The Playground

The range closed early.

It was a Friday afternoon in February. Overcast. A little windy. Chilly for Arizona. I only came out to practice — hit some drivers, work through the irons, maybe roll a few putts. But the range was shutting down, and if I wanted to get some full swings in, I could jump out for a quick nine before the sun went down.

And before I had to be home for dinner.

So I did.

Going out as a single is one of the best things in golf that nobody talks about.

You pull up. You check in. You don't know who you're playing with. Maybe nobody. Maybe you catch a twosome on the fourth hole and they wave you up. Maybe you walk out to the first tee and there's a guy standing there alone, same as you.

No context. No introductions beyond first names. No job titles. No Instagram handles. No history.

Just two people and a tee box.

I met Forest and Jordan the other day.

I was trying to squeeze in a few holes before dinner. They let me join for the last two. We said almost nothing. Great shot. Nice putt. That's about it.

I left after the seventh hole. Skipped eight and nine — it was getting backed up, and dinner was calling.

Thanks guys. Great playing with you. I appreciate you letting me join you for the last two holes.

And I drove off.

Two holes. Three phrases. And it still counted for something.

Then there was the old timer from Madison, Wisconsin.

Retired. Wanted Italian restaurant recommendations. Told the occasional racy joke that caught me off guard just enough to make me laugh harder than I should have.

We didn't talk about golf that much. We talked about Arizona. About where to eat. About nothing in particular.

Some rounds are just pleasant. And pleasant isn't nothing. It's a gift.

A few weeks ago I got paired with a dad and his adult son. The son had just moved back to Arizona from Utah.

The son was high energy. Fun. The kind of guy who turns a random Tuesday round into an event.

"Let's go, Jimmy!"

"This one's for you, Jimmy!"

The son hits an 80-yard flop shot over the trees and puts it four feet from the pin. Granted, he took a drop. But the shot was pure.

And he will not let his dad forget it. Chirping him for that hole. The way only a son can.

That's the stuff my son and I would do. Or that I would do to my dad. And my dad would give me the look. The one that says not funny — even though I can tell he wants to laugh but won't give me the satisfaction.

We talked for hours. His roofing business. I offered to connect him with people in my industry. We talked life, sports, family.

I found out later he's a fairly big deal on Instagram and TikTok. Significant following.

It never came up.

Not once.

Because on the golf course, it doesn't matter. You're not your bio. You're not your following. You're not your job title.

You're just the guy who pushed that putt three feet past the hole and now has to make the comebacker.

And then there was the retired dentist.

We got paired up on a quiet afternoon. Started talking. He went to school in Buffalo.

I went to school in Buffalo.

Small world.

Turns out one of his college classmates was a guy I knew. A guy who happened to be my youth baseball coach in East Aurora. Who also happened to be my dentist growing up.

And that coach — that dentist — grew up one block away from my dad and his brothers in Cheektowaga.

On Ellen Drive.

The McCarthys of Ellen Drive were not a group to be messed with.

Eight kids. Pale. Freckled. Red-haired. Irish. Stand By Me characters before the movie existed. Sandlot kids with skinned knees and iron hands. They ran that block the way kids used to run blocks — by showing up every day and not backing down.

My dad was one of eight. And everything I know about competition, toughness, showing up, and loyalty traces back to that street.

And here's a retired dentist on a Tuesday afternoon in Arizona — a complete stranger — and within ten minutes we've traced a line from a random golf course in the desert back to one block in Cheektowaga, New York.

Six degrees of Kevin Bacon. Except it wasn't Kevin Bacon. It was my dad's neighborhood. My childhood dentist. My baseball coach. A world I thought was a thousand miles and forty years away.

Golf brought it back in one conversation.

That's the thing about going out alone.

You don't know what you're walking into. You don't know who you're about to meet. You don't know if it's going to be two holes of silence or four hours that change how you see the world.

Forest and Jordan gave me two quiet holes and a wave goodbye. The old timer from Madison gave me a restaurant recommendation I actually used. A father and son gave me an afternoon that felt like family. A retired dentist brought me back to Ellen Drive.

None of them knew what they were giving me.

When you were a kid, the playground worked the same way.

You showed up. You didn't know anybody. Someone threw you the ball or said "you're on my team" or just started talking to you on the swings. And for the next two hours, that person was your best friend in the world.

Then the streetlights came on. Or your mom called you in. Or the sun went down.

And you went home. And you never saw them again. And you didn't think about it as loss, because that wasn't what it was.

It was just the way it worked.

You showed up. You connected. Time ran out. You left.

The connection was real. Even if it was temporary. Even if you never got a last name.

Golf is the last playground.

No other sport works like this. No other activity pairs you with a stranger for four hours and asks you to walk together, talk together, compete together, and then shake hands and disappear.

Hat off. Handshake.

Great meeting you, Phil.

Drive home. Forget the name by Thursday. Remember the round forever.

And that's enough.