“Mind if I join you?” the old man asked. 

Sally and I looked at each other. Her eyes said no.

“Well…” I said, pushing my golf cart quickly towards the next hole, “Maybe.”

He started hobbling after us. I slowed down. It didn’t seem right to tell him no. Sally rolled her eyes at me and I rolled mine back at her.

We’d come upon the old man on the 13th tee of the Canal Shores golf course in Evanston on a sunny, balmy August afternoon. Dressed in a golf shirt and shorts, he had a knee brace and was propping himself up with an eight iron and a three wood. He had no other clubs and no cart. 

“Hi,” Sally said. “What ‘cha doing?”

“Well, he said. “I’m just jumping on a few holes to play. Usually there’s no one on the course this time of day.” 

“Ah,” I said. “Today is busy. There’s a twosome right on our tail. And two in front of us.”

Sally and I were walking the course, and even though it sometimes took us a few more shots to get to the green than we would have liked, we were keeping up with the pace of play.

The old man didn’t seem to be too concerned about slowing us down. He dropped the three wood, stepped up to the tee with his eight iron, and neatly landed the ball in front of the green. Sally sprayed her ball short wide and I went left of the green.

“How old are you?” Sally asked.

“I’m 95,” he said, straightening a little. His eyes were kind.

“You it the ball pretty good for a 95-year old,” she said. “I hope I can still walk a course and hit it like that when I’m 95.” 

We found out his name was Mike and he lived in Skokie and came to Canal Shores often. “They call me Lefty Mike,” he said.

He also told us he and his wife had eight kids. “I got into trouble playing golf all the time,” he said. I wish I’d asked him what he did for a living. Probably a salesman or a business owner. He had the personality for that.

Instead, we chatted as golfers usually do – complimenting each other’s shots, tracking where balls landed, and sharing each other’s agony over shanking a drive or missing a putt. Lefty Mike used his two clubs as canes to help him walk the fairways, expertly using one to flip the other one off the ground into his hand after he’d hit a ball. He lost a few balls, but seemed to have a magical stash of them in his pants pocket.

“Hey, Lefty Mike, you’ve found yourself a couple of women!” the golf pro shouted from his cart as he passed us on 18.

“Yep,” Lefty Mike shouted back. “They’re pretty good golfers, too.”

I’m just a hacker, but grew up playing golf with my dad, who taught me the game. I had a feeling Lefty Mike had taught his kids, too.

“Here’s the tree my kids planted for my wife and I,” Lefty Mike said as we approached the 18th green. “She died five years ago.”

I looked at the medium sized maple and moved closer to read the plaque, which had a simple loving tribute to Lefty Mike and his wife Madge. I’d never noticed it before. “Very nice,” I said.

“Are you quitting or gonna play some more?” Sally asked Lefty Mike after we finished our round.

“One of my sons is meeting me here and we’re going to play a few more holes,” he replied.

Sally and I bid him goodbye and headed to the clubhouse for a drink. As we sat on the patio, we saw Lefty Mike and his son go past us on the first hole and then play the second hole. Then we saw them do the same thing again.

Fearing the worst, Sally and I had reluctantly allowed Lefty Mike to share in our afternoon of golf. But what really happened is that he let us share in his afternoon of golf.  And it reminded me of two things: that age is a number and if you open yourself up to people, usually good things happen.