Pushing Through

As I took a deep breath of crisp October air on the 18th green of Wade Hampton Golf Club in western North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, my three playing partners cleared the stage, as if my putt could seal a major championship victory. The 1-footer for par wasn’t to clinch a famous trophy, but it was all that separated me from becoming the first person to play Golf Digest’s list of America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses in a single calendar year.

My life changed forever the second I walked off that green in 2018. Everywhere I went, I was the guy who’d completed the list. And people wanted to talk about it. Over the years, three questions have been asked most frequently. First, how did I manage to play every one of those golf courses in just a year? Second, how did I rise above my difficult childhood to get here? Third, and most recently, how does someone who isn’t an author, a professional golfer or a celebrity get a book deal with a major publishing company to write about it all?

My answer is the same to all three. It’s simple and clichéd, but it’s worked since I was a boy: Never give up. 

I was born in 1959, in a tin-roof shack with no plumbing or electricity in the deepest woods of Jim Crow–era east Texas, to a single mother of three who would go on to have a total of eight children out of wedlock. At 5 years old, sitting next to a makeshift wood-burning heater as dark smoke from a kerosene lamp—the room’s only illumination—curled toward the already blackened wooden planks that formed the ceiling, I swore to become the first person I knew who graduated from high school. When I was 9, a freak accident nearly took that chance away.

On a warm Friday evening, I draped a red beach towel over my shoulders and fastened it with a knot to make a cape. An older sister and brother sat nearby on a threadbare divan, engrossed in an episode of Star Trek playing on our tiny black-and-white television, its channel knob replaced by a pair of grip pliers dangling from the stem. Meanwhile, I was Superman. I took off running through the nicest house we ever called home during my childhood—worn but not dilapidated, forsaken but not yet abandoned. With my arms stretched toward the heavens, I soared above imaginary clouds and landed in the back of our house next to an old, cast-off refrigerator.

Pretending to live out a scene from a comic book where a villain had stuffed Superman into a safe and dropped it into the depths of the ocean, I crawled inside the refrigerator and pulled the door shut. After a few minutes of fantasizing about saving the world, I pressed my hands against the inside of the door. It wouldn’t budge. I pushed again. Nothing. Soon it began to get hot. I had trouble breathing. Engulfed in terror, sweat dripping from my body and tears running down my face, I yelled out for someone to save me.

In the darkness, I anchored my skinny body against the back wall of the refrigerator and pushed against the door with every ounce of strength my arms and legs could muster. It remained resolutely shut. I bowed my head against my knees and quit. I accepted that my life was ending. I started to pray, finding peace in the teachings of my grandparents that children who die before they turn 12 always go to heaven.

Dazed, gasping and unable to see my own hand in front of my face, I suddenly heard a voice. I stilled myself and listened. The voice wasn’t coming from outside the refrigerator door. It was inside my head, urging me not to give up.

I took a deep breath of what remained of the thin air and pushed one last time. Somehow, the door flew open. The darkness was swept away by light and air pouring in over me. I stumbled out of the refrigerator and, after the numbness left my legs, raced back into the house where my sister and brother were still sitting, as indifferent as strangers. From that day forward, everywhere I went in the world, I carried the belief that the only heroes we can rely on are the ones inside. I vowed never to give up again.

More than five decades later, I launched my top-100 quest on the immaculate fairways of none other than Augusta National. Back in 2003, I had been appointed to a new position at ExxonMobil that would take me and my family to Texas. The joke was that I needed to begin shooting something—either animals or par. I chose golf. Once I started swinging a club, I was hooked. When retirement approached 13 years later, I dreamt of an ambitious journey to kick off the next phase of my life. When presented the opportunity to play Augusta, I knew it was the perfect place to begin my pursuit.

Over 12 eye-opening months, those strangers proved that, at least in the golf world, the United States is still a place where you can count on people to be generous enough, enthused enough and willing enough to help a fellow stranger realize a dream.

