He’s On The Dog Leg Now!-The Trials And Tribulations Of Seth Damon On The Golf Course

By Lester Lannon

Seth Damon, the old time big shot left-wing political activist who led some significant if now faded from memory marches against the Vietnam War in the early days, say 1965, when it counted, defended the Black Panthers even before they faced down the guns of every law enforcement agency that had anything at all to say about it and fully consumed himself in the fires of the 1960s counter-cultural upheaval was not sure what got him playing golf as he reached retirement age, as he looked for some “hobby” to occupy a few hours of his day a couple of times a week.

He could very well remember back to the times at a number of SDS meetings, and later at various Cambridge socialist communal collective meetings that a prime task for the young was to “burn down the country clubs.” Of course he used that expression metaphorically to express his and his fellow comrades disgust as the workings of bourgeois corporate society and their societal values expressed through their clubs and other exclusionist enclaves. Used it in the same way that the Narodniks and others in rural-dominated societies down through history when they were fed up with the onerous land taxes and dues called to “burn down the manor house,” burn down the place where the records were kept. But no Seth had not been acting to somehow in retrospect reverse his then ill-digested notions of how to change society.

Nor could it have been that he was doing a mea culpa from the days back in his working-class section of Riverdale growing up home when he would on weekends during the school year and whenever he could in the summers caddy, doubles, carry two bags hopefully, in order to have walking around dough for dates and general hanging out since his dirt poor parents always had their heads under water for anything but paying for the basics. Although during the summer once school got out each Monday the course was closed in order that the caddies could play he was not interested in playing golf. Had like most people who work at certain jobs no interest in learning more about it than he had to. He would tell Sammy Dowling, Chuck Tanner, and Chris Kelly his boys around Hank’s Variety store that from what he could see with the guys that he caddied for, rich guys from various banks and industries in the area that “golf was for old guys.” What he cared about was getting into Kathy Lyons’ pants, or whoever sparked his interest at the time. And when he did get old and did take up the game of golf he patted himself on the back about how right he was to dream of breasts and asses back then and leave the golf for his dotage.

In any case Seth did so, did as he approached his fiftieth years take up the game at his local public course, Pine Village, near where he lived. Took it up without qualms and with the notion of meeting others so inclined who were not necessarily political, not necessarily lawyers, and not necessarily into the other intellectual pursuits that animated his life. And in the course of the first few years he met a small coterie of guys, and while women have charged onto the course in larger numbers of late this was still a guy’s game, who he took pleasure in playing with and doing the male social bonding thing without a lot of pressure. 

One of the rituals in a game filled with ritual, rules and norms of etiquette that Seth had established over the years was a full-blown attempt to play the first day and last day of the golf season at Pine Valley, usually sometime in March to sometime in early December. And to get his coterie, or some of them, to play the first day with him if not the last. This year with a light snow winter in southern New England and early signs of spring the course opened a little earlier in March than usual and so when the golf pro sent out the e-mail announcing opening day Seth was on his own e-mail wire to see who wanted to play. Since a number of his buddies were still working, a couple had not come back from winter Florida, a couple had early season physical problems and one had a death in the family Seth wound up playing alone. Or rather playing with a couple of guys that he had played in tournaments with but who he did not otherwise playing with regularly.

Rather than going through a painful play by play description of Seth’s round, a nebulous task for a very average for his age golfer crowing about his opening day game he sent this message to his “boyos.”

“According to unnamed sources who have asked that their names not be used since they are not authorized to speak publicly on the matter last year’s Pine Valley tournament program big dough winner (and according to those same sources nothing but a low down sand-bagger [a guy who fudges his scores to get a bigger handicap]) Mr. Seth Damon had a sparkling 96 on the opening day of golf at Pine Valley Golf Course in Riverdale, Massachusetts. He had missed a twenty-foot putt that just rimmed the cup on number eighteen or else he would have had a sparkling 95. A dubbed sand shot on number eight prevented a sparking 94. A forty-five foot putt missed by three feet on number six prevented a sparkling 93. And so on in nineteenth hole golfer lore. Interviewed by Ted Lewis from Golf Tuesday magazine about his round Mr. Damon said that he would very likely win many side bets over the coming period from his cronies as he put it-“like taking candy from a baby.” Enough said.