Golf Built the Bridge My Dad and I Needed

You don't have to agree on everything to build something solid together. Sometimes you just need a fairway.

My dad and I don't agree on a lot of things: how to spend a Sunday, what counts as a life well lived, whether the news he watches is trustworthy. That's just always been true, but it never made us stop showing up for each other. There were stretches where we went a while without talking much, the way families do, but the bond was always there underneath, quietly getting stronger over the years. Somewhere along the way, my dad and I found the one thing we could agree on completely: getting a few birdies together is one of the best feelings there is. Golf didn't build that bond from nothing. It sealed the deal.

It started in my backyard. That was the first time my dad watched me swing a club, and my partner was out there too, offering his own commentary- lovingly, I'm sure, but he's a genuinely good golfer with a lot more experience than me, and he called my swing a bit of a disaster. He wasn't wrong. It still kind of is, most days. But my dad, who's been golfing for over fifty years, just watched for a bit and said, "You have a nice swing, Jess. You really do. You just need to lock in a few basics."

Later that night we were cooking our famous rice and beans together (food's the other thing we never fight about), music on, and my dad started walking me through what felt like a million things to remember all at once: takeaway, clubface, release, weight shift, one tip stacked on top of another until I couldn't hold onto any of it. Somewhere around the fourth or fifth thing, I thought, oh my gosh, he needs to write this down. So I grabbed the nearest notebook I had, which happened to be one of my son's old ones from a Scholastic book fair, dragon on the cover and all, and handed it to him.

That's the notebook. It's mine now. I will never let it go — we don't get to see each other often because he lives in the Midwest and I live in New England. Golf gives us something easy to talk about when our communication is sometimes short, and there's a lot of ground to cover in not much time. No need to work up to it, no careful subject changing, just "how's your swing been?" The more I play, the more I notice that golf is a lot like life. Good holes and bad ones, back to back, no pattern to it. Most of the time out there it feels like it's just you against the course, you against yourself, entirely alone with your own mistakes, but just like in life, if we are lucky, we have at least one person who can make things feel less hard.

He wrote what's already in there by hand, in handwriting that slants and doubles back on itself, with half the notes underlined twice for emphasis — like he was worried I'd skim past the important parts.

The first page is pure mechanics. Takeaway goes straight back along the dotted line. Close the face of the club on the takeaway. Straight-line release on the downswing — no chicken wing. That one's underlined twice and followed by three exclamation points, because as a beginner, that's the piece he's drilled into me more than anything else. It's his answer to almost every bad shot I hit: keep that release straight and let the club go where it wants to go instead of steering it. "Hit 'em long and straight" is basically his whole golf philosophy in four words, and for me right now, the straight part starts with that release.

Then, at the bottom of the same page: LET IT GO!!! He wrote it about my swing. That's all he meant by it, probably — stop steering the club, trust the release. But I've decided to believe it means more than that. He's never said it out loud as anything other than a golf tip, and I've never asked him to explain it. I just know that when I read it now, I don't just hear a man talking about clubface angles. I hear my dad telling me to let go of whatever I'm carrying that isn't actually mine to carry.

The second page is where the notebook stops being just instruction. Focus on a smooth stroke to the hole. Let it go!!! Good job!! — and then, underneath all of it, he drew a heart. A little flag driven through the top of it, like a pin on a green. At the bottom: Love, Dad.

I've read a lot of instructional material in my life. I have never once gotten choked up over a golf tip. Until that one — or really, until I noticed that "let it go" shows up on both pages, like it's the one lesson he needed me to actually keep, whether he meant it that way or not.

My dad and I can be a lot like oil and water. Dare I say, maybe too alike in some ways. We're both known to be hotheaded, opinionated, and quick to lash out. I prefer to call it passionate, though I know others might beg to differ. That's part of what's made things complicated between us over the years. But something strange happens on a golf course: my dad actually calms me down. He makes me feel safe out there, in a way I never expected the two of us, of all people, to arrive at. I need him to tell me why my ball keeps pulling left, and he's the only person who will tell me the truth about it while also drawing me a heart at the bottom of the page.

It's gotten to the point where, if I'm overwhelmed and standing over a bad lie, I'll picture him next to me, telling me to relax. Telling me to let it go. That might be one of the strangest things I've ever admitted in writing, but it's true, and it works.

He's approaching eighty now. His life looks different than it did when I was growing up , he's a grandfather several times over these days, and somewhere in there, something in him softened. Not endlessly patient — he's still my dad — but enough. Enough to walk nine holes beside me instead of ahead of me. Enough to write "relax!!!" in my notebook, like he was reminding both of us at once.

I think what I'm getting now is his grandpa style of teaching. The smooth, unrushed version. The one that has time for a heart drawn in the margin. My kids and my nieces and nephews get that version of him as their default, but I remember the before, so I know exactly what a gift the after is.

The round where I shot a 38 on our nine-hole course, my dad walked the whole thing with me. Didn't ride ahead in the cart. Didn't check his phone between holes. Just walked, and watched, and occasionally said "good job" in the exact all-caps, double-exclamation-point energy of his handwriting. He reminded me to take my time and go through my routine. When I made mistakes, he would calmly ask me what I thought happened. It's one of the best rounds I've ever played, and I don't think that's a coincidence.

Golf gave my dad something he doesn't often get anymore: a reason to teach and a daughter who actually wants to know what he knows. He spent years and real money on lessons from instructors who were genuinely excellent, building a swing and a golf IQ he's proud of. And now I get to be the one who benefits, simply by showing up, being the student, and trying very hard not to revert to my teenage self when he tells me my grip is wrong for the fourth time.

Because here's what I've had to admit, somewhat begrudgingly: he actually knows more than I do. About this, at least. And letting him teach me isn't a concession. It's a gift I get to give him almost as much as one I get to receive.

I think most people — not just older parents, just people — want to be asked about the thing they're good at. Want someone to sit across from them, or walk a fairway beside them, and say, show me how you do that. It doesn't happen often enough. We get busy. We assume we already know what our parents know, or we've heard the story before, or we'd rather not sit through another lecture on grip pressure or, even more so, our "parenting styles".

So when I read "let it go", I don't just hear a swing tip, even though that's probably all he meant by it. I hear something closer to permission: to stop needing us to agree on everything, to stop keeping score on the years we spent apart, to just take what's being handed to me right now, in his handwriting, in his own time. That's the bridge. Not the birdies. The notebook, and everything he's still willing to put in it.

📖 LIBRARIAN'S NOTES

I couldn't resist digging into why this all feels so true, and it turns out the research backs up the feeling. A landmark study out of Sweden's Karolinska Institutet, tracking over 300,000 golfers, found a 40% lower mortality rate among golfers compared to non-golfers — the equivalent of roughly five extra years of life, regardless of age or gender, which makes those slow walks together even more worth taking. There's also real psychology behind why my dad gets so much out of teaching me: Erik Erikson's concept of generativity describes a deep, well-documented human need in midlife and beyond to guide and mentor the next generation, and researchers have found that older adults who get to teach or mentor report meaningfully better well-being and a stronger sense of purpose because of it. And on the relationship side, family researchers have found that novel shared experiences between parents and adult children are especially powerful for closeness because they disrupt old, fixed roles — which tracks exactly with how golf turned my dad from "the guy I used to argue with" into "the guy who taught me to shoot a 38."

What's the thing that's built a bridge in one of your relationships?

Follow The Golfing Librarian on Pinterest for more golf stories, tips, and travel guides