Forethoughts: Filling the Bucket

When my kids were little, I joked that the three words that struck fear into every parent’s heart were collect them all.

With the release of every new series of Happy Meal toys, I found myself bouncing from one set of Golden Arches to another in search of another Barbie or Beanie Baby. To pacify my three-year-old daughter after failing to find a missing character in her Disney collection, I actually resorted to drawing a dot on the beak of a duplicate Daisy Duck and renaming her Cindy (as in Crawford) Duck, Daisy’s “cousin.”

My daughter came by her collecting honestly. I spent my youth building baseball card, stamp and coin collections. I couldn’t care less about their market value; their worth came in completing the set and in the knowledge I derived while doing so. Philately, for example, spurred curiosity about U.S. and world history, geography and politics. It turned me into a different kind of collector—one who amassed copious facts and information. Trivial Pursuit, anyone?

Golfers are inveterate collectors. I’ve written about guys with hundreds of putters and vintage golf clubs. What self-respecting golfer’s man cave doesn’t have displays of golf balls from courses he’s played? One frugal friend amasses golf-course pencils; another has close to 200 golf hats hanging off nails in his office.

The more aspirational golfer collects bag tags, often displaying them conspicuously to prompt inquiries like, “Hmm. Cypress Point?”
Of course, you can’t just book a flight to Monterey, drive to Cypress and expect to tee off. The hunt’s the thing; the tag, a trophy mount. More accurately, getting on is like closing a business deal, getting to “yes,” like finally convincing someone to trade you that Nolan Ryan card you coveted.

But “collecting courses” differs from checking items off your bucket list.

If Cypress Point was always on this guy’s bucket list—a lifelong dream—then I’m happy for him. But if it’s just a matter of checking the box on a list of America’s greatest courses—or worse, a matter of bragging rights and a chance to spout off about whom he had to know to finagle the accomplishment—then he should be hauled off to the golfer’s gallows.

For this issue, we asked a cross-section of Colorado golfers what populated their bucket lists. We proscribed the clichéd response of playing Augusta and/or attending the Masters, and we edited out fantasies, no matter how cool they sounded (“Play golf with U2 in Ireland.”)

The responses ranged from the hubristic to the humorous to the philosophical. “It’s about the people, not the places,” Colorado Open Foundation Founder and Oakwood Homes President Pat Hamill told me. “Those are the experiences on my bucket list.”

With that in mind (and since Father’s Day is this month), topping my bucket list is playing one last round with my 94-year-old dad, even if his neuropathy limits him to riding and watching. I also want to play every course in Colorado with the regulars who give each place its character.

I want to collect them all—public, private, resort, sand-green—but not just to say I did it. As with the stamps of my youth, I want to use them as an entry point into learning about what informs and animates each place. It might take another 20 years, by which time I’ll be 74 and close to accomplishing the admittedly cliché bucket list item of shooting my age. Doing so at Augusta would be nice but unnecessary.

More “Forethoughts” from editor Jon Rizzi:

Forethoughts: Healthy Concerns

Golf Done to a Turn

It Happens Every Spring

To The Good Life?

Colorado AvidGolfer is the state’s leading resource for golf and the lifestyle that surrounds it. It publishes eight issues annually and proudly delivers daily content via www.coloradoavidgolfer.com.