“What tees do you intend to play?”
“Whatever ones she plays.”
I pointed a thumb at my 21-year-old daughter who was marking balls and fiddling with assorted paraphernalia in her bag, one with her name and the Rollins College logo on the side.
“That might be a mistake,” my father replied. “There’ll be no doubt how far she outdrives you.”
“Well, where, pray tell, do you plan to play?” I shot back.
“As far forward as they’ve got markers,” my 83-year-old dad, Frank, said with a wry smile.
That was the launch of the 3G Invitational, an exclusive event featuring just one group, ours, three generations from the Eubanks family who try to get together and get golf balls in the air at least once a year. My parents, whom I am fortunate to still have, live in a condo in Gulf Shores, Alabama, an exploding tourist spot on the sugary beaches of the Gulf of Mexico between Mobile and Pensacola, Florida.
And my 21-year-old daughter, Liza, was days away from starting her senior year of college in Winter Park, Florida, where she plays on the women’s golf team.
For some reason, this edition of the event seemed more important than most. Perhaps it was the fact that we had packed Liza’s things for school for the last time. Graduation charged toward us apace. We couldn’t see that train yet, but we could hear the whistle.
Or maybe it was that my mother’s lens of cognition had blurred in recent years. At one point, she asked Liza if she played golf, even though Mom had walked countless holes in junior and amateur golf with her over the years. Sometimes standing beside my mother, I felt like a 5-year-old again, pulling on her pant leg trying to get her attention. Dad bore the brunt of it, taking her car keys away and making sure the stove was disabled when he left for a few hours to play golf with friends.
Most of the time we played Gulf Shores Golf Club, a semi-private track which lies a lengthy par-5 from the front door of Mom and Dad’s condo. But for this 3G Invitational, we ventured six miles down the road to Peninsula Golf Club, which, as the name implies, sits on a sliver of land between the gulf and Mobile Bay.
“Are you sure that’s forward enough?” I asked when Dad put a tee in the ground on the opening hole. “That’s a pretty good forced carry for the first shot of the day. You are 83.”
“I haven’t forgotten how old I am,” he said as he took one practice swing and popped a drive down the middle. “I think you’re in the right rough,” he then offered. “Need any help finding it?”
It went on like that for just over three hours, a pace that would have been quicker had we not caught a group of board-short-wearing tourists on the back nine. “They can’t be having fun, but at least it’s expensive,” Liza said of the four guys struggling ahead of us.
The only time I measured our length disparity was an early par-5 when Liza and I hit two of our best tee shots. She outdrove me by 34 yards. The other time was a 179-yard par-3. I was between 5- and 4-iron, chose the longer, and still left it below the hole. Liza flew 6-iron over the flag. Her ball stopped on the back fringe.
“You’ll hurt yourself trying to keep up with her,” Dad said.
“I still have a putter,” I responded.
Liza and I played well, shooting over par but in the low-to-mid 70s. Dad came within a couple of shots of his age, a target he reaches regularly these days.
After lunch, we loaded up for the short ride back to the condo. “That was fun,” Liza said.
“It was,” Dad agreed. “Come back over and we’ll do it again sometime.”
That would be wonderful. We can only hope.
Steve Eubanks
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