FROM THE EDITOR

In last year's golf issue I 'fessed that I'm not a golfer...yet. I'm still not...yet.

This year I set out to find out, all Tigermania aside, why so many of you show addiction symptoms for this game.

"It can be a team sport, it can be a partner sport, an individual sport," explains Mark Fehrenbacher, 45, golf manager for the Channahon Park District who started as a caddy at age 12.

"You can play it when you're 6 years old until you're 96 years old."

Jerry Moody, golf operations manager at Mundeleins Steeple Chase Golf Club, has been hitting the greens for 40 years. FORTY YEARS!

"There's an awful lot of us...who were athletes at a young age and when you're young you're always involved in groups," says Moody. "Its easy to get people to play basketball because you see so many people every day."

"As you get older and get a job, those opportunities disappear and one of the things you can get active in is golf."

Leon McNair, a PGA pro for more than 25 years, agrees: "It's one of those games you play that it's you against the golf course. The other thing, what better place can you recreate than when you're out enjoying a beautiful place, in nature, at a golf course?"

Okay, okay, I understand the lure. But what about all the time that you must devote to this game? Maybe I'll start in 10 years, when our toddlers grown up some.

"Don't wait!" says an animated and adamant Frank Chieppa, a PGA pro with the Dundee Township Park District.

"You go to your golf course...find a putter...ask a pro to cut it down to your son's size...and you go to the putting green. I don't care if it's 15 minutes. That 15 minutes is good for you because it gets you on the course quicker and it builds up interest (in the sport) in that child."

"My daughters five," says Chieppa. "I'm not trying to mold the next greatest golfer, but she loves to come out with me. She loves to shag the golf ball."

He adds: "The park districts, we are in it for lifetime recreation."

ANN LONDRIGAN
Editor

6 / Illinois Parks and Recreation