He wanted to be a golfer. He was trained to become a monk. He became a writer

Colman McCarthy, one of my golfing and writing heroes, died the other day. He was best known as a liberal op-ed columnist and editorial writer for Washington Post, where he had a run of nearly 30 years, beginning in the late 1960s. He was a true believer in the central value of Quaker doctrine, that war begets war. As a golfer, he was a true believer in the miss-’em-quick – and still broke countless times.

Before Colman became a journalist, writer and author, he had two long and almost unintentional studies. He spent nearly a decade, graduating from high school on Long Island in the 1950s and then college in west Alabama, planning to become a professional golfer. Then, after playing college golf at Spring Hill College, a Jesuit school in Mobile, he spent half a decade living in a rural monastery in Georgia, training to become a Trappist monk. That was his way of life in journalism, and a long series of classes he taught, at universities and high schools, under the rubric he called Peace Studies.

As he settled into his inner-Beltway life, with his wife and their three sons, Colman returned to golf. Her upbringing took place in a city – the nation’s capital – where a golf swing is a kind of passport, whether visiting the East Potomac public course or visiting the Burning Tree, an exclusive women’s golf club for presidents and ambassadors and other dignitaries. When the mood moved him, Colman wrote about the play, always with a timeless wit and a light touch.

King of Augusta, back in the day, wouldn’t have had much use for Colman McCarthy. On the eve of the 1977 Masters, in his widely syndicated column, Colman ridiculed the tournament for its small, hand-picked fields, as it excluded many established and hot golfers, to say nothing of Black boxers and stars from faraway lands. He proposed a player boycott of the Masters where (as he called it at the time) the “Championship Players Tournament” would rise to the top and the Masters would be rebranded as the “Clifford Roberts Invitational,” as a mock insult to the club’s chairman. Half a year later Roberts died (Colman had nothing to do with it!), and later the conditions of the tournament invitation became a very good way.

Colman McCarthy was born on the North Shore of Long Island in 1938. His father was a golf and baseball-loving immigration lawyer, a lawyer in the Atticus Finch tradition, except the elder McCarty was a New York Irish Catholic. Colman did not lack heroes. Tommy Bolt, as a child. (Colman played for her a few times.) Mother Teresa, many years later. He was attracted to people who thought about their ways in life. Chi Chi Rodriguez, for example, although their politics were on opposite sides of the fairway. Colman fell in love with Notah Begay, too.

In 1977, Colman wrote a small book called “The Pleasures of the Game,” which I found as a new edition at the local library in Patchogue, on the South Shore of Long Island. I was a senior in high school, and it was a game changer. Colman wrote about the joys of the nine-club bag, the benefits of travel, playing fast, obeying the rules, bringing your own food. He described his days as a caddy at a prestigious Long Island club, sometimes with such luminaries as the Duke of Windsor and Perry Como.

Then came a sort of downgrade, at the pro shop, where he sold socks by the pair and golf balls by the sleeve. Finally, his big break: “From there, I went into the dark—working as a night man with rotating fairway sprinklers. Between rounds, mostly between midnight and 3 a.m., I practiced putting moonlight, seeing Venus from my guidepost in the hills.”

Long Island summer nights in those days were (and still are) warm, humid and quiet. Those old-time fairway sprinklers, usually on the fairway, provided a rhythmic, delicious evening soundtrack, along with the occasional passing shower. The image of Colman stayed with me. The idea of ​​a golf course as a kind of monastery was born. At the beginning of “The Joys,” McCarthy got the broad joy of golf down to one sentence: “Golf exercises the body, stimulates the mind and lifts the spirit.”

I have a vague memory of writing to the author after reading “Pleasures,” and I’m pretty sure I met Colman at the 1985 Kemper Open at Congressional, where I was playing and he was walking around, wearing a bucket hat and carrying a reporter’s notebook. One night that week I sat in on his Peace Studies class at American University. (Over the years I have pointed out to students in class. One of Colman’s key points is that it is not enough to know about global violence — our responsibility is to do something about it.)

After class, Colman and I got a cafeteria dinner. (He was a vegetarian.) After dinner, I took the Metro back to my digs for the week, the couch of a journalist friend from college who lives in Foggy Bottom. I don’t remember how Colman got back to his house but he didn’t have a car and was committed to public transportation, and his three-speed Raleigh. He rode his bike everywhere.

On his journey, he talked to everyone. That was one of his things: talk to everybody, because you can learn from anybody. He lived as he preached. He counted Joan Baez and Sargent Shriver as friends, along with various golfers, Congressional staffers and bus drivers. We kept in touch (albeit infrequently) over the past 40 years. I am proud to say that Colman McCarthy has shaped my life immeasurably.

I can’t imagine life without heroes. I don’t know how you feel about this.

About a month ago, a young woman with a Southern accent in her voice was scanning my items at a local grocery store in Philadelphia, where I live. He said he is from Mobile, Ala., and attended school there, Spring Hill College, but left without getting his degree when he ran out of money. I gave the lady a squib about Colman McCarthy – although I’m not about getting his sub-70 score as a junior on the Spring Hill golf club – and his later life as a teacher. The lady said she was saving money by planning to go back to school to start her career as a teacher.

Colman’s wife, who was with Mav, was a nurse, Scotch-drinking, meat-eating, foodie – as a couple they were further proof that opposites can and do attract. (Both, it should be noted, are devout Catholics, though from high society Greenwich, Conn.) Mrs. McCarthy died in 2021. When the couple met and got engaged, Colman’s future father-in-law had a plan to end the relationship – take him out golfing at the family’s top club! In tennis shoes and borrowed sticks, Colman walked at 66. The wedding was going on.

Their two sons, John and Edward, became teachers and baseball coaches. A third son, Jim, became a public relations executive and consultant who helped lead Augusta National through the point-of-a-bayonet brouhaha as a single-sex club in the early 2000s. Colman and his three sons play golf foursomes whenever an event comes up, sometimes on Long Island or the Dominican Republic, where John McCarthy lives. Since Mav’s death, Colman lived with John and his family in the Dominican, and died there on Feb. 27 at the age of 87. He practiced at Casa de Campo greens until the end, still beaten by the game. All the while, he was eager to make the world a more just place for its 8 billion human citizens, including the 60 million golfers who roam our world’s many and varied fairways.