A Day Of Trash Digging Started Me In Golf

I actually started playing golf by accident. One morning when I was about 10 years old me and my brother headed out to do some trash digging in the neighborhood to see if we could find any treasures to take home. Boy did our parents love that. We would do this every Saturday morning because that's when the trash man came to pick up the neighborhood trash. During our hunt I found an old Spalding 6-iron golf club with a leather wrapped grip. The golf grip was old, hard, and very slick, but I didn't know any better. I was so excited about finding it that you would have thought I won the US Open or something.

When we got back home we went into the garage and got a handful of golf balls. We had a ton of golf balls because that's how me and my brother made a few bucks. We would find the golf balls that were hit over the golf course fence and we'd sell them back to the golfers at Meadowlark Golf Course in Huntington Beach, CA, which was only a block away from our house. That's another golf ball story for another day and actually very interesting and funny. Anyway we got to the neighborhood school and just started hitting golf balls all over the place. Now I know where I got the idea of hitting golf balls at the school. I actually picked it up pretty quickly, but my brother was the shank-master. Several times he hit it into the backyard of some of the houses surrounding the school. Luckily he didn't break any windows, but I'm sure the neighbor loved chewing up a golf ball in his lawnmower the next time he mowed the lawn. It was evident that golf wasn't for my brother and to this day it still isn't :-)

So as you can see my start in golf wasn't your typical start like most kids. My dad didn't buy me my own set of golf clubs and drag me out the the golf range for hours on end, but I think if he would have I probably would have liked it. Ever since then I've been playing golf, which is now going on 33 years. I played some junior golf, played high school golf at Edison High School, and played many years at Meadowlark Golf Course as a men's club member.

In college I was going to go out for the golf team at California State University of Fullerton, but after talking with the coach and some of the players I realized that I wouldn't be able to get my computer science degree with all the travel required. So I would say my first big life decision was to pursue a career in computer science instead of one on the PGA Tour. Eventhough the odds of making it on the tour were slim, I still think now and then where I'd be if I took the path of a career in golf.

Anyone out there have an interesting story to tell about how they got started in golf?