I took my 92-year-old father on a golf trip. Next stop: Boca Raton!

What do you do when your soon-to-be 93-year-old father, Stan, tells you he wants to take a golf vacation to Boca Raton, Fla.? You negotiate, because he requests a month-long stay, which he used to do in retirement with your mother, who passed away five years ago, while you are (a) married yourself and (b) not retired. I countered with a week, but Stan said he couldn’t possibly do less than 10 days. We settled on nine.

“Who knows how many chances we have left?” my father said.

Unfair guilt, but fair point.

I will spare you the logistical details other than a few predictable highlights: the departure and arrival gates were as far from security as possible; Stan forgot his passport at security; and the rental car shuttle vanished for longer than Anthony Kim. We expected we’d produce a season’s worth of “Seinfeld” material during our visit, and we delivered. In the end, though, none of that mattered.

The Rothman family had history at PGA National Resort in Palm Beach Gardens, about a half-hour north of our Boca base. In 2009, Mom and Dad met the reigning heavyweight boxing champion, Ukraine’s Wladimir Klitschko, when he was training at the facility for an upcoming title fight while developing a passion for golf, too. I took Dad’s suggestion to reach out to Klitschko’s manager and ended up writing a piece about the champion taking on the resort’s Champion course. It’s the site of the PGA Tour’s Cognizant Classic each year and is famous for “the Bear Trap,” a treacherous, water hazard-laden stretch from holes 15-17. A photo of me holding a recording device above my head, up to the 6-foot-7-inch man-mountain — the most charming and intelligent athlete I’ve ever interviewed, by the way — remains a cherished memento.

Memory lane aside, neither Dad nor I had swung a club since October thanks to the long, miserable New York winter that motivated the trip and, lest you’ve forgotten, Dad is nearing 93. So, the Champion — a former Ryder Cup and PGA Championship host, too, and a fine test of ball-striking — was a non-starter. Instead, we began on The Match course.

The Match itself is a reminder of how much things had changed at PGA National over the years. Designed by Andy Staples, the course opened in 2021 on the footprint of the old Sarazen layout here (ditto the Staple short course; more on that later). Its name derives from its conceit: Match-play strategy is the design’s guiding principle, meant to create decision points on almost every hole. There’s a healthy supply of drivable par-4s, split fairways and creative green complexes including a “thumbprint” on No. 2, Redan on No. 11 and 60-yard Biarritz to conclude matters, as well as a flexible routing that allows for multiple competitive formats like head-to-head matches and team competitions. You’re constantly calculating risk and reward, or would be if you weren’t mainly concerned with getting the clubface on the ball and not pulling any dormant golf muscles.

Dad and I were paired with a lovely pair of snowbirds from Wisconsin who had a home within the resort. We all played from forward tees (the better to keep Stan company and not tempt him to move back, as is his wont), and the conversation flowed. The husband knew a former work colleague of mine; the wife reminded me of my late mother, quietly regal and consistently advancing the ball despite appearing none-too-athletic. I kept this latter fact to myself.

Highlights from the front nine were watching a prehistoric-looking sandhill crane amble across a fairway and Dad’s 50-yard bunker shot onto the green during a three-hole stretch of bogeys, which is impressive for a nonagenarian. Stan, a high-single-digit handicapper in his prime, can still swing the club.

The couple dropped out after nine holes. We played the 10th alone while a lone figure waited on the 11th tee. Sherif, a sturdy fellow in his mid-80s — though, like Stan, he looked much younger — asked if he could join us, because his group had likewise departed following the front side. Of course he could. We soon established that Sherif’s psychiatry practice had been in our native Great Neck, N.Y., and we name-checked the local diner, chocolatier and so on. Even more surprising: Sherif remained a member at a private club on Long Island where my friend Justin, who Dad and I would be meeting up with later during the trip, had been a longtime member. Did Sherif know him? Of course he did. “Wonderful golfer,” Sherif said, which is true. Two small-world encounters with different people in one round felt as comforting as it was coincidental.

Stan has been playing golf since he got out of the Army about 70 years ago. In all that time, I’ve rarely known him to discuss swing plane, alignment and the like. His approach to golf is granular, constantly evolving and consistently quirky, to say the least. It’s all about relaxing the ankles, or tensing the glutes, or focusing on the left index finger or the right pinky, depending on the day. As the afternoon progressed, Dad began to tire, and his declining play made him even more susceptible to experimentation — so Sherif’s Furyk-esque lift-the-club-straight-club-then-turn backswing became irresistible following failures with a lobster-claw right-hand grip and replacing his golf glove with a handkerchief. Alas, what’s good for Sherif wasn’t good for Stan, who ended the round somewhat downcast.

That night, Stan called Arthur, who lives in nearby Delray Beach, to finalize plans to meet later in the week. Arthur and Dad went to elementary school together and sang in a professional choir as preteen altos, performing gigs up and down the East Coast. They hadn’t seen each other or spoken in more than 50 years, since a long-ago high-school reunion; Arthur had reached out on a whim a few months back to catch up — lo and behold, we were soon to be in the area and would stop by. Now Dad was telling Arthur that he feared his golfing days were over if things didn’t get better, fast. My counsel to be patient with his game after such a long layoff may have met with deaf ears — what Stan hears or only pretends to hear (or not hear) can be hard to discern.

