True in Golf - True in Life

I wonder how many people ever saw a rabbit running loose on a golf course? Wade Lane saw many of them and at the end of the day he usually had a few in his pocket.

For you folks not in the know, a rabbit was worth a one dollar bill at the Reynolds Golf Course. You let him go on the first tee. You caught him when you won a hole outright. That means you had to beat everybody else in your foursome on that hole. If someone else won the next hole the rabbit would be loose again. If you won two holes in a row you would have a rabbit and a leg. Now it became a little more difficult for your opponents to set him loose again.

Every now and then an opponent would set another rabbit loose… and maybe even another. There would be rabbits running all over the place.

And you needed an accountant to keep up with all the rabbits and legs and dollar bills.

But Wade was hard to beat. And most of the time he beat you with his putter. Nobody putted like Wade Lane.

His usual comment: “It’s not how you drive, but how you arrive.”

I had some amusing moments on several occasions on the last tee when my dad and Wade would be arguing over who had which rabbits. At that point in their life, neither of them could hear very well. So in other words, daddy might have let another rabbit loose and Wade didn’t exactly hear him when he let him loose… or vice versa.

A stranger could have heard those two and thought they were enemies. The truth is they would leave the golf course, go pick up their wives and all go to dinner together.

I remember one afternoon there were at least five of us playing together. We were about to play our third round and everybody hit the ball off the first tee. Everybody went to their ball to get ready for their second shot but Wade could not find his ball. He always hit the ball straight down the middle so everybody was puzzled that his ball could not be found. After a five minute group effort to find Wade’s ball, he came up with a rather interesting comment.



“You know what? I don’t believe I ever teed off!”

And he hadn’t. He went back to the tee to hit his ball.

You can surmise that there was more conversation going on than golfing.

Wade and I were partners more than a few times in local golf tournaments. He was the best partner you could have in a scramble format golf tournament because of his putting. If the ball was anywhere close to the hole, he would drain it.

Wade was also the king of Irritable Bowel Syndrome. You can take that from someone who knows more than a little about that subject. He always carried a roll of toilet paper in his golf bag. We were playing together in a tournament one weekend and were about to hit our approach shot on the first hole. The other pair in our foursome was from out of town and complete strangers to us. We met them on the first tee.

All of a sudden Wade jumped out of the golf cart and dug in his golf bag for his Charmin and headed for the woods. The startled strangers asked me if he was okay. We watched Wade hurriedly walking in the woods. He walked so far in the woods that he got to a clearing. He backed up and his fanny was in full view of all three of us. After he finished he walked back through the woods and out the same path he entered.

He had no idea the show he put on for the three of us waiting in the golf carts in the fairway.

I told him what had happened on the next hole. He got a good laugh out of it. Then he lined up a 20 foot putt and nailed it.

I vividly remember the day Wade died in 1992. I went over to the Lane house in the hearse. Daddy was at the house when I got there. As I was rolling the stretcher out of the house I happened to look up at my dad. There was a huge tear rolling down his cheek.

I was reminded that day that all the hours they spent together on the golf course had nothing to do with rabbits and rabbit legs and dollar bills.

But it was about fun and fellowship and friendship.

By the way, I appropriately placed Wade’s putter in the casket with him before he was laid to rest at Hillcrest Cemetery in Reynolds.

I can tell you that putter was not placed there as a symbol of how well he finished a hole on a golf course.

But it was placed there as a symbol of how well he finished his life.

It’s not how you drive – but it’s how you arrive.

True in golf and true in life.