The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Andrew Leslie loves to hit the links with his dad, Asa, and his friends. "You know that's how you get close, when you're one-on-one with someone," said Leslie. "I love my dad to death and he's always there when I'm struggling and it's just easy to talk to when we're on the golf course." So can his dad win against him? "No, not even close," Leslie responded, with a smile, sitting in the Whitney Forum. "He can spank that ball pretty good, but when it comes down to the short game, he's got to learn how to get that ball close to the pin on his second and third shot to beat me." Leslie is from Calgary and grew up in a blue-collar family as Asa owns a carpentry business, which keeps him outside. That's rubbed off on Leslie. "I just like being outside with nature, listening to the birds chirp," he explained. While Leslie only golfs about five times a year, his handicap is 12. "It's alright for playing five times a year," he said. "The courses in Calgary are a lot different, a lot more challenging than the ones here. "The ones in Calgary are just long and narrow fairways," he explained. "They're multi-million dollar courses. Waterfalls and everything like that, island greens, it's challenging, but it's fun." He likes the game because he can relax, but it also gives him a chance to think about life. The game brings him something else, too. "Golf's one of the toughest sports you'll find," Leslie said. "Your hand-eye coordination has to be unreal, you have to hit that ball straight. It's challenging to get that little ball close to that little hole in a 500 yard hole, and in par." When Leslie isn't playing with his father, he plays with friends and he recalled one memory from when he was in Grade 10. "One of my buddies, he was, it was a rainy day," said Leslie. "We were out on the golf course at Valley Ridge and he shot the ball. So he lines up for his next shot and he's going for the green, it's a par four, so he's kind of a dog-leg. He was trying to fade it around the corner and put it up over the trees and on to the green and when he took a swing the club slipped out of his hands and got stuck up in a tree. What does he do? He throws his other club up there to knock it down and he gets his club stuck up in the tree again. So needless to say, we went home two clubs short and he never got those two clubs back."
