I was 13 years old.
It was 1990 – back when my golf balls came in sleeves from K-mart, clubs were rented, and nobody in my family had ever uttered the word “lessons”. We were a middle-class, factory-town family. My dad was a foreman. Good man. Loved sports. Loved his kids. Definitely not a country-club guy.
But we still golfed.
One Weekend that summer, we were staying at my grandparents’ cottage on Walpole Island in Ontario. The “cottage” was painted Pepto-Bismol pink – aggressively pink – and sat on the reservation. We spent a ton of time there as kids. Fishing. Swimming. Being feral. It was home in the way only childhood places are.
About ten or fifteen minutes away, just west of the small and overly polite city of Wallaceburg, sat a tiny, nondescript golf course called Baldoon. It had trees and greens, but the rest except that damn creek is just blurry green memory in my long-term fading Hippocampus! It’s closed now, turned back into farmland around 2015. I Google Earthed it for exhaustive research on this story. Where there used to be fairways and greens, there’s just corn now. Bushels of it.
But somewhere in that dirt, my ball is still in that creek.
Satellite imagery © Google (2013, 2024). Images shown for historical comparison and commentary. Baldoon Golf Club, Wallaceburg, Ontario (closed 2014).
We went as a threesome: me, my dad, and my older brother Tim.
Tim will eventually get his own series, because Tim is a cheater. I love him – but facts are facts.
At this point, we were all terrible. I was just the most terrible.
I had never taken a lesson. I was 13. I was using rented clubs and cheap balls that were rapidly finding new homes in bushes. We weren’t playing real scoring golf – more like best-ball-ish rules while trying not to hit anyone. Although with my swing speed hovering around five miles per hour, even the course elders could probably Neo their way out of danger.
By the first par 3, I’d already lost several balls.
Hole #3 at Baldoon was a short par 3. About 180 yards. The problem wasn’t the distance – it was the creek that ran straight across the middle. You didn’t need to hit the green. You just needed to get over the water. Maybe 70 to 90 yards of carry.
That’s it. Simple.
I teed it up and hit what can only be described as a spanked dog. It hopped once, then slowly ran away from me with its tail between its legs. The ball went maybe 35 yards. Not halfway to the hole. Not even halfway to the creek. Halfway to halfway to the creek.
So I did some quick 13-year-old math.
I didn’t want to lose another ball. I knew I couldn’t hit it over the creek. But surely, surely, I could throw it over.
(This is the kind of logic you only arrive at while still liking He-Man.)
So I made the only reasonable decision available.
I picked it up and threw it.
I don’t know if I was channeling Nolan Ryan or Jack Morris (I was a Detroit Tigers kid) but I gave it my best pitching motion and launched that thing with unadulterated confidence.
Bullseye.
Center of the rock-laden creek. No lucky bounce. No ricochet off a stone to save me. Just ploop. Slow. Sad. Final.
Let’s pause and appreciate the efficiency here.
I failed to hit a golf ball far enough to reach the water.
So I picked it up..
To avoid losing it…
And threw it directly into the water anyway….
My dad and brother absolutely lost it. Laughing. Bent over. Pointing. No anger, thankfully, just pure, uncontrollable joy at how bad I was/am at golf.
And honestly? I laughed too.
Here’s the thing though: after that moment – after I literally threw my ball into the water – my dad finally let me drive the cart.
Up until then, it was a hard no. No license. Rules are rules. Very Boy Scout. Borderline Gary energy. But apparently committing an act of golfing idiocy so pure and undeniable earns privileges.
Driving the cart changed everything.
I don’t remember my score after that. I probably took an eight on the hole, which is hogwash really because I threw the ball. Legality was gone. The scorecard was meaningless. A snowman is a snowman whether you earn it or not.
What I remember is laughing. Driving the cart. Being outside. Being with my dad. Being terrible at something and still having a great day.
That’s how you make a Snowman.
It’s not about the score.
It’s about who you’re with.
And life is still pretty damn great with an eight.