Doljabi

In Korean culture, on a child’s first birthday, there is traditional ceremony known as the Doljabi (돌잡이) or the “fortune telling game.” Before as many assembled friends and family as possible, the child is dressed in historic garb and placed on a fancy pillow before having several items revealed to them at once. Legend has it, whichever three objects the child selects will predict their future. 

My daughter, now a high school freshman, verifies the following order of selection as correct: a Mizuno 7-iron (borrowed from her mother), a stethoscope (borrowed from her grandfather), and a crisp $100 bill (origin unknown). As a mild golf addict, I remember being elated at her club choice. I was at least as happy as my parents and in-laws were about the stethoscope and the cash. Hillbilly being my native ethnicity, this was all new to me when it happened, but I loved it. It was one of many new things I learned in the first five years of marriage to a Korean native of upstate South Carolina. I still love learning about Korean culture with her and my kids. One thing I hadn’t yet learned was that my wife hated golf, because it kept her dad away from home when she was small. 

My own golf background had no such issue. My dad hates golf, but loves cars. I taught myself to play at the driving range at Seminole. No, not that one… the one that’s near campus in Tallahassee; and before Jack or Brooks showed up. Thanks for the rides, Dad! By the time I got married, my golf experience consisted of a well-thumbed copy of Ben Hogan’s Modern Fundamentals of Golf, a set of Hippos I got for college graduation, and countless public rounds with dudes at least as interested in beer as maintaining their handicap. I wish I could say I’d never been one of those guys, but I’d be lying. 

Bolstered in no small part by their Doljabi choices (my son took putter 20 months later), my wife and I put the kiddos into junior golf before any other sport. Both my daughter and son took lessons and attended camps from the ages of four through nine or ten at Olde Atlanta Club near our home. All were with Dave Anderson, a gifted teaching pro for any age, but for juniors especially. Dave has a knack for making golf fun with a tricked-out six-seater cart named “Big Blue.” Big Blue’s greatest bells and whistles are: 1) a far greater number of bag straps and spare junior clubs than seems possible, and 2) an inexhaustible reserve of Hydrox cookies (chocolate and vanilla). The more lessons I brought them to, the more I appreciated what he was teaching them. What they remember now is not all the times they were told to keep their left arms straight or to keep their heads still, but the stories of the cookies they won and the breezy, bumpy, clattering rides on Big Blue, even when they didn’t. After elementary school, golf gave way to baseball for my son, and to tween ennui for my daughter. But those stories always come up again and again. They’re family favorites. 

Early this year, just after Christmas, my daughter said to me, “could we play some more golf?” As I suppressed the urge to attempt a back handspring, I somehow managed a single word response.  

“Sure,” I said. I thought to myself: easy, playah … don’t jinx it.

“Just for fun?” I asked.  

“Yeah. Like, on the course,” she replied. 

Just like that, the ice broke. When briefed of this development, my wife said, “Thank God! Get her out there!”  

Soon after, despite highs in the mid-50s (take that, Chicago!), we started practicing twice a week and playing nine holes most weekends. Two weeks ago, she played her first tournament, a nine-hole beginner at Callaway Gardens’ Mountain View course. We agreed that it was just to get a baseline against which to measure improvement. One par and eight triple bogeys later, she’s registered for her second nine-hole event in May. There’s always something good to keep you coming back: mine is the kid’s repeated thanks every time we get back in the car. 

On the NewClub Golf blog, there’s a recurring quotation from Old Tom Morris that presses our ethos forward. It reads, “the meaning of life is creative love. Not love as an inner feeling, as a private sentimental emotion, but love as a dynamic power moving out in the world and doing something original.” I see a lot of love and originality in Dave Anderson and Big Blue, respectively. 

The great writer Maya Angelou said that “people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” My girl may forget the exact lessons that Dave taught her, as fundamentals fade into the background of her smooth adult swing. I have no doubt she’ll always remember the feelings of safety, fun, and belonging he shared with her. I pray it leads to more twilight rounds with my daughter in the near and far places, like those in The Golfer’s Journal. 

Heck, Collins Hill Muni works too.