Four Itchy Feet

October 26, 2025. Alexandria, Virginia.

It was another perfect fall day in Northern Virginia. While my daughter was running the 50th Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C., Junior and I decided to hit the links. She crushed it, finishing her first-ever marathon with a very respectable time of 5 hours and 35 minutes. Meanwhile, Junior and I were focused on a different kind of endurance test: trying to finish eighteen holes before sunset.

Junior had stripped me of the family golf title a couple of weeks ago, and I was definitely looking for an opportunity to take it back. Greendale Golf Course—an 18-hole public course located in Alexandria and managed by the Fairfax County Park Authority—is always busy, so you can expect to be paired up with others every time. We were lucky to join Carter and Derek, a couple of young men who played right at our level and were great fun to play with (and acted as perfect witnesses to the carnage).

I played consistently poorly but somehow managed to break a hundred. Junior, on the other hand, was an absolute roller coaster—he was either brilliant or horrible. Every single hole, he’d score either a par or a triple bogey, with almost nothing in between. I joked that he was the Mr. Jekyll and Dr. Hyde of golf, adding, “I guess you just like keeping the scorecard honest!”

With the winter quickly approaching and golfing opportunities becoming more scarce in Northern Virginia, we cherish every chance to play now. I am so blessed to have a son who loves the game and still wants to play with the old man!