The next afternoon, however, we were back at it on PGA National’s Palmer course, and naturally Arnie helped bring back the enthusiasm. It’s a fun, playable layout with generous landing areas, interesting approach shots to often-angled greens, and enough eye candy to keep one engaged even when one’s game goes off the boil for a spell. Both Dad’s game and mine began to show signs of life during the loop — trending, in the current vernacular.

While we’re on the subject of enthusiasm and momentum, a quick shoutout to PGA National Resort. My long-ago memory of the place had been that of a golf factory — efficient but little more. Today, there’s music playing in the staging area, the staffers uniformly friendly and energetic. No doubt preparations for the Cognizant added vibrancy, but you can feel things are happening under the new ownership, a private-equity real estate firm.

Dad’s 93rd birthday would happen a few days following our return north, but when you have access to a world-class restaurant on-site, well, you access it. The Butcher’s Club is a swank steakhouse with a cool Rat Pack-era vibe from celebrity chef and Florida native Jeremy Ford, winner of “Top Chef” season 13 and owner of a Michelin star for his restaurant in Miami. (The Butcher’s Club is Michelin-recommended.) Stan and I toasted his upcoming big day with, appropriately, old-fashioneds  — one traditional, one enhanced with cedar smoke, both delicious. Dad’s vision of heaven involves steak au poivre and, like my wagyu burger, if there’s a better version in existence it might be in heaven. The warm staff made Dad feel like a celebrity throughout the evening, even writing “Happy 93rd birthday!” in chocolate sauce in his beloved dish of ice cream for dessert. “That was just a wonderful birthday dinner, thank you,” Dad said, before falling into a blissful sleep on the ride home.

There are things to do in the area that don’t involve golf and, given our extended stay, we had the time and inclination to do them. For starters, the Flagler Museum in Palm Beach, a Gilded Age Beaux-Arts mansion built by Henry Flagler, the (Standard Oil) man most responsible for creating modern Florida — “spectacular” barely scratches the surface. The Boca Raton Museum of Art and adjacent downtown shopping piazza. Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in Delray Beach. The Gumbo Limbo Nature Center back in Boca.

All are fabulous ways to spend a few hours, although I think Dad might have most enjoyed a new activity, long favored by my sister and my son: thrifting. “Why don’t they have places like this where we are?” he exclaimed while rifling through the upscale golf clothes at one shop. (Because we don’t have as many rich people near us, updating their wardrobes as consistently.) This child of the Great Depression took great pleasure in getting two pair of shorts, a golf shirt and a pair of shoes for $20.

The biggest non-golf highlight, of course, was to come. Arthur wasn’t the only childhood friend in the area; two other friends from Middle Village, Queens, Paul and Norman, also live nearby. Mid-afternoon, the foursome (and two wives) assembled at Arthur’s house for an afternoon of reminiscing and babka. Most incredible, besides how sharp everyone was: Arthur had a recording of the choir, which had made a record back in 1944. The room listened in awed silence for a solid 15 minutes to preteen Arthur and Stan, who were marvelous. A truly mesmeric moment.  

But, as Dad had said to me 20 years ago as he awakened from triple-bypass surgery, “I still have more golf to play.” We were back at PGA National to try out The Staple, the aforementioned par-3 course. It’s not yet The Cradle at Pinehurst, i.e., a perfectly wrought short-course experience. The Staple’s first and last holes were being used as practice areas for a junior tournament, and there’s no snack stand or the like — it’s a work in progress. (Word on the street is that the new owners are planning to supercharge things ASAP.) But the conditioning is on-point and the holes are varied and fun, with interesting green contours and bunker placement to make it a worthwhile place for fun matches and wedge practice. Dad and I zipped around three times in about two hours, once I’d convinced him after the first loop that, no, we can’t sneak out onto any of the adjacent full-size courses. The man is incorrigible.

We were both feeling good about our games after three rounds at PGA National, and the day before our departure my old friend Justin had us out to his place, Via Mizner Golf & City Club. Few pleasures in life compare to having a private 18, especially a swank one, more or less to yourselves. Dad hadn’t seen Justin in about a quarter-century, back on Long Island, when Stan hosted us at his club, but he remembered that “Justin hits it a mile.” Which he did and still does, on top of being a +1 handicap in his mid-50s.

It was, however, an awestruck Justin who pulled out his rangefinder to measure the distance Dad crushed his drive on the 4th hole — 183 yards, or about 2 yards per year. In fact, Dad striped it the first 12 holes, getting 3-wood and hybrids well airborne off the turf, middle-ing one shot after another. He busted out his signature exclamation — “Sign him up for the Tour!” — after several strikes, and his signature expletive — “S#$*!” — after a few missed short putts. Dad’s enthusiasm and good play were infectious. That, and a swing tip from Justin about keeping my back to the target longer, had me compressing the ball and hitting greens more greens than Scottie Scheffler.

The temperature eventually rose to 85, and Dad grew fatigued on the last few holes. We doffed hats, shook hands and had the bagman snap a few group photos before Justin had to depart to pick up one of his kids. I sent him a pic and a thank-you text when Dad and I were back at the hotel. “Enjoy Stan — he’s a gem!” Justin wrote back. He’d lost his own mother and father within a two-week span a year ago. Gather those birdies.