O’Brien: Golf teaches valuable lessons for all aspects of life

I have witnessed, in person, golf shots that no professional player could duplicate.

The shots also taught me important life lessons.

My brothers and I grew up whacking plastic balls around our backyard. Later, we played the local public courses, usually in cut-off jeans, Converse All-Stars and no shirt. When most of us had grown up and moved on, my parents joined the Manito Country Club. Despite our questionable mastery of golf etiquette, Dad would occasionally invite us to play with him at the club.

On the old hole No. 1 at Manito, Hatch Road ran along the left side of the fairway behind a tall wire fence. My oldest brother John, who normally swung the club with a smooth confidence, smashed his tee shot over the fence, scoring a direct hit on the windshield of a northbound RV. The windshield lost.

The driver pulled over, and with vengeance in his heart, stormed onto the fairway. The driver confronted John, who was innocently strolling up the left rough, and demanded to know, “Did you hit the ball that shattered my windshield?”

John looked him right in the eye and countered, “I don’t know. What kind of ball was it?”

Before any further escalation of this confrontation, Dad smoothed things over and assured the RV guy the windshield would be taken care of. That was lucky for the RV driver, because John did a tour of duty in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne Division and went to 12 years of Catholic school. That guy had no idea who he was dealing with.

There are two lessons that I learned from this episode: The first is that we should always own up to our mistakes. The second is that a pull hook is the most dangerous shot in golf.

My brother Larry was a left-handed, All-City center fielder who could beat me at table tennis using his right hand. He was always the coolest guy in the room, and I never saw him do anything athletically or socially awkward. (That is, before he started playing golf regularly.)

We were teeing it up on a Saturday morning at Esmeralda, with a crowd of older golfers waiting behind the No. 1 tee. Larry hit a low screamer off the heel of his driver. The ball rang off of a metal pipe on a sign in front of the tee, zinged straight back past us toward the window of the pro shop, hit the bricks just above the window, caromed straight down onto the windowsill, and shot back out through the waiting hackers onto the tee box, about 5 yards behind the tee markers.

I have no recollection of Larry’s next shot, but I do remember thinking that Larry had just received a good dose of humility. Larry has since taught public school for more than 30 years. Throughout his career as an educator he received so much humility that he finally had to retire.

Larry’s errant tee shot taught me that even the coolest, most competent people can mess up, and the rest of us should try our best not to enjoy it too much.

When we were kids, we didn’t have video games or the Interweb. What we did have was “go outside and play,” so we invented games to amuse ourselves. One of our favorites was “Par-2 Golf.” The goal was to hit the ball onto the “green,” which was a garden hose coiled up into a kidney shape.

We set up two holes in the backyard and played them over and over. Hole 1 started at the top of a slope, went over two tall, bushy apple trees and crossed the driveway to a grassy play area with strategically placed swing sets. Behind the green was a 6-foot cedar fence. There was no such thing as a free drop, and if your tee shot landed on the driveway and bounced over the fence, tough.

Hole 2 returned up the slope. There was a stone retaining wall right in front of the second tee, so a skulled shot could end in an ER visit. The tee shot went back up over the apple trees to a green between two huge pines, with a sunken concrete driveway lurking on the right side.

We used real balls for Par-2. I always got to use Dad’s MacGregor 11-iron, and I learned to open the face to add loft. Of course, with the face open, a bladed line drive was always a possibility. One day I was leading the tournament when I did exactly that. The ball shot off to the right of the green, heading directly at the dining room picture window. As the ball sped toward its target, I wondered how many lawns I would have to mow to pay for the damage. I also mourned the end of “Par-2 Golf.”

The ball hit precisely at the intersection of wooden frames between the individual panes of glass and bounced off harmlessly. We played on with no hesitation.

That day I learned that sometimes you do everything wrong and it still turns out OK. Later in life, I learned that it is more often the opposite case.

Missing from this list is my baby brother Rob, who grew up taking golf lessons. He is, as they say, a “good stick.” I have never seen him make a shot like those described above, but I did see him throw his putter about 60 feet up in a pine tree once. Without a word, he retrieved another putter from his car and we finished the round without further complications.

From this incident, I learned not to let a temporary setback stop you from reaching your goals. I also learned that when you throw a club, and all through life, you should always follow through toward your target.

I suppose it would be nice to have Bubba Watson or Tom Watson’s golf game. But what kind of boring stories do they have to tell?

And just think of all the life lessons they are missing. No, I’ll stick with my peer group, the golfers who do incredible things on the golf course, things that the pros cannot imagine.