One doesn’t fully understand pressure, I now believe, until they’ve stood inside a prison yard bordered by 15-foot barbed-wire fences, in front of a dozen inmates, an officer and a superintendent, and needed to drop a rubberish ball onto a green carpet about 25 yards away with a 56-degree wedge.
Chunk it?
Trash talk.
Thin it?
Trash talk.
Land the ball on the putting surface? I somehow did that at the end of a pitching contest — and still heard about it.
Of course the golf writer wins. I mean, he writes about golf. He better freaking win!
Can’t argue that. And a golf story was why, in late July, I was at Cedar Creek Corrections Center, a minimum-security prison outside Olympia, Wash. Tim Trasher, the aforementioned superintendent, had started what has been dubbed Cedar Creek Golf Club, hoping that its members would be rehabilitated through what golf romantics like Thrasher believe makes golf good. Whether that’s possible won’t be known for a while, as CCGC is only a couple of years old, and the process is by no means linear.
There was the smack talk, though. And encouragement, which I also heard after being asked to hit during one of the competitions. Maybe you hear such things in your own rounds. Inmates talked of developing a sense of pride in playing golf — and that’s perhaps not unlike how you feel deep down when you pull into your course.
There was also rule abiding. I learned that on a round played with Thrasher and Brandon, a one-time member of CCGC who has stuck with golf since his release. On the second hole, after a tee shot into the rough, I propped my ball up in the grass, because — well, because. But as I did, I heard a gasp behind me. It came from Brandon.
“I can’t believe you’re breaking the rules in front of a cop” he cracked.
There was also another round. For those still in Cedar Creek.
As part of my trip, the prison and a nearby course had coordinated an outing for five CCGC members. There was job training. There were lessons. There was a seven-man, four-hole scramble. I watched. I listened. One of the inmates said he closed his eyes at one point and believed he was free — and that he was inspired for the day when he actually would be and could return.
“When you get sentenced by the judge, that’s it,” one of the inmates told me afterward. “You go, you do time. But if you want me to come back into society a better person, then give me all the tools to do that. So what Thrasher is doing is a great thing. A lot of people in the community might not see it that way. But it’s bettering these men. You can see it. The camaraderie, the diversity.
“Most of us wouldn’t even talk to each other in prison, because of prison politics, they call it. But in golf, we do.”
There was also a small gift.
A few weeks after my visit, I was mailed a card. (It’s pictured at the top of this story.) There were notes. Thank-yous and such. And a hand-drawn loofah on the cover.
A loofah?
That was the prize for that pitching contest I won. (Toiletry items are valued in prison.) But I never claimed it. I left it there.
But they still paid up to the golf writer.
Editor’s note: To watch our YouTube video on the Cedar Creek Golf Club, please click here or scroll immediately below.
