Carter's Column: Someday finally came at Kiawah

DICKINSON —I find myself on the 18th hole at the Kiawah Island Ocean Course, perched on just about the only hill on the entire island in what’s widely considered the true Lowcountry in South Carolina.

I have 186 yards in and a 3-iron in my hand, a club I’d normally hit 230 yards if struck just right. My legs have nearly given out after the seven-and-a-half-mile walk through the sand dunes, but I hit one of the most well-struck irons of my life.

As it climbs into the air, I can already see it. I’m going to be the guy who birdies the daunting 18th at the Ocean Course, with families on the patio having dinner whose net worth probably matches that of a Fortune 500 looking on.

The ball falls harmlessly in the Bunker.

It was 30 yards short.

A collective groan breaks out from my playing partners in the distance.

When I walked into the clubhouse at the beginning of the day, I was met with a moniker in the pro shop that sticks with me for the next four hours: “World’s Toughest Course.”

It’s not hard to see why. The wind off the Atlantic doesn’t stop. There’s nothing to block it. A cotton sweatshirt does little to keep it from cutting straight through me, and it’s the reason my 230-yard club comes up 150.

This day, in general, was particularly rough. When I ask my caddie, Dave – who’s been there for the better part of a decade – how bad the wind is, he doesn’t hesitate.

“About an eight out of ten,” he says.

But I’ve been begging to play this course for years.

Ever since my parents ditched the cold of Minneapolis and moved to Charleston in 2020, it’s been at the top of the list. Watching Phil Mickelson win the 2021 PGA Championship here only made that desire worse.

In my head, it was always supposed to be perfect. 76 degrees. No wind. My dad by my side. Instead, it’s 60 degrees with 35-mile-per-hour gusts.

And somehow, I don’t want it any other way.

One of my dad’s biggest sayings is, “If you’re going to be a bear, be a grizzly,” and now an idiom I had scoffed at for the better part of the last 20 years suddenly became incredibly fitting.

Maybe somewhere in the back of my mind, I was even egging Mother Nature on to add a few more miles per hour – because in reality, I didn’t really care.

My dad keeps the score, and for someone who usually fixates on every number, every shot, every mistake, I don’t ask to see it once.

I play off about a five handicap – for non-golfers, that puts me roughly in the top 9% of players. I shot a 96.

It’s a number I haven’t seen since the days when I was more worried about collecting the newest Silly Bandz than paying a utility bill. And still, I have no real shame in telling the world.

My point in writing this isn’t to gloat about playing a golf course that costs more than half my rent, but more so to say that if you have something in your life you want to do, don't keep waiting. Don’t waste half a decade thinking about how fun something could be, even if it doesn’t turn out exactly how you pictured it.

And yeah, I realize it’s an incredibly privileged thing for me to say as some 24-year-old who only has a couple of bills and an annoying cat to tend to at home. But the idea still stands.

Whether it’s training for a marathon or just making a weekend trip to Yellowstone to see that national park you’ve always wanted to visit, just do it.

I fall back on a short dialogue I had with my dad as we were leaving Charleston International Airport.

As I’m transferring my bag’s worth of merchandise into my backpack, he tells me that maybe he should have walked away with a couple more items from the pro shop. He only had a green and white hat which, to his credit, he said will probably be the only one he wears from now on.

“But I don’t need people asking me how much it costs to play that course,” he says jokingly.

“Can’t take that money with you to the grave,” I say.

He nods.

“Exactly.”