On this week’s episode of the Stick & Hack Show, renowned author Luke Reese joins Mike and Adam to discuss his new book One for the Memory Banks, as well as his love of Scottish golf.
The following excerpt has been edited for space. Listen to the rest of the episode here.
Stick & Hack: You are world renowned when it comes to your, uh, your legendary writing and your stories. We are proud and honored to have you here on the program. You’re the author of the book One for the Memory Banks. Tell us a little bit about your career to date and where you started and where you are today for the listeners.
Luke Reese: I have had the luck of being born in a small town in Ohio with a father who said, “if you want to get out of here, you gotta learn languages.” That’s essentially what happened. And so I learned how to speak German. And then when I joined the military, I was sent overseas and then I was taught by the military how to speak French. So that sort of started an international career for me. I’m one of the luckiest guys on the planet because I get to do what I like to do all the time.
Stick & Hack: Let’s go back for a half second. When you say that you learned languages, you learned the language of golf at 34 years old, which you don’t hear much, especially for those that are in a golf career for 20 years or so. Uh, to hit golf at such a critical part of your life, you know, kids and families, that’s gotta be something that you look back on and go, man, how did I not start 20 years before then?
Luke Reese: Well it’s actually a double-edged sword. Essentially, I’m a Scottish golfer. I learned to play and I was trained by Scots. I was lucky enough to be taught to play essentially by an older Scottish guy named Alan Bond, who’s nicknamed Bondi. And he was some combination of like Winston Churchill, Arni Palmer and Sean Connery. I mean, this guy was, he was it, he was funny. He tormented me and that allowed me to become essentially that. Scottish golfer that I am, uh, which makes me a terrible choice. Mike, if you’re ever looking for a guy at a four and a half hour round playing stroke play, I’m great for about three holes. And then after that, my attention span, I don’t have enough things to think about.
Stick & Hack: Scotland golf is not the kind of golf we’re used to here in the U S, why is it so different and so special in your opinion?
Luke Reese: What I love about Scottish golf has probably three or four aspects. Number one, it’s it’s person against nature. You’re out in nature, and you’re going to deal with the wind, you get to see the wind, you get to see the balls bounce in a weird way. You have to accept life as it comes to you.
To me, that’s number one. You’re sort of taking it as it comes. Uh, number two, it’s a very natural walk. It’s a natural landform. It’s not like they went out and said, let’s go move a bunch of earth and make some, some artificial piece. It just looks like it was there. Um, number three, they play fast. Number four, they play match play. And so, you know, if you’re a guy with the attention span of a gnat, like I have, um, it’s, it’s actually wonderful to like, if you screw something up is one 18th, you know, you’re like, okay, dude, that’s 6% of the round. God. Okay. I don’t really care. Um, it’s not like I just made a triple.
Now I’m going to shoot a 77 and I’m out of the tournament. Um, so that’s what I love about match play so much.
Stick & Hack: Tell us about One for the Memory Banks and why is it a different kind of golf book?
Luke Reese: One for the Memory Banks was a book that, um, I guess I’ll go to the ending first. I was taught to play by this guy who passed away just in August of ‘19. I had over the years gathered a whole bunch of stories and I, and I’m the kind of guy who sits in the bar and just writes notes and laughs and I tend to sort of make little wise answers back to people, but I don’t want to be the guy who’s telling all the stories.
So in a nutshell, I sat down, I just wrote all sorts of things out. Um, and these stories are a collection of essentially British match play stories of how he taught me.
Listen to the rest of the episode here to learn more about British golf and match play, as well as Luke’s impressive career.
