My dad always said, “The Rules of Golf are the rules of life.” He learned this early.
As a self-described “ornery kid” growing up in the 1950s and 1960s in small-town Iowa, Bob Longman was athletic, even if he was “kind of a little guy.” He quickly learned that golf was a sport he could excel at with practice, no matter how short he was. Wiry and with coke-bottle glasses as a teen, he got a small thrill out of it when people underestimated him. Then, he’d beat them. “Confidence without cockiness” was his philosophy, and it served him well.
He played golf his whole life. He won club championships and teed it up across continents, from the Philippines to Pebble Beach. He’d work in retirement as a greenskeeper for the golf course he grew up on in Shenandoah, Iowa.
When my dad learned he was sick with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer in January, he seemed to be the only one who understood just how little time he had left. My mom told me days after his diagnosis that she’d read online somewhere how pancreatic cancer’s hallmark was that “by the time you know you have it, you’re already dead.” But as someone who had beaten expectations and underestimations all his life, we wanted to believe that wouldn’t—couldn’t—happen to my dad. That he’d beat the odds once more.
After he told me about his diagnosis, I flew home to Iowa. We walked the dog together, and I suggested he’d get out on the course again in the spring. Perhaps play a round with his buddies, or at least hang out at the clubhouse. I’d hoped my words would bring comfort—to him, and maybe to me, too. I thought of golf less as my dad’s hobby than an essential part of his being. Just as you might plan your next meal, my dad planned his next round. I simply could not envision a world where he didn’t play golf again. It was as impossible as imagining a reality without his playfulness, devotion, impish smile, sense of humor and encouraging words.
But when I brought up playing again, he just said, “Maybe,” and quickly moved past the subject. He had other things he wanted to talk about. More pressing things. He seemed to know his remaining moments of clarity would be finite, anticipating the debilitating pain, Dilaudid drips, and doctors to come. He seemed to know this would be the last time we’d walk the dog. That he wouldn’t be around anymore in just a couple of weeks.
Still, golf would remain a part of his life to the end, even if he couldn’t hit a ball or roll in a putt. While he had it in him, he wanted to tell his best stories, stories that re-emphasized the many lessons he had shared with me during our time playing golf together—from the first moment I could swing my tiny, pink beginner’s club. Some were as simple as shortening my backswing. Others were bigger. They were about golf, but also about so much more.
Months after his death, those lessons are what I have left of him.
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Dad and daughter playing a round. (Photo courtesy of Molly Longman)
Golf isn’t fair
When my dad told stories, he often prefaced them by saying he knew I’d “heard them all a thousand times before.” In my teens, I’d sometimes roll my eyes or tune out because, yes, Bob, I had. But post-diagnosis, I couldn’t fathom the idea that, soon, I wouldn’t get to hear them anymore. So I started recording them, suddenly wishing I’d taped every word he’d ever said to me.
One of the few tales he had time to re-tell (one that I actually hadn’t heard a thousand times) seemed to have a new double meaning. While serving in the Navy during the Vietnam War, my dad spent all his free time on land playing golf. Eventually, he qualified for the final round of the All-Pacific Naval Golf Tournament. He’d gotten permission to play as far as he could go from his admiral. But then, “a day or two before I’m supposed to fly out to Hawaii to do this, I get orders to report to the USS England to go back out in the Gulf of Tonkin,” he told me, in the short period before he died.
It wasn’t fair. He went back to see his admiral, who told him, “Son, you’d better be on the dock at 8 a.m. tomorrow, or you’ll be court-martialled.”
“So I said: Yes, sir.” At this point in his retelling, my dad laughed, summoning the strength to do a little salute.
Although the memory of his interrupted tournament must have still stung a little, all these years later, he had a sense of humor about it.
The deeper lesson he seemed to emphasize was this: Life doesn’t really care about your plans. We miss the shot. An unpredictable gust of wind carries our perfectly struck ball off course. A freak injury—or a strict admiral—cuts short our winning streak. One day, we’re at the top of our game, and then everything falls apart. But you’ll feel better about things if you can find the humor in the chaos … or at least get a good story out of it.
My dad did just this with his diagnosis. I asked if I could borrow his Chapstick one day while driving him to the emergency room. He said, “Sure, but I hope you don’t catch my cancer.” Once there, the nurses complimented his T-shirt, which read: “Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside a dog, it’s too dark to read.”
You’re only as good as your word — and your score-keeping
At least 576 times in my life, my dad must have told me: “You have nothing if you don’t have your integrity.”
For him, this applied to life, business, friendships and golf. It was about repairing your divots after you took a chunk out of the grass. About staying quiet while your partner takes a shot. About honesty in score-keeping. In everything.
At one of his last oncology appointments, my dad’s nurse, seeming to realize she could do little to help him, told a story that was extremely Bob Longman-coded. She was a varsity golfer in college, she shared, and after one tournament she noticed the score that had been posted was one stroke too low. She told an official it needed to be corrected. That one stroke meant she wouldn’t advance to the state competition.
“But you did the right thing,” my dad said, the classic sparkle coming back to his blue eyes for the first time in days. “That’s worth so much more.”
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Bob with his daughter when she was a child. (Photo courtesy of Molly Longman)
Kindness is a cure, or at least a balm, for the yips
The day after my dad died—on January 30, exactly 20 painful days after his diagnosis—his friend Denny told me a story. I was in the fog of grief, thinking about how it was just over a month ago that my dad had talked about how he wanted to golf even more with “the fellas” this spring, and how we’d work on my swing together during my trips home from New York. How we’d watch more musicals as a family, like “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” How he wanted to play more Scrabble with my mom. I thought, as we opened presents at Christmas, that I’d have plenty of time left to hang out with my dad. My daddy. The person who taught me how to walk and golf and live. My favorite person.
Not much was cutting through that horrible, thick fog, but Denny’s story did. He recalled that, when he first met my dad, naturally, they’d played golf together. Denny had the “yips” that day.
Every time Denny missed a putt—and he missed almost every time—my dad offered a reassuring: “Oh that’s too bad!” “Oh, no!” “Next time.”
“At first, I thought he was yanking my chain,” Denny said. “But then, a few holes in, I figured out: Oh my God, he really means it.”
The sheer lack of sarcasm—the shocking sincerity—was part of the kindness and good spirit my dad was known for. Yes, he had his competitive moments. But the compassion, empathy, and sportsmanship he preached were key to who he was, on and off the course. He reminded me frequently of the importance of kindness in the days before he left the world.
The stewardship of Bob
In recent years, my dad’s game had begun to decline (much to his chagrin), but he found a new passion in taking care of the golf course as a greenskeeper. He loved making little criss-cross checker patterns on the fairways and mowing greens. In the early morning hours, on his lawnmower, alone with the sunrise, a group of swallows would swoop up and down in front of him, inviting him to play a game with them, as if they knew he was a friendly part of their world. He loved this. He was at peace.
All his life, he’d been careful to repair the divots he made on the course, to pick up his trash, and to appreciate the beauty that was all around him. Yes, this was about maintaining the integrity of where he played golf, but also about respecting the natural balance of the world where he lived.
His philosophy was an extension of the old National Park Service saying, “Leave no trace.”
Or, as he put it to me a million times: “Leave the course greener than you found it.” And that is just what he did.
Molly Longman is a freelance writer who lives in New York. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Cut, Wired, and theSkimm. She continues to play golf in honor of her father.