I didn\u2019t grow up in a golf family. My father was a teacher and owned a landscaping business. We were a dirt-on-our-Hanes-T-shirts family. No blue or white collars here.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Golf came to me in college. As my passion for it developed and it became a large part of my career, I\u2019ve often wondered what it would be like growing up with a club in my hands, sharing special moments on the course with my father, which I witnessed countless times secondhand. Certainly, it\u2019s something I hope to develop with my two sons.<\/p>\n
Those feelings were stirred again reading The Philly Phenoms. At its heart, the book is a love story about how a father-son relationship can be strengthened through golf and forge a bond so powerful, it can help a family overcome anything. <\/p>\n
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There are fun moments on the course and a boorish antagonist you can\u2019t help but loathe. For me, my thoughts centered on fathers and sons and golf as I read it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The book, written by Nate Oxman, a Philadelphia-area teacher and caddy at Merion Golf Club, follows 10-year-old Lee Lomax as his passion for golf evolves from hobby to obsession. Lee helps his father Sam, who was a stick in his youth, rediscover his love for the game and competition, culminating in a climactic charity match against two pros.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The adoration Lee has for his father is amplified on the course. The resilience his father shows, on and off the course, heightens his son\u2019s reverence. It\u2019s the quintessential father-son-golf relationship\u2014one predicated on mutual respect, appreciation and a shared love of a game they play together.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was a fun peek into a world I never experienced. Oxman said he wove many personal anecdotes into the book, which makes it so authentic. A love of golf developing in adolescence, lessons learned on the course that extend off it, a father and son forging a bond that will last a lifetime.\u00a0There\u2019s beauty in honesty. <\/p>\n
For me, that admiration was cultivated on grass too. Not around sport, but enterprise, physicality and a devotion to one\u2019s family you must have pushing a lawnmower for 40 years. <\/p>\n
Like Lee, I idolize my father. Like Lee, it came from watching him do things that seemed superhuman. One did it cutting grass with a golf club. Another with a blade.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Philly Phenoms is a beautiful reminder of that love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I didn\u2019t grow up in a golf family. My father was a teacher and owned a landscaping business.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69866,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[288,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-69865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-books","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}