Linked for life: golf, fathers & sons

Reserve Run Golf Course is a compact and testy 18-hole loop.

It’s almost as if it were modeled after course owner Scott MacDonald, who always looks as if he’s about to growl “What do you want?”

He keeps a tight grip on the Western Reserve Road operations, and has been known to chase down a golfer or two for various infractions, and indiscretions of course rules.

I was one such chased golfer.

But one recent day, he seemed oblivious to that history when I sat down with him as part of The Vindicator’s “18 Greatest Golf Holes of the Valley.”

(My infraction was standing on the back of the cart a couple of years ago. He ranted me off my perch from half a football field away. He’s probably done it to 1,000 golfers, which is why, I guess, that incident was oblivious to him when we talked golf.)

“You got boys?” he asked as we small-talked. Three boys, I answered.

“You got ’em golfin?” he asked. Just starting, I answered.

It was then that the growl of his jawline seemed to melt into moisture in his eyes. (I did NOT say tears. NOT, I say. It was moisture. He’d find me one day.)

There’s no better place to be a dad, he mused, than on a golf course with your sons.

He’s right. Dads are dreamers and planners, and with their sons, it happens from the first moments of life. Most of us will announce that we’re just hoping for a son who’s “happy and healthy, etc. ...”

But what we’re thinking is: Doctor, quarterback, president, CEO, a winning Michael Jordan shot in Game 7.

All true, but all projected onto sons. None are as easily shared for a lifetime as golf.

I get to see it each Saturday morning at Mill Creek Park when 60 or so boys tee off in a par 3 league, many of them followed by a dad or grandpa (and some moms, too).

Andy Lockshaw and Perry Ring are two of those dads. Amid the well-kept greens and the waving trees on Youngstown’s West Side, they gush of the ability to share a sport and its ability to shape the mind as much as the body.

“You have to develop yourself in life — nothing comes overnight,” said Ring, of Canfield.

“That’s golf, too. It requires persistence and perseverance and patience. We take this experience at golf and translate it into life.”

This year, Ring’s son, Kyle, attained straight A’s in school, and they acknowledged the parallels of success — persistence, perseverance and patience.

Lockshaw points to another life quality in golf: honesty.

“In other sports, you have referees. In golf, you count your score. You’re responsible for your ball. You are the judge; you are the jury.”

Both guys rattled off great life experiences between them and their sons on the course. Lockshaw said that when he got Nick started, he did the dad thing of letting Nick win.

“Two or three years ago, I quit letting him win. This year, I’m going to beat him at some point,” said Lockshaw with a laugh of the turned tables with Nick, who lettered as a freshman this year at Boardman High School.

One of the more notable golfing fathers and sons in the Valley are the Santors. That torch has gone three generations — grandpa Andy, brothers Bill and Bob, and Bill’s son Andy — who’s now head PGA professional at Mill Creek Golf Course.

Andy remembers hanging with dad, uncle and grandpa at an early age and rattles off the accomplished foursome’s golf feats like a shopping list (they’re really good).

His turn at being the noticed Santor came as a young teen when the foursome were teeing it up at Stambaugh. On No. 5 sat a large tree, and grandpa always guided Andy to aim right so that when your drive landed short of the tree, you had a line to the green.

That day, Andy’s drive flew into the heart of the tree. A stunned grandpa couldn’t recall ever getting a drive to the tree, Andy said.

The Santor torch for golf will be passed on to Andy’s kids — but with a twist — all girls.

And he pauses about that but for another reason.

“Kids sporting events today have changed so much,” Santor said. “There’s more parental involvement. I don’t recall my dad getting involved like parents do today. It was always what I wanted. He never pushed.

“I never tell a parent how to be a parent to their child. But if asked my opinion, I tell them: My dad did not push it on me.”