Change of Course

Today, a schoolteacher begins a 365-day, 50-state golfing journey. But it's not about the golf.

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At 9:30 this morning in the southwest corner of Brooklyn, a chip shot from the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, a 59-year-old social studies teacher stepped to the first tee of Dyker Beach Golf Course. It’s a 426-yard, par-4 hole with a slight dogleg to the right. The teacher was exactly where he wanted to be. Not only because it was the Fourth of July and his country’s 250th birthday, but because it was the start of a self-styled journey that will include 365 consecutive days of golf in all 50 states - “one golf course, one community, one conversation at a time.”

The official name of the journey is Now Driving: The U.S.A. It will be a journey powered by two of the teacher’s enduring passions: golfing and learning.

“I’ve had a golf problem virtually my entire life,” the teacher, Albert deGrasse, said with a laugh.

DeGrasse has had a fascinating career trajectory. A graduate of Boston College, he taught British literature in Kingston, Jamaica, and English at several boarding schools in New York and New England. After the horrific trauma of 9/11 — he lost a close friend who he’d played golf with on Sept. 10 — deGrasse left the city and worked for eight seasons tending to the greens and fairways at Ould Newbury Golf Club in Massachusetts. Along the way, he met a guy who hires stuntmen for TV shows and movies on — where else? — the golf course. DeGrasse wound up getting knocked down and roughed up in such programs as HBO’s “Oz”, in addition to smashing cars in “America’s Most Wanted” episodes and getting attacked by dogs in Bon Jovi’s “Misunderstood” music video.

He returned to teaching, this time at The School at Columbia University, switching from English to social studies. A couple of years ago, deGrasse was reading in Golf Digest about various golfing records — most rounds played in a week or month, most consecutive days of playing, etc. — that had been set over the years. DeGrasse didn’t have a particular hankering to get his name in the record books, but thought it would be a good time for a sabbatical and got thinking that maybe he could use golf as a vehicle to connect with people and to enrich his understanding and awareness of U.S. history; to go to many new places and get many new perspectives, finding out what his countrymen and countrywomen are thinking and feeling in these deeply polarized times.

What better time to undertake such a quest than amid the revelry over the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence?

“This isn’t just a golfing tour; it’s a listening tour,” deGrasse said. “My story is to hear other people’s stories. It’s going to be complicated, but then, ours is a complicated country.”

The more deGrasse pondered the idea of a year-long, all-American golf-and-learning excursion, the more he liked it. His wife, Rev. Dr. Stephanie Spellers, who is Canon in Residence at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in Manhattan, was less enthralled. DeGrasse vividly recalls Spellers’ initial reaction:

“What kind of fool idea is this?”

“I knew he loved playing golf, but this seemed like a whole other level of magnitude,” Spellers said. She encouraged him to think it through and see how he felt. A few months passed. DeGrasse’s enthusiasm was undiminished. Spellers, runaway favorite for Spouse of the Year, came around completely, to the point that deGrasse calls her “the general manager of the whole operation.”

“I came to see how lit up he was about this,” Spellers said. “When you love somebody, you want to do whatever it takes to nurture that ‘lit’ feeling and help make their dreams come true.”

The first order of business was to locate a camper van to call home for the next year. DeGrasse found a 2018 Ram Promaster, and repurposed it with an upbuild into a model called “Roadtrek Zion SRT.” Just under 20 feet long, it has a shower that will double as a locker for deGrasse’s clubs, and a bench that converts to a comfortable bed, and will be the office where deGrasse will post his daily Instagram posts and his weekly YouTube recaps. If you are thinking this setup would run someone a lot of loot, you would be right; deGrasse had to pull $75,000 out of his retirement account to fund it.

“Some dreams can’t be deferred,” deGrasse said.

DeGrasse has installed a dash camera to take in the vistas as he traverses the country. It is not far from one of his customized Now Driving: The U.S.A. golf balls that will be a dashboard fixture. It bears an inscription from one of his 7th-grade students. Her name is Maria.

She wrote, “I’m always in a room full of people I can learn from.”

DeGrasse plays to an 11 handicap, but this trip is not fundamentally about making pars or an occasional birdie.

“Rather than being the best golfer I can be, I want to be the best company I can be,” deGrasse said.

DeGrasse is a person who has no problem showing his emotions. He cried when Jim Abbott threw a no-hitter for the Yankees in September 1993. The Jets break his heart annually. He cried again when the Knicks won the NBA title last month. He is unguarded, sensitive, and a strikingly good listener. It is a skill he aims to put to good use on his trip. Listening to people, after all, is the whole point, whether it’s in a coffee shop in Tulsa or as practice green in Laramie, Wyo. DeGrasse was born and raised in Brooklyn, and now lives in Harlem.

“There’s a whole lot of America he’s never had a chance to listen to,” Spellers said.

DeGrasse wants to visit as many historical sites as he can, like Valley Forge in Pennsylvania, and Yorktown, Virginia, where his great-great-great-great-great grandfather, French Admiral Comte de Grasse, played a pivotal role in vanquishing the British navy in the final battle of the American Revolution in 1781.

After he finishes his round in Dyker Beach today, he’ll head upstate, to Dutchess County, swing into Massachusetts, and then go to Cooperstown. From there, his plan is to go to Pennsylvania and then head through the Midwest. He is scheduled to meet up with his wife in Minneapolis at the end of the month, before she takes on a new position as the lead priest at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco on Aug. 1. By July 4, 2027, deGrasse will have yet another new experience, living in the Bay Area.

In the meantime, he will be hitting tee shots and chips and putts near and far, savoring the golf and the other part even more.

“Someone’s got something to offer that will make me a better learner, a better teacher,” deGrasse said.