholarship is funded by donations from golfers and the proceeds of an annual professional tournament (Spears, 1995). Although Chick Evans has passed away many years ago, his legacy still lives on through the 825 scholars currently enrolled in 19 universities all across the United States. Chick Evans has made a profound have impact on the golf community and caddies looking for a way to pay for college.
This tournament, apart from entertaining students and other fans, highlights what stuff different colleges are made of. This comes at a critical time when high school seniors are considering what colleges to attend once they graduate. Thus, it is not surprising that this package of sporting events brings glad tidings to the people as it helps usher-in the beautiful spring season. However, a critical evaluation of the different teams and schools reveal the series of events -both good and not so good- that occur as they prepare for this all-important tournament.
Pappano, Laura. “How Big-Time Sports Ate College Life” Norton Sampler: Short Essays for Composition, 8th ed. Pages 591-600. 2013.
Wind howling, heavy breathing, spikes clicking on the ground, coach’s yelling. The most intense race of the season. The wind was very powerful for this course on the Tell City Country Club through these enormous green hills of the golf course. Dead grass and brown leaves were blowing nonstop. All nine of the schools slowly started walking up to the starting line. Everyone was looking at each other while representing their own school with showing their school color off with pride. There were three teams total that knew that would be an extremely close score. My team and I stood in our red jerseys knowing that we were going to be the ones to win. I could feel the jitters going through my body. Boom!(personification) The gun went off. Nothing
I guess it started when I was about twelve years old. My father took me to this place called a golf course. I did not know why or what we were here for, but I was interested in finding out. We entered a building called a clubhouse; then, he paid for a bucket of practice balls. I followed him to the driving range. Once we got there, he got a metal stick from his golf bag and gave it to me. I grabbed the stick, and he showed me how to hold it. Then, he told me to swing it. I swung it back and forth as careless as I could. He then said, "Son, you have one of the nicest golf swings I have ever seen." I did not even know what I was doing with that stick, but I guess my dad saw something I didn't. My father then decided that he was ready to teach me how to use the three clubs of golf: a putter, iron, and wood. He handed me the putter, and we went to the green. He explained to me that a putter is used on a green to get the ball into the hole. I took a few smooth swings back and forth to get a feel for a putter. He said, "Hit this ball until it goes into the hole." I was impressed with myself because it only took me six hits to get it in the hole. He laid twenty balls on the green, and he told me to hit every ball in with one shot. It took me about three hours, but I accomplished what my dad told me. He thought I was ready to try the next club, so we headed to the next location. We went out onto the fairway, and he handed me an iron. He laid out some more balls on the ground and told me to hit them towards the flag on the green. The first ball I hit did not even get close to the green. The rest of the balls I hit went either over or on the front of the green, but I never let another one fall short. My dad said, "Keep practicing until you hit all of the balls on the green." I kept practicing until all of the balls were laid up around the flag.
Ever since I was a little kid, golf has been there. Golf has been something in my life that I can always fall back on and use to get some anger out of just to clear my head. No matter what it was, golf has been my rock. There is nothing like waking up at the crack of dawn to get out under the sun to play a game you love.
The summer before that Christmas, Dirk was golfing with his high school's golf team on a hot July afternoon. At the end of the course, he and his coach walked to the parking lot. All of a sudden, Dirk toppled like a tree onto th...
As more of my teammates began to show up, I recognized most of them. However, I learned later that if I went on to play in the Spring, this would not be the same exact team I would play with. With only twenty minutes until we began,I put on all of my gear and my dad gave me a thorough warm up. Time seemed to fly by, and before I knew it, everyone was gathered together as positions were being assigned. I was originally overwhelmed with excitement, but as the game drew closer, the joy I had felt was replaced with anxiety. The lacrosse game taking place before ours ended and we entered and took our place on our bench. I recognized the opposing team’s jerseys quickly and identified them as a travel team from our area. Taking one final breath, I rushed into the lacrosse net enjoying my bird’s eye view, unsure of what was to
You work like hell. But you learn a lot.” In my experience, I have learned a lot but the most important thing that I have learned is forgiving myself on the golf course; forgiving myself on the shots I do bad on or have a bad round. I tell myself that I will do better next time. Golf is as big as a mental game as it is a physical game. For example, I was at the biggest golf match of my junior year. I started the first hole off with going straight into the woods; as a result, I had to take a stroke. This patterned seemed to continue throughout the first nine holes. As I was eating lunch in between holes I realized what I was going wrong this whole time. I was thinking about my first hit; however, all I needed to do was forget about it. ……….. In conclusion, I got second place in district continuing to sectionals. Regardless of all the thoughts in my head. Forgetting about them made it a lot easier to enjoy the game and to play a good round. As a golfer, I’m thankful to have gained this quality as a life lesson not just on the golf
As the Tiger rolled around, there arose a question of whether or not to keep the team together or break it up and give the two seniors a chance to compete in other individual events at regionals. I actually didn't know about this possibility until about five minutes before the race began on Saturday. We were all huddled together preparing for the start. Jeremy came up to Rodney and me and told us that if we didn't do well the team might be dropped. Kicking our motivational drive into high, the four of us focused on only one thing: running the time we all knew we could. Getting into the blocks I felt more ready than ever. At the sound of the gun, I shot out of the blocks. I sprinted around the track, concentrating on making a great hand-off.
baseball tournament for the second summer in a row, learning multiple lessons on life and
I fondly remember many things from my athletic and coaching career, but none so fondly as the 2008 Mid-season Classic. I feel privileged to have witnessed a group of young men overcoming obstacles on their way to achieving their goals. Best of all, everyone in attendance watched as a young man reminded us what sportsmanship is all about. In tough times since that day I remind myself that another great memory is always just around the corner; I just hope I’m in attendance when it
Finally Friday came. The tournament lasted for about three hours, peppered with constant complaints, arguments, and threatened fist fights. To my own disbelief, we lost -- by one point! For the rest of the night I rationalized our loss by creating stories of how they must have cheated, accented by remarks about the character blemishes of their mothers. I just kept saying that we were still the best and it didn't matter that we had lost. By the end of the night no one was speaking to me, not even my partner in the competition. I finally snuck off and went home. All the way, I could feel myself choking on ...
It was two days until the first game of my last high school football season. My team and I were going to play Bayfield, a battle we had persistently prepared for since the last game of our junior year. The sun was beating on my pads, radiating the heat to make practice seem even worse. I was exhausted and looking forward to the end of my last sweat poring practice for the week. Our team was repetitively executing plays to make sure they were like second nature to us on Friday.
The sporting event that I chose to attend was my first golf tournament of my collegiate career. My first tournament was held at our home course, Spring Lake Country Club, on September 7th and 8th. Not only was I nervous, but also I was excited to start this amazing opportunity that I was given to play a college sport. Even though I felt like I didn’t play my best my team came in 2nd place and we all improved our scores from the first to the second day. After my sporting event I chose to attend both bingo night, and karaoke night.