I Swore Off the Sand (and the Sand Took It Personally)

I have a complicated relationship with sand. I like it at the beach. I like it in an hourglass. I do not like it in the middle of a golf hole, where it waits for me like a relative who heard I was in town.

So this week I made a vow. One round. Zero bunkers.

I picked a tough place to make it. The C.W. Koiner course at Brookside is a city-owned par 72 in Pasadena, and it is mostly flat, which sounds friendly until you notice how many bunkers are placed across all that flat ground, thoughtfully, like punctuation.

The vow

My brothers Chris and Pat met me on the first tee. Beyond the trees, the curved rim of the Rose Bowl sat there like a giant cereal bowl, and behind it the San Gabriel Mountains looked down on the whole arrangement with a lot of patience.

I announced my goal. Chris, who is upbeat about everything, immediately appointed himself official bunker spotter.

“Two on the right,” he said cheerfully, shading his eyes. “One on the left. One more way up there that’s mostly just thinking about you.”

I also announced this week’s swing thought, which came from a video I watched at 11:40 PM on a Tuesday: sweep the porch. Low, smooth, unhurried, like you’re brushing leaves off the front step.

Pat asked whose porch.

“Everyone’s,” I said. “It’s a universal porch.”

I swept the porch. The ball went right, took two hops, and rolled into the first bunker Chris had pointed at, as if it had been listening.

“That’s one,” Chris said, not unkindly.

The tour

By the fifth hole I had visited four bunkers, and I was starting to recognize the sand by texture.

The swing thought was not helping on the grass. Sweeping the porch, it turns out, is a lovely way to hit a ball about forty yards along the ground, like a dog chasing something. Every time I tried to sweep harder, I swept straight into another bunker.

In 1968, Brookside hosted the Los Angeles Open, a real PGA Tour event. Real professionals stood on these tees. I like to think some of them found these bunkers too. I could not make that sound true even inside my own head.

When I wasn’t in the sand, I was in the long rough, which takes its job seriously. Pat, who is new to golf and treats every shot like an adventure, became my search party. He found my ball twice, both times holding it up over his head like a lost puppy he’d brought home.

“Good news,” he called the second time. “It’s not in a bunker!”

It was not. It was three inches from one.

The conversation

On the back nine I took The Regret, my 2011 driver, out of the bag and had the talk we’d been putting off.

“Listen,” I told it, quietly, so my brothers wouldn’t hear. “I know we’ve had our differences. But today I need you to keep it out of the sand. Just this one tee shot. For me.”

The Regret said nothing. Its faded headcover hung there with the expression of a club that has heard this speech before.

“I’ll get you a new headcover,” I said.

Then I made the best swing I’d made in weeks. The ball rose up against the mountains, straight and true, past the trees, past the first fairway bunker, past the second. Chris actually applauded.

It landed in the dead center of the fairway, bounced once, and rolled, and rolled, and rolled, gently and with total confidence, into the one way up there that had been thinking about me all day.

The Regret had answered. Perfect drive. Different plans.

The porch

By the seventeenth, the vow was long gone. Chris had stopped counting out loud, which was very kind of him, and switched to holding up fingers, which was somehow worse. He was on his second hand.

My approach landed in a greenside bunker, deep, with a lip that looked down on me.

I stood in the sand and, out of habit and despair, thought: sweep the porch.

So I did. Low, smooth, unhurried. The club slid under the ball, a huge, beautiful fan of sand flew up into the afternoon light, and the ball floated out, landed softly on the green, and rolled to about two feet from the hole.

There was a long silence. Pat said, “Whoa.” Chris lowered his fingers.

It was the best sand shot of my life. The swing thought had worked perfectly, all along. It just only worked in the one place I had sworn never to go.

I tapped in for a five and did not say a word. Some porches you just sweep in silence.

The parking lot

On game days, this course doubles as parking for the Rose Bowl. Thousands of people have stood on these fairways holding foam fingers. None of them, I promise you, has seen as much of the bunkers as I did.

Eleven bunkers. One perfect escape. When I got to the car, I took off my shoes and poured out enough sand to start a small beach.

One hundred twelve strokes, and every one of them got sand on it.