Do you remember your first birdie?

This post follows up on last fall’s “Do you remember your first par?”

Do you remember your first birdie? I don’t but I’ll always remember my son’s. Carter, 7, will likely remember it, too.

For several years, I’ve been taking him to a local metropark (muni) par 3 course where every hole is under 100 yards. That course is perfect yardage-wise to start out young golfers, but its design is flawed. In between the tees and greens is thick rough, no fairways. There is no roll on any shot, a fact that makes the game tougher for the young-ins.

I finally delivered on my promise to take him to a “real course.” I took him to Pine View Golf Club to tackle its “little pines,” a nine-holer with a mix of long par 3s and short par 4s that adds up to 1,818 yards with a par of 30.

On his first tee shot from the junior tees, roughly 80 yards long, he blasted a low line drive that rolled down the fairway and nestled 7 feet from the cup. He rammed the putt home to start his “real” golf career under par and one shot better than dad. Pretty cool.

He didn’t make par the rest of the day, but he still hit plenty of solid shots for just his second round of the year (I’ve been slacking getting him out, I admit). At the end of the day, he said he wanted to try the “daddy” course. I had to convince him to save Pine View’s 6,500-yard course for another time … like another five years from now.