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Join the Club
by Peter Gallagher
Sports Illustrated, August 3, 1998
Vol. 89, No. 5, p. G11

For our anniversary last year my wife gave me my first club membership. Pelham (N.Y.) Country Club has a jewel of a course, the site of Gene Sarazen's and Walter Hagen's duel at the 1923 PGA. I grew up nearby, but the only times I visited golf courses as a kid were at night, usually pursued by the authorities after some boyhood prank. Golf came late in life for me and hit hard.

When I told my 84-year-old Uncle Larry about the joys of belonging to Pelham, he confided that when he was a boy growing up in Mount Vernon, N.Y., he had dreamed of making a living at golf. In those days he had caddied, mopped floors at a bank and worked at a pharmacy, where he fought with other delivery boys over who'd get to take medicine to the Kennedy house, where Joe Kennedy Sr. always tipped you a fiver. "I hopped the fence at Pelham once," my uncle told me, "and was confronted by a member who threatened to have me arrested for trespassing. 'Sir,' I said, 'my father is a member in good standing and would be offended by your accusation.' Well, the old guy looked surprised and said, 'Please accept my apologies, young man, and play on.' "

Now, I knew that Uncle Larry's father, my grandfather, was no "member in good standing" at Pelham. The man had a less-than-legal speakeasy business and a weakness for the horses.

"Pete," my uncle said, "I gave that guy the bull, and he took it."

Within a month of our talk, my uncle died and a TV pilot I had done, The Secret Lives of Men, about three divorced guys who play golf, got picked up by ABC. Now, as I walk the course at Pelham "rehearsing" my role as a weekend duffer, I can't help smiling at the thought that one of us is making a living at golf.