4:51 AM

“How many times have you seen the sunrise?”

Mr. Locke asked me, a cigarette resting on the side of his lips. His deadpan, raspy delivery was something I’d come to look forward to during these summer mornings.

He’d just hit his first shot of the day. There was no time for banging balls on the range — when he showed up, it was go-time. I replaced his driver headcover and we were off — pacing forward, chasing a perfect drive 267 yards into the morning fog.

He rarely looked in my direction while we walked, even more infrequently asked my opinion on club selection. To a first time observer, you’d think he was miserable. But to me, he was a man who knew exactly what he wanted; who knew precisely what he was seeking. I admired his cool style — calm, never seemed to get worked up on the course.

He was a dew-sweeper, more than a golfer. He lived for early mornings, where silence hangs in the air, only to be broken by unpredictable streams of birdsong. He didn’t keep score, only time. This was his morning constitutional; I was merely an extra on his stage.

I’d never even considered the question before. I was 19 years old, in between my freshman and sophomore years of college, freshly returned from a distant school. “Who keeps track of sunrises?”, I thought.

“I’m not sure, maybe a hundred?”, I said, shrugging my shoulders, shuffling my feet down the first fairway. Mr. Locke sort of nodded; still didn’t look my way. This was normal. Often times I thought he just wanted to fill the time in between shots with meaningless, casual conversation to keep things moving. The summer before, Locke and I exchanged emails. He was a meteorology enthusiast, as was I, and we shared interesting articles about hurricanes and tornadoes. Other than that, we didn’t have much in common, except golf.

I turned to look towards the tee box, but only a trail of footprints pressed into the morning dew stared back. We were very much alone in that moment, in our own world, accompanied only by the heavy air rising from the ground, swirling, unpatterned, as if revealing the landscape specifically for the two of us.

We barely stopped when we reached his ball. No need for me to provide a distance, he knew which club he wanted. Without so much as a moment to align himself with the pin, he gently covered the 90 yards with a repeatable swing that he’d seemingly perfected over thousands of similar walks. Driver, walk, wedge, walk, putter, repeat.

I handed him the flat stick as he hurried past me. I’d tend to the divots, he’d take care of the golf. It was mid-July and humid. While the rest of metro-Baltimore snoozed alarms and poured coffee, one man at this particular corner of the world was putting in the low-lit silence of another Wednesday morning. The clock read 6:24 AM and Mr. Locke was walking away from his first hole of the day with a routine two-putt par.

I’d carried his bag many times, and we got along fine, but yet I didn’t really know this man. Apart from weather and golf, we didn’t have much to talk about.

I knew he lived close to the golf course. I did not. I knew he owned a construction company. I’d never built anything. I knew he preferred Camel cigarettes. I’d never held a cigarette in my life.

I reminded myself of the caddie mantra: seen but not heard. Put your head down and do your job. I held onto the urge to talk about yesterday’s thunderstorm and instead replaced the flagstick.

“7 minutes. We gotta pick it way up.”

I was greeted on the second tee box by his voice trailing off. Locke had already smoked another drive into the abyss and was walking down the courtesy cut. I never considered myself a slow caddie, or an unprepared one, but here I felt like I was already letting down one of my regular loops. For Locke, pace was the name of the game. Walk 18 holes, in and out, before 9:00 AM. Best to not hold him up.

It’s easy for the mind to wander between the tee box and the fairway. In between a thousand footsteps lives the unrelenting forces of distraction. On this morning, the ground moved beneath me like a treadmill, bringing with it random thoughts of things said and left unsaid, choices made and abstained. I was on autopilot. I thought back to waking up that morning.

My iPhone alarm snoozes for exactly 9 minutes. Two minutes longer than what it took Locke to par the first hole. At 4:51 AM, I’m met with the shaking realization that I have 9 minutes to get in the shower. 20 minutes to get on the road. 60 minutes to get to the golf course. How can you fall back asleep with those kinds of numbers running through your mind?

At 4:51 AM, 9 minutes, to me, feels like the world. At 6:24 AM, they are fleeting moments standing in the way of one man and the rest of his day.

Double-time now. Don’t let him wait for you.

I caught up with him in the fairway, clubs rattling around in the bag. The day’s new sun raged, burning a fierce orange fire into the lingering clouds. The angle of the morning light hit us perfectly head-on, giving us little chance of seeing clearly to the green. Locke talked directly to the beaming rays, “doesn’t matter, I know how far it’s gonna go. I’ll walk left, you walk right.”

With that, he carefully placed his Camel onto the turf, pulled a 6-iron and dug the earth beneath his ball. It wouldn’t have mattered if he hit the green, a bunker, a tree — his expression would remain unchanged by the actions of a little white ball.

Most golfers allow their moods to become defined by their performance on the golf course. I, being among the most influenced by the game. Few players can leave the rest of their day in the parking lot, only to pick it up once the round concludes. Locke seemed to understand this fully. He was simply, just out for a walk.

At 8:39 AM, Mr. Locke shook my hand. We scurried off the 18th green and towards his car. I felt like we had just run a six-mile sprint. I knew he didn’t care to keep track, but by my count, Locke had shot 3-over par, 74. The only thing on his mind, “two hours and twenty-two minutes — helluva job.”

I closed his trunk and turned towards the caddie office. He backed out of his parking space, rolled down his window and said, “seven thousand three hundred and thirty-two days. I haven’t missed a sunrise in over twenty years.” He smiled, and without giving me much of an opportunity to say anything back, he drove off. What at the time seemed like a not-so-humble brag from a seasoned morning person, made sense later that night.

I opened my laptop and clicked my Gmail tab as I lay in bed, tired from the day’s double-loop. Unread in my inbox was an email from Nicholas Locke Jr. The subject heading, “$86,400 a Day.”

“Ryan: nice walk this morning. Each day, we’re given 86,400 seconds to make choices, decisions, actions that will define the rest of our day and maybe even our life. Also, for those around us. If each second of the day represented a dollar in the bank, how would you spend it? Knowing that if you didn’t spend it, you’d lose it? See you next week. — Nick.”