Disclaimer:

I have attempted to write this article numerous times but words seem to fall short of what my grandfather meant to me so I keep rewriting. I will do my best to put into words my emotions over my grandfather’s passing but he will forever mean more than words can describe.

Role Model

Normally I write these articles and start with golf and how I’ve been playing but that does not feel right for this one. A couple of months ago my grandfather passed away peacefully. He had been slugging with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) for 16 years. If you don’t know about this disease, just know that life expectancy with this incurable disease is typically 2 years. Pop, as I called him, was a fighter. Reminiscing while grieving his passing and writing for myself and this newsletter, I was reminded of the countless memories I have with him.

Pop was one of the main reasons I started this newsletter. He loved pictures and stories and I wanted to be able to give him a way that he could better keep up with my golf career as I turned pro. He was one of my biggest supporters. Every time I went in the house I was greeted with “there’s our golf pro” and immediately he would ask me questions about my adventures in golf. I know he loved these newsletters as I always heard from him when I published a new one and I am sad that he will not get to read this one as a tribute to him.

As his good friend, Joe McCutchen, said at his service, Pop was one of the most positive people on earth. He always found a way to put a positive spin on things. He was one of those people who made you believe that there was good in the world. You wanted to hang around him and hope that some of his positivity rubbed off on you. Nothing shows this better than his 40+ year career as a track coach at First Presbyterian Day School where he coached numerous state champions in multiple disciplines of the sport. He had runners from other high schools asking him for advice and hanging around him in the hopes of his positivity wearing off on them. I really am proud of that part of my grandfather. The amount of people that loved him is immeasurable and it is an honor to say that I am his grandchild.

Pop was diagnosed with ALS long before I started to play golf so he was never able to come to any of my events but he did do something that was very touching to me. He never really played or followed golf but when I started to take it more seriously and show some signs as a good player, he and my grandmother started keeping up with golf and watched all the PGA tour tournaments to understand more of what I was doing. That always meant a lot to me. In order for me to remember to be positive, I started wearing a wristband on my right wrist that says “#ChallengeALS.” The purpose is to have some of Pop’s positivity with me at all times. I started wearing the wristband in my junior year of high school. Three of them have broken through the years but I continue to wear it, hopefully for the rest of my life, or until they cure ALS. Any time I am in a tough situation on the golf course and start to get negative, that wristband is staring back up at me when I grip the club and it checks my attitude immediately.

As the title of this section suggests and all that I have said, Pop was the ultimate role model for me in life and in my faith. As I’ve stated in this newsletter before, your faith is not a journey in a vacuum. The way you live your faith helps others in their faith journey. Sometimes we don’t understand why God allows his soldiers to go through the things that they go through but with Pop it is crystal clear. He was a man of phenomenal character, positivity and an infectious love of life. Him having this trial at the end of his life only solidified who he was. Individuals like me, my family, all those that he coached and touched during his 85 years on this earth were witness to his incredible tenacity and his light that never faded. He looked the disease in the face and said give me all you got, I know where I’m headed after my life but I’m not done here yet. My faith is stronger because of Pop and I am a better person because of his influence on my life. I miss him dearly and cannot wait to see him again some day.

Grief

Grief truly is a hard thing to understand until you go through it yourself. God has blessed me with the four greatest grandparents a kid can ask for and for me to have all four of them for 24 years and counting with the other three, I am very grateful. I am also very grateful for the amount of time I got with Pop after he was diagnosed with ALS when I was 8 years old. Every time we would take communion at church, I would pray over and over to God to slow the disease down and give me more time with Pop and keep his pain away. God answered that prayer and allowed Pop to live until even after I graduated from college and graduate school with my masters, when he wasn’t even supposed to live to see me graduate from elementary school. Not only am I thankful for this, I am also thankful that death is defeated for Pop and he is disease free up in heaven with God. He is smiling down and laughing his amazing, memorable laugh, while watching his family. I say all of this because as I have grieved I have just wished he was still here. I can still understand and be thankful for all of these things and be upset and mad that he was plagued with this disease that robbed him of his autonomy. That is the paradox of grief and something that has made me wiser in the past few months as it is the first time in my life I have truly grieved.

Golf Update

This month marks one year of my professional golf journey. If I was to use one word to describe this past year it would be “growth”. I know it’s cliche, but I have learned a tremendous amount this past year that I have touched on in previous newsletters. I look back on my golf game this time a year ago and can see how much better I have gotten with course management and swing changes that I have been grinding on. I realized in order to play at the highest level, my swing needed to become a much simpler move so that I could rely on it under pressure. I have put systems in place such as a grip trainer and stance measurements for full swing and putting stance. If you see me on the range or practice hole at Idle Hour, I am most likely using one of them to check my basics every day and build a solid foundation so that I can continue to get my swing more reliable. Next month is when things ramp up for qualifying school and I feel very prepared to go out, do my best and see how far I can get this year. I will touch more on this in an upcoming newsletter when golf is more the focus, but for this one I felt that a brief update was appropriate as there are more important things to discuss.

Newsletter Reflection

I have stated in previous newsletters that I have been working on other newsletters that I never published. I know how valuable everyone’s time is to them and I don’t take it lightly to have your attention reading these newsletters. Because of that, I am very picky about what I put out as I do not want to produce letters just to publish them. Instead I desire to publish quality materials. If you have any topics suggestions that you would like for me to touch on, please leave a comment or email me back. I would love to answer any questions! The continued support on these letters has been encouraging and I hope that they can point more people to Christ!

God Bless,
Jay