Four generations of golfers
September 28, 2007
Mike Kardash of Rehoboth Beach is a long-time sportsman, who’s been lucky enough to see his love of golf passed along to the next three generations.
The former Baltimore Oriole shortstop recently played an historic round of golf at Heritage Golf Course near Midway, involving all four lines of Kardashes.
“We all had a good time,” said the 88-year old patriarch, who is also a member of the Eastern Shore Baseball Hall of Fame.
Kardash has a long history with golf in the Cape Region, beginning at the old Rehoboth Beach Country Club near Silver Lake. “We bought our home in Rehoboth in 1955, and joined the country club. I won the club championship in 1960 and 1962. Then they moved the club out to where it is now. I won the club championship again in 1967 at the new site.”
His son Tom, 61, now lives in Wilmington, and was a two-time state wrestling champion at William Penn High School in New Castle. Kardash’s grandson Eric, 37, also lives in Wilmington, and works for J.P. Morgan.
The newest golfing Kardash is Pete, age 7.
“We played at Heritage Golf, and it worked out really well. It was the first time Pete had ever played on a golf course that had long holes. Since there wasn’t a big crowd there, we felt that Pete wouldn’t hold up anybody else. He really enjoyed it. It was fun to have all the sons together,” Kardash said.
A fractured hip eventually put an end to Kardash’s longstanding relationship with Rehoboth Beach Country Club, which at one point included a stint as the club president. Nonetheless, he made the most of his recent opportunity to enjoy a rare round of golf with his great-grandson and the Kardash boys in between.
Now on video, in all its awful glory
John Eustis, a golfing buddy, is recovering from surgery that has kept him from playing golf for several weeks. He’s had to find some other way to maintain his addiction to the sport, which the rest of us understood might happen.
What we didn’t know was that he discovered the potential use of the video feature of his cell phone to capture some amazing clips of bad golf swings in action.
For many years, for example, John and all of my other playing partners have expressed varying degrees of amazement or dismay at my overlong swing. They were amazed at how far past parallel I would take the club on the backswing, and dismayed when I would tell them that it just didn’t feel like I was going over as far as they said.
The new video clips from John’s cell phone were a revelation. Even with so many people telling me that my swing looked like John Daly’s, I just never fully realized how right they were.
This column is accompanied by five still photos I took from the video clip John recently sent me. They show a normal set-up in the first frame, and a fairly typical takeaway in the second shot.
The middle picture is the most startling.
My hands are high over my head–which is good–but the club is pointed nearly straight down–which is not.
As many others have told me, it’s a wonder I can actually hit the golf ball on the way back.
Shortening the swing should produce more consistent results, and it’s something I plan to work on during the off-season. Using video, even the little grainy variety available from cell phones, should help me achieve that goal.