After fearing I would forever be playing a one-ball in my household, I discovered the art of golf parenting from an unlikely source
I started listening to a new podcast over the summer break. It was Hamish Blake’s “How Other Dads Dad”. The point of the podcast, as Blake put it, was to steal little nuggets of parental advice from the various fathers in his little black book. Among his guest list for series one were comedy duo Rob Sitch and Dave Hughes, Australian Test cricket captain Pat Cummins, veteran journalist Stan Grant and decorated soldier Mark Donaldson. It’s an eclectic bunch of blokes who share very little in common other than the universal bond of fatherhood.
Sitch was by far my favourite episode. Being the golf tragic that he is, the creator of “The Castle” had me hooked when he revealed the ultimate ‘dad grading system’ he now employs thanks to fellow Aussie funny man Glenn Robbins.
“Most people know what a golf handicap is,” Sitch tells Blake. “Glenn says to me: ‘What are you like at finding a carpark in the city; I’m off 3 [Laughs]’. Then he asks me, ‘What’s your dad handicap?’ I hadn’t thought about it. I’d like to think I’m off single figures but I’m (probably) off 11. Glenn said, ‘I had you off 8’ [Laughs].”
Sitch went on to share stories of his efforts to become a scratch-marker dad (which, ironically, included giving up a lot of golf), and the mistake most of us make by always burying our heads in our phones (“I reckon I’m off 30 there,” he admits. “PGA Tour limit!”).
It got me thinking about my own parenting game, and one big bogey I made during the pandemic. I have two sons, 5 and 7. I introduced my eldest to golf at the age of 4, when Santa delivered his first set of clubs. After taking him to my local driving range a few times, and out on course once or twice, I began to sense he wasn’t that into golf, and that other team sports were more appealing to him. It was every golf-playing dad’s worst nightmare. Consequently, his shiny sticks found a new home in the shed, collecting dust next to mine, perhaps in the hope his younger sibling may get better use out of them one day.
Due to injuries, work commitments and the death of my father a few years earlier, my desire to hit the fairways at every available opportunity wasn’t what it once was, back when Dad would regularly check in to see with whom I’d teed it up that week and where, all so he could gloat to his mates down the street.
Last year, when my youngest began to show some natural ability with club in hand, I felt I’d been given a second chance. Santa again delivered (because of course No.2 was right-handed!) and away we went, out bush for a little family getaway and to the very course Dad introduced me to the game on all those years ago. Filled with newfound hope, I packed both kids’ sticks.
It was during this nine-hour trek home that I listened to Sitch preach about his father, an over-the-top, glass-half-full type who became the inspiration behind Sitch’s beloved character Darryl Kerrigan in “The Castle”.
“One thing not many people master is thinking the glass is half full all the time,” Sitch says. “[It was] one streak my father did have… just lauding my mum and the kids all the time. One of us kids would do something so minor, and Dad would be like, ‘How good’s Greg?’ And that’s where the scene ‘Dale dug a hole’ came from in ‘The Castle’. When you think of Darryl Kerrigan, it was pitched at an age when your dad is your hero.”
I always saw elements of Kerrigan in my dad. Only now was I seeing the very elements I was missing as a father. Instead of singing my eldest’s praises when he was trying his hardest to share my passion for golf, I simply gave up and directed our energy elsewhere. Maybe I saw golf as a test of hand-eye co-ordination, skill and following rules, instead of an avenue to muck around with my kids. Either way, I didn’t give it time. I wasn’t thinking half full.
Sitch had struck a chord.
I spent the ensuing weekend praising my two young Tigers out on the course. Topped shots, airswings and shanks were met with over-the-top acclaim from Dad. Flushed shots straight down the middle were duly rewarded with high-fives and ice cream on the way home.
For hours, we belted balls down the clay-cracked fairways of my childhood course, together as one, laughing in the searing 37-degree heat, my dad no doubt looking down with a gloating grin. My boys had caught the bug, and I had caught it all over again.
As I write this, they’re both hassling me to go to the range, again. I can’t wait to play a full 18 with them someday soon. What their future golf handicaps will be, who knows and who cares. What I do know is this: I’m going full Darryl Kerrigan in my efforts to become a scratch-marker dad.
