A Golf Time Capsule: Ernest & Caryn

On Sunday afternoon, my brother and I played one of our favorite courses, El Cariso in Sylmar, California. This is a course of last resort for most but not for the usual reasons. It is one of the toughest yet most playable short courses I have ever played. Even better, you can usually get on without a starting time, which is why we found ourselves there on such a glorious afternoon.

We arrived about 1:30 and were on the 1st tee a few minutes later. About the time we were ready to hit our drives, a twosome approached. Knowing it would likely be a slow round (many of El Cariso's faithful play the game at a somewhat leisurely pace) I figured I'd invite them to play along with us.

They were an obvious husband and wife team in their 40s. As they accepted my invitation the woman said that she was sure they had played with me before. I said that was a distinct possibility as I used to play the course quite a bit.

My brother and I immersed ourselves into our usual 18 hole match and I really didn't think much about the couple. They seemed like pleasant folk and treated each other well. It was clear that they played a lot of golf together and enjoyed both the game and each other's company. That was good to see given my own checkered history of playing golf with my wife back when I was married.

Up two after 9 holes (I would squander the lead later, don’t worry), I suddenly remembered Caryn and Ernest distinctly. I had played with them, one round, maybe 5 or 6 years before. At the time, they had just started to play and were pretty clueless but they were obviously intent on learning to play the game properly. Back then, they had the wrong clothes, both in jeans and tee shirts. Worse, they each towed geeky pull carts, one of the most basic giveaways of being painfully new to golf. Even then, it was clear that Caryn was the better athlete. She must have played softball because she stood to the ball with what I like to call evil intent. Ernest, like most husband golfers, was quick to offer an ill-founded bit of advice. Even so, then as now they just seemed to enjoy being on the course and with each other.

Time and countless rounds had transformed them both into grizzled veterans of the links. They both had carry bags and decent clubs (though they still used club covers on their irons). They also dressed the part with Ernest in standard issue golf shorts and golf shirt and Caryn respledent in dark blue golf skort and light blue top.

Late in the round Ernest confided to me that Caryn simply adored golf and was constantly buying him the most stylist golf togs. He said that he would protest, just a little, saying, "Sweetie, I suck. I'm not supposed to look too good on the golf course." It was easy to see that her passion for golf meant a great deal to Ernest and that he would stop short of doing or saying anything that might take any of the fun out of Caryn’s golf experience.

It was easy to see that Caryn had worked on her game, and just as easy to see that she'd gotten some strange ideas in her head. She stood far too tall to the ball, likely in response to someone telling her that she was too crouched. To paraphrase Harvey Pennick, she had taken the hole bottle of aspirin when all she needed was two.

This position created an odd and inefficient motion to her swing. The verticality of her stance led her to lift the club immediately as it moved away from the ball and to keep on lifting after that. Since she has the kind of flexibility that only women and PGA tour players seem to possess, she could actually stay in her swing throughout her long and tall move away from the ball and make fairly solid contact. The problem was that the resulting downswing took her club on a descending path into virtually every short costing her at least 30-40 yeards on her drives. Even still, she could hit the ball easily as far as her faithful beloved.

Ernest was another story. He had traded his old armsy swing for an abbreviated swing that I am sure he hoped was tight and compact. In contrast to his wife, Ernest never hit the ball squarely. He bailed out of every swing and the resulting ball flight was way too high and pretty weak.

Ernest and Caryn are almost like a golf time capsule. In so may ways they are still the people and players they were years ago. But, they are also very different. They have learned some lessons though not all of them good. They play the game seriously but are of admirably good humor about their shortcomings. They play the game for all of the right reasons and you can clearly see that it has come to mean the world to them. As I strode off the 18th green into the quickly darkening skies, I realized that I had learned a great lesson from Caryn and Ernest: Golf is a game and none of us are its master. The sooner we learn this most elusive lesson the sooner we can really start to enjoy ourselves and honor the spirit of the game. I hope it’s a lesson that sticks.