One doesn’t fully understand the pressure, I believe now, until they’ve stood inside a prison yard enclosed by 15-foot barbed wire fences, facing a dozen inmates, an officer, and a warden, and had to throw a ball of manure onto a green carpet about 25 feet away with a 56-degree wedge.
piece it?
Trash talk.
Thin it out?
Trash talk.
Put the ball on the putting surface? I kind of did that at the end of a pitching contest – and I still heard about it.
Of course the golf writer wins. I mean, he writes about golf. He better win freaking!
;)
‘I never thought I’d be playing golf, let alone in prison’: Here, golf offers a second chance
Nick Piastowski
Can’t argue that. AND a golf story it was why, in late July, I was at Cedar Creek Correctional Center, a minimum-security prison outside Olympia, Wash. Tim Thrasher, the aforementioned superintendent, had started what is now called Cedar Creek Golf Club, hoping that its members would be rehabilitated through what golf romantics like Thrasher believe makes good golf. Whether this is possible won’t be known for a while, as the CCGC is only a few years old and the process is by no means linear.
However, there was a bad conversation. And encouragement, which I heard even after I was asked to hit during one of the races. Maybe you hear things like this on your rounds. The inmates talked about developing a sense of pride in the game of golf – and it’s probably not unlike how you feel deep down when you pull up on your course.
There was also respect for the rules. I learned that in one round I played with Thrasher and Brandon, a former CCGC member who has stuck with golf since his release. On the second hole, after a little putt into the ground, I lifted the ball into the grass, because – well, because. But as I did, I heard a gasp behind me. It came from Brandon.
“I can’t believe I’m breaking the rules in front of a policeman,” he said.
There was another round. For those still at 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 looked. i heard One of the prisoners 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 the judge sentences you, that’s it,” one of the prisoners told me afterwards. “You go, you have time. But if you want me to come back to 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 improving these men. You can see it. The society, the diversity.
