I tried to raise my two sons right. Honestly, I did everything I could, but to no avail. It was Michael Jordan’s heyday, and they both wanted to play basketball instead of golf. Liking Michael Jordan was cool. Liking David Toms wasn’t. So they played the sport of their cultural hero instead of listening to their Dad. (Sigh …).

They both play golf now, but it’s the game of someone who took it up when they were 30. I think the best golf tip I could give anybody is to take up golf when you’re ten years old. They didn’t, but that’s what grandkids are for.

So I’m taking my grandson, who just turned eleven, to the range tomorrow for his second series of lessons. We’ve been playing an executive course for about three summers now, and two years ago he had his first series of lessons.

He does everything right-handed except play golf. When he was four, we had this set of plastic golf clubs with big heads and a big golf ball and he just couldn’t get it. So one day in a moment of inspiration I turned him around to the port side and there it all was.

He lives a long way out of town, so its about a half-hour drive to get him and another half hour to get back in town to the course, but I don’t mind. He’s only going to be eleven once, and it’s not like I have more important things to do than to put golf into someone’s childhood.

We all want to leave something behind, a world that’s different because we were in it. I’m going to do for him what my father did for me. And my two sons? Well, now we have something we can always talk about, and there’s no better family outing than a day on the course. Maybe I did have some influence after all.