The First and Final Round

It was time. My 18-month-old twin boys had been banging their plastic toy golf clubs around the house (and their heads) for weeks. On a perfect Good Friday morning, we loaded them up in the car and set off for Evergreen Golf Course, a pitch-and-putt that had been happily welcoming golf newcomers like my boys, and me, for six decades in our corner of Pennsylvania. But we weren’t going because the boys were ready to play—Evergreen was in its final days.

Three weeks earlier, the family group chat had been hit with the crushing news that our beloved little course, situated between a nursery and a quarry, was closing due to sinkholes. The course’s owners had finally lost the war they’d been valiantly fighting for far too long, and they announced the shutdown at the end of April.

Evergreen was where I learned to hit wedges, where I won my first 18-hole match against Dad, where I ate countless hot dogs, drank too many Cherry Cokes and created probably millions of shots across an 8-by-12-yard putting green that somehow squeezed three holes onto its tiny grass surface. It’s where I fell in love with the game. And I was not alone.

My boys wobbled across that same putting green that day, slapping their plastic balls, chasing after our real ones and plucking them from the hole like they were sunken treasure. When their interest waned, we got them back in the car and my wife took them home. It was a short session for them but a necessary one.

Then I jogged over to join my dad, brother-in-law and nephew on the first tee. We made our way through the maze of 80-ish-yard holes, laughing as we compared tree-lined shots to the chute at Augusta’s 18th. We groaned as our punched wedges bounced over the greens, as if we were playing Ross’ turtleback greens at Pinehurst. Someone shouted that one of the greens was smaller than No. 7 at Pebble Beach. In between, we reminisced about the precious time spent there, and how a scruffy old track can foster a love of the game and be the springboard to take us to courses all over the world.

After a selfie on the 18th tee, Dad once again called his shot and once again failed to make his first hole-in-one. We all howled, and as I walked up to hit, it suddenly became too real. I choked back tears watching my ball fly long off the back of the hole. As we walked the closing 92 yards, I ached for my boys not getting to experience this place again, but I was thankful that their few steps at Evergreen would still be part of their golf journey.

Luke Weierbach has been a member of the Broken Tee Society since 2017.