By Mike Eovino
We all have golf origin stories, and frankly I'm quite fond of mine.
If you play golf with strangers frequently (and I do), you need to have your origin story ready to go. My index bounces around from the high 4’s to the low 8’s, so I occasionally know what I look like I’m doing in front of people who don’t know any better. I can’t count the times I’ve told people that I spent my high school and college years in the late 80s and early 90s as a golf-obsessed teenager caddying and working in the pro shop of one of the 50 snobbiest clubs in America (legend has it that they relieved a young Dave Marr of his duties as head pro for eating lunch in the grill room with some members after playing a round with them; he somehow managed to pull himself together, win the PGA Championship, and anchor golf on ABC Television when ABC mattered in golf coverage - but never forget that the help eats in the kitchen).
My bonafides as a man of the people — someone who made his way through golf on his own to a career capped with wins like the Henrico County Two-Man (First Flight, not Championship), the Dunes West Men’s Invitational (my dad’s semi-private, mostly public course), and the First Tee of Greater Richmond Parent-Child (Father-Daugher division) — are impeccable. I mean, I didn’t even have a car in high school. I rode my bike to the club to loop, run carts, clean clubs, and had my hand-me-down clubs on my back on my bike on Mondays to play on staff day (until I got to keep my clubs in the bag room). I get a ton of mileage out of these stories; telling them is like slipping on a well-worn pair of spikes. People love to hear stories of scrappy young kids cutting up, putting the rich guys in their place, and beating the members’ kids in high school golf. Caddying earned me money and golf on Mondays from noon till dark, and working in the shop meant I could hit balls from the back of the range and play Tuesday through Thursday in the late afternoon. Everyone loves an underdog story, right?
I hadn’t really started peeling back the layers of this onion until recently. But when I did, I realized there’s much more to the story.
Yes, I most certainly did work in a place that would never have had my family as members, but I also lived less than three miles from the club. I may not have been to the manor born, but I grew up solidly upper-middle class in a suburb on the train line to Wall Street. I certainly made no contribution that led to my personal geography at the time. My clubs were hand-me-downs, but that meant there were golf clubs in my family — both my dad and grandfather played the county municipal courses (which were and still are outstanding). Oh, and my grandfather bought me a set of Hogan Apex redlines when I finally beat him straight-up my junior year in high school. And while I may have humped my clubs on my back to the course, no one who saw me ever thought twice about what I was doing. If I’d been a Black teen riding a bike with a golf bag on my back, what do you think the police would have said?
Add it all up, and I’m less of a study in rugged individualism and more of someone who made the most of a really freaking great opportunity. I managed to go 50 years before finally listening to people who’ve been telling me that some people start the race of life steps from the finish line, others start it at the halfway point, but too many people start the race behind the starting line, with roadblocks all along the way. I won’t stop telling my origin story, but I need to add a little more context to it.
Mike Eovino sells and manages consulting for a great software company with a funny name. He's a volunteer coach for the First Tee of Greater Richmond. His Twitter handle is @meovino. He occasionally posts pictures of moderately priced golf courses on Instagram at @linkspebbles and pictures of other things at @hardcorelooper.
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