Graham Chernoff at Lincoln Park

Under the category of seeing things I never thought I'd see is Graham Chernoff playing golf at Lincoln Park.

Here's a picture to prove that I saw what I saw--Graham on the Hole #1 at Lincoln Park.

It's a Par 4, straight uphill to a small, mounded table-top green. In the background, you can see the tall clump of bushes that loom about 100 yeards alongside the left side of the fairway and gobble up any ball that's slightly tugged off the tee. Ian Cussen, Lincoln Park regular, regularly finds 50 to 100 balls in these bushes every time he plays Lincoln and is waiting to tee off on Hole #1 

I seem to remember Graham that parred Hole #1, but maybe he took a bogey.

That it doesn't matter now the way it mattered when Graham and I were playing Hole #1 is the holy gift of the game of golf--that it means so much when you're playing and so little when you're finished.

The great golfer Gary Player said of his life in golf that he'd 'learned almost everything about practically nothing'. 

Lincoln Park's a bit scruffy for a golf purist like Graham (note the condition of the tee-box), but he perservered and gave the course its due, admitting that he had "to shape his shots" around the tight little golf course.