I played ANGC in May 2017 but officially retired the following month, so I embarked on my 365-day mission on June 17 at Kinloch Golf Club in Virginia. Thus began my previously unimaginable adventure, which would prove full of serendipitous encounters in clubhouses, on golf courses and on street corners, along with unexpected phone calls and emails from strangers. They gave me the chance to haul my 14 sticks and countless dimpled white dots across the most sought-after and exclusive golf clubs in America.

Over 12 eye-opening months, those strangers proved that, at least in the golf world, the United States is still a place where you can count on people to be generous enough, enthused enough and willing enough to help a fellow stranger realize a dream. I sliced, hooked, bladed, shanked and topped my way from one unexpected invitation to the next.

I brought my notebook for the finer details of every round on every course, but some memories stand apart. On my exhausting but beautiful jaunt through the Pacific Northwest, I played Bandon Dunes and Pacific Dunes on the first day, Bandon Trails and Old Macdonald on the next, then drove through the night north to Seattle for a walk through the piney, narrow fairways of Sahalee Country Club.

With only five weeks left to fully realize my dream, and just six weeks until the club was to host the U.S. Open, my connection at Shinnecock Hills fell through. I was devastated. But rather than throw in the towel, I launched an all-out assault on every contact I could find. I wrote letters to the club president, general manager and pro. I called all of the people I had met along my journey. I even emailed Tiger Woods’ TGR Foundation asking for Tiger’s help. In the end, Jimmy Dunne—the investment banker who has memberships at a litany of golf’s most famous clubs and would go on to become president of Seminole Golf Club—answered my call. I’d never met him before our round together, but we had a day I’ll never forget, including Jimmy nearly acing the par-3 11th.

Next, a friend of a friend connected me to a member at Pine Valley, and I shook hands with Chris for the very first time on the driving range. He was a wonderful tour guide. Charley, the general manager, met us afterward and gave me a book on the history of the course. I will always treasure it.

In my final six days, I sprinted from New Jersey to Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho, to play Gozzer Ranch, then flew back East to South Carolina for the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island before driving up to Cashiers, North Carolina, for the grand finale at Wade Hampton.

It all seemed to make for a great story. There I was, an almost 60-year-old Black man who had been born into a place that had next to nothing, at the end of a journey through a world that had almost everything—a world that for most of its history had excluded people who looked like me. So I once again set an improbable goal: I would write a book about my story and get a deal with a major publisher.

For several months, I wrote. I took pieces from blogs I’d posted during my quest and interlaced them with memories from my boyhood. With help from a novelist I’d met through the guy who had arranged my round at Pine Valley, I turned those pages into the first three chapters of a book. I revised them into a proposal and mailed it off to a couple of editors in hopes of obtaining a book deal.

I was naïve. I quickly learned that getting a book deal wasn’t that simple. I received two responses, both rejections. When I asked for more feedback, I was told the writing was good, but not good enough. Disappointed but undeterred, I returned to revising my chapters. Then I caught a big break.

Max Adler, who had written about my golf odyssey in Golf Digest, introduced me to David Granger. 

Granger, who was the editor-in-chief at Esquire from 1997 to 2016, had become a literary agent, and he took an interest in my book. Adler also introduced me to Drew Jubera, who had written Must Win, a book about a southern Georgia football team’s quest to regain its past glory while the town and the school attempted to do the same. Drew and I dug in to develop a more compelling book proposal. It worked. We got the attention of several publishers, and eventually I signed a book contract with Simon & Schuster.

Playing From the Rough braids the stories of my two improbable journeys: the first from those poverty-stricken east Texas woods to becoming a globetrotting executive at ExxonMobil, and the second through some of the most exclusive, celebrated grounds in America. I wrote it with the hope that some would come for the golf and stay for the life stories, while others would come for the stories and be captivated by the unifying nature of golf, where differences melt away in the heat of a common passion.

The final question I often get is about what I learned from my trip. I have another simple answer: Despite all the division in this country, golf has helped me see the American dream come alive. With enough determination and perseverance, along with some kindness from strangers, we can all do hard things.