He wanted to be a golfer. He trained to be a monk. He became a writer

Colman McCarthy, one of my golfing and writing heroes, died the other day. He was best known as a liberal op-ed columnist and editorial writer for Washington Post, where he had a nearly 30-year run, beginning in the late 1960s. He was a true believer in a core value of the Quaker teaching, that war begets war. As a golfer, he was a true believer in the miss-’em-quick – and still he broke countless times.

Before Colman became a reporter, writer and columnist, he had two long and almost unintentional internships. He spent almost a decade, during high school on Long Island in the 1950s and then college in west Alabama, planning to become a professional golfer. Then, after playing college golf at Spring Hill College, a Jesuit school in Mobile, he spent half a decade living in a monastery in rural Georgia, training to become a Trappist monk. This was his path to his life in journalism and the long series of classes he taught, at universities and high schools, under a rubric he called Peace Studies.

As he settled into his life in the Belt, with his wife and three sons, Colman returned to golf. His adulthood unfolded in a city—the nation’s capital—where golf fluency is a passport of sorts, whether you’re traveling to East Potomac Public Course or visiting Burning Tree, the no-women golf club for presidents, diplomats and other dignitaries. When the spirit struck him, Colman wrote about the game, always with unfailing logic and a light touch.

The Lords of Augusta, at the time, could not have had much use for Colman McCarthy. In the run-up to the 1977 Masters, in his widely broadcast column, Colman derided the tournament for its small, carefully selected fields, as it casually excluded many determined and passionate players, to say nothing of black players and stars from faraway lands. He suggested a boycott of the players Masters in which (as he then called it) the “Tournament Players Championship” would be elevated to major status and the Masters would be rechristened the “Clifford Roberts Invitational”, in honor of the club chairman’s joke. Half a year later Roberts died (Colman had nothing to do with him!), and over time the criteria for a tour invitation became much more meritocratic.

Colman McCarthy was born on the north shore of Long Island in 1938. His father was an immigration and baseball-loving attorney, a lawyer out of the Atticus Finch tradition, except the elder McCarty was an Irish-Catholic New Yorker. Colman was never short of heroes. Tommy Bolt, as a child. (Colman caddied for it several times.) Mother Teresa, years later. He was drawn to people finding their way in life. Chi Chi Rodriguez, for example, even though their politics were on opposite sides of the freeway. Colman loved it Notah Begaialso.

In 1977, Colman wrote an exquisite book called The Pleasures of Play. which I found as a new edition at my local library in Patchogue, on the south shore of Long Island. I was a senior in high school and it was a game changer. Colman wrote about the joys of the nine-club bag, the benefits of walking, playing fast, following the rules, bringing your own food. He described his days hanging out at a Long Island club, sometimes for celebrities like the Duke of Windsor and Perry Como.

Then came a discount of sorts, in the pro shop, where he sold socks by the pair and golf balls in sleeves. Finally, his big break: “From there, I went into the dark—working as a night man in charge of rotating freeway sprinklers. In between rotations, especially from midnight to 3 a.m., I practiced putting under the moonlight, looking at Venus in my plumb bob in side shots.”

Long Island summer nights in those days were (and remain) warm, humid and still. Those old-time ’round’ fairway sprinklers, usually on a pole, provided a rhythmic, sprinkling soundtrack of the evening, along with the occasional, impromptu shower. Colman’s photo landed me. With it was born the idea of ​​the golf course as a kind of monastery. At the beginning of “Pleasures”, McCarthy distilled the vast joys of golf down to a single sentence: “Golf exercises the body, stimulates the mind and elevates the spirit.”

I have a vague memory of writing to the author after reading Pleasures, and I’m sure I met Colman at the 1985 Kemper Open in Congresswhere I was caddying and he wandered in, with a bucket hat and a reporter’s notebook. One night that week I sat in on his Peace Studies class at American University. (Over the years I’ve directed students to the classroom. One of Colman’s main points is that it’s not enough to be aware of violence around the world—it’s our responsibility to do something about it.)

After class, Colman and I grabbed a quick dinner at the cafeteria. (He was a vegetarian.) After I finished dinner, I hopped on a subway back to my digs for the week, the couch of a reporter friend from college who lived in Foggy Bottom. I don’t remember how Colman got home, but he didn’t have a car and was famously committed to public transport as well as his three-speed Raleigh. He biked everywhere.

On his travels, he talked to everyone. That was one of his things: talk to everybody, because you can learn from anybody. He lived as he preached. He counted Joan Baez and Sargent Shriver as friends, as did various golf professionals, congressional staffers and bus drivers. We stayed in touch (albeit very sporadically) over the past 40 years. I am proud to say that Colman McCarthy has shaped my life immeasurably.

I can’t imagine a life without heroes. I don’t know how you feel about this topic.

About a month ago, a young woman with a hint of the South in her voice was scanning my items at a grocery store in the neighborhood in Philadelphia where I live. She said she was from Mobile, Ala., and had attended school there, at Spring Hill College, but dropped out without a degree when she ran out of money. I offered the young lady a joke about Colman McCarthy — though nothing about his sub-70 average as a junior on the Spring Hill golf team — and his later life as a teacher. The young lady said she was saving money with a plan to go back to school and start her career as a teacher.

Colman’s wife, who went by Mav, was a nurse, a Scotch drinker, a carnivore, a conservative – as a couple they were further proof that opposites can and do attract. (Both were, it should be noted, devout Catholics, though she from high-society Greenwich, Conn.) Mrs. McCarthy died in 2021. When the couple met and quickly became engaged, Colman’s future father-in-law had a plan to break up the relationship — take him out golfing at the family’s high-rise! In tennis shoes and borrowed clubs, Colman rolled into 66. The marriage was on.

Two of their sons, John and Edward, became teachers and baseball coaches. A third son, Jim, became an executive and public relations consultant who helped lead Augusta National through point-of-bayonet brouhaha as a one-sex club in the early 2000s. Colman and his three sons formed a golf foursome whenever the opportunity arose, sometimes on Long Island or in the Dominican Republic, where John McCarthy lives. Since Mav’s death, Colman lived with John and his family in the Dominican, and he died there on February 27 at the age of 87. All the while, he remained eager to make the world a fairer place for its 8 billion human citizens, including the 60 million gamers who roam the many and varied streets of our planet.