DEWSWEEPERS

Dewsweeper, Greensboro National GC

Footprints in the Dew, Greensboro National GC

A Great Friend, Jamestown Park GC

A golfing friend recently loaned me his copy of Final Rounds by James Dodson about a bucket list trip to the origins of golf with his father who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer.  Dodson turns out to have grown up in this area in Greensboro, North Carolina, and his subsequent book on the experience became a bestseller and 1996 Golf Book of the year.  I enjoyed the book so much a quick search on Amazon scored another book on The Dewsweepers, Seasons of Golf and Friendship.  Early Dewsweepers were sent out at first light to swipe the dew off of golf greens with a long cane pole.  Dodson defined a Dewsweeper as “a guy who takes the game but not himself very seriously”.  I finished this book on the eve of an early June tee time acquired by a regular group of Dewsweepers at Greensboro National Golf Club the next morning.

This group of senior golfers has a lot in common with my golfing friends in Kansas City where we played many rounds of golf through the liquid sunshine on sparkling fairways.  I actually set my alarm around 5:00 each Saturday morning for years and drove to a public course where tee times were issued in the order of the golfers assembled on a wooden bench next to the clubhouse door which was unlocked at dawn. 

 The Dewsweepers had three cardinal rules which were uncannily similar to our rules:

*  We only play to have fun.  Nobody takes this game all that seriously.

*   We never play for more than a buck—no big money to be made here.(keeping things friendly) 

                                             *  We play a Floating Flannigan (McDonald)—a mulligan that carries over from the first tee and can be used on any tee.

Dodson notes that “when you’re simply out on the golf course enjoying the surroundings and the company, you have achieved the blessed state of stupid happy and reached NATO—Not Attached to Outcome.  Accept what the game gives to you.  That’s the secret to a good round—let it happen.  Golf can become a form of personal therapy and the holy grail.  Golf really isn’t about greatness—it’s about goodness.  Good shots, Good friends.  And ultimately, good memories.”

Our Dewsweeper round yesterday morning morphed into a very hot and humid finish.  After missing about four putts within three feet I also missed my chance to finish into the desired 80’s, so I drove over to our local practice range this morning to specifically work on that distance.  It’s been said that sometimes you stroke it and sometimes you tap it.  The trick is to know which you should do!

Somehow, I had never noticed a memorial bench unobtrusively placed between the practice putting green and chipping green.  Not being a local native, I didn’t know the man memorialized here, but the three words under his name summarized the game of golf nicely, “A Great Friend”.