I have crossed paths with some interesting men and women in my life. But this guy – Craig T. surprised me like a guru – came through and spoke much truth in a short time. Think he was a brother from another mother. – Jack D.
“Golf…it’s not life or death,” offers Craig T. Nelson, star of the popular television series, COACH. “It’s more magical than that.”
Craig T. is not talking about prestidigitation here. He’s not talking sleight of hand, or about pulling rabbits out of a hat. He’s sharing the philosophy which guides him on stage and at home, as well as on the golf course.
Nelson, the featured celebrity at the Sentry Markets/Al C. Giusti Memorial Invitational Golf Tournament scheduled for April 26-30 [1993] at Portland’s Columbia-Edgewater Country Club, is a philosopher. Understand that, you understand the man.
At the Long Beach Grand Prix, just days before his 47th birthday, Nelson climbed out of a specially modified turbo-charged Toyota. He was clearly focused on his first automobile race since he used to hot rod his ’52 Chevy around Spokane where he grew up. What’s a golfer doing in a race car?
Simple. “I was asked,” Nelson smiles, and it’s a big smile, like a little kid’s. “It’s for a worthy cause. Just like the golf tournament.”
“Racing is exhilarating. It’s a thrill,” Nelson explains. “You put yourself up against the course, against your limits. You test your intestinal fortitude.” He pauses. “You’re able to think of nothing else. Or else you’re gone. Into the wall.”
Is he any good at it? “I’m very good at it,” Nelson says matter of factly. “I am fast. And I’m very aggressive and I’m highly competitive.” Of course, this was all said before the actual contest.
“Hopefully,” Craig T. speaks here in the third person, like a skeptical fan watching a Hollywood star in his first race, “hopefully, the sonuvagun can control the car. And himself.” He continues. “It’s frightening, it’s a love-hate relationship. It’s been a really interesting journey. Racing is like a hit TV show or golf. In the process, you find out what you’re made of.”
Golf? Did somebody say, golf? That, too, has been another journey for Craig T. It’s been a true character builder. “One of the game’s major lessons – and it was a terrible lesson for me – came years ago when I was playing with a neighbor, Mr. Ehmer, and his son,” Nelson recalls. “I remember we were playing at Indian Canyon on the 11th hole, and Mr. Ehmer said, ‘My son and I aren’t going to play with you anymore.’ I asked why. And he said,’ Because you cheat. You didn’t have a five on that hole back there, you had a seven. That’s not the way the game is played.’
Caught cheating, the rest of the round was understandably somewhat embarrassing for the young Craig Theodore Nelson. “I never forgot it,” he almost sighs when he says that. “I learned then that there are no short cuts, especially with golf. The spirit of the game is all about measuring one’s integrity. A person’s honesty is paramount.
“When that leaves the game, golf is destroyed.”
Asked if that was his most humiliating experience as a golfer, Craig T.’s response tells you something about the man as well as the game: “So far.”
His most humorous moment? Funny you should ask. “It was at Pebble Beach. At the Pro-Am banquet the night before, I had told the story about Mr. Ember, about my most embarrassing experience…,” Nelson can’t quite believe this himself. “So, I’m on the first tee the next day, and I really take a cut, and my first drive goes about 30 feet. A woman in the gallery took one look at that shot, and she screamed. SHE SCREAMED. All the molecules in my body fell apart,” Craig T. recalls the laughter as it cascaded across the gallery. “Every fiber of my being said, Get Off Of The Course….The woman actually screamed.”
Stop me before I golf again.
Craig T. Nelson got his start in show business as a box boy for the local IGA in Spokane. On the side, he appeared as Mr. Peanut in the grocery’s TV ads. “I was the only one who could fit into the plastic costume,” he explains. The rest, as my Grandpa Charlie used to say, is history.
He flunked out of his first college, where he studied criminology. (He was hoping to join the CIA.) He flunked out of the second, where he didn’t study English Lit., at least not enough. At a third school, Nelson successfully auditioned for a drama scholarship. “It was the only thing left,” he says.
Lured to Los Angeles by the promise of a movie role from a Hollywood producer who turned out to be a short-order cook, Craig T. took a job as a security guard at a soap factory. He studied acting. He wrote for both Tim Conway and Alan King. He became half of a comedy team. He felt adrift.
He quit.
“In 1973, I moved to Mount Shasta. No electricity, no running water, no tools, and three kids. I had a horse to drag the logs I used to build a cabin. The only tools I had were the desire and the instinct to keep pushing on,” Craig T. recounts. “It was so hard. And it was so hard every day that all I could do was accept it. Nature doesn’t take any hostages. It’s not fair, or kind, or cruel. It just is.”
Nelson’s mother of all camping trips changed his life, and the way he chose to live it. “I learned how to survive,” he says with confidence. “Everything can be taken away from us, my family, and I know I can manage. I know I can live on basically nothing, because I have.”
“Those years at the mountain provided inner strength,” Craig T. explains. “And the knowledge that certain things in this world – really important things to me – like integrity, ethics, honesty, they’re going to demand my attention.”
“I just resolve to let no person, place or thing become the object of my attention,” he says. “They’re gonna do what they’re gonna do. I can’t change them. The only person I can change is me. And you can’t expect any rewards, either. To be good is to be good for nothing…you just do it for you.”
“You can’t play golf with any other philosophy,” Nelson assures us. “Golf can’t be looked at except as something greater than it appears.” Well, that explains everything, doesn’t it?
Nelson sees life as a journey. He sees a round of golf in much the same way. It’s not quite as simple as it looks. It’s a journey fraught with great opportunities and hazards, choices and decisions, twists and turns. Frustration and elation. Especially twelve-foot putts.
“The game doesn’t necessarily reward talent or technical merit,” Craig T. advises. “Like life, all I can do is put the effort in. The rest will take care of itself.”
It is just that simple. In front of the camera or backstage, according to Craig T. Nelson, you play golf one stroke at a time.
It’s perfectly safe to watch Craig T. Nelson play golf.
Honest. It may just prove to be a scream.
Craig T. Nelson, by the way, is an even money bet to break 80.