[NOTE: The following story was written by Jim McCabe of The Boston Globe, appearing in the Globe’s April 29 edition. McCabe, who also covers college hockey, is the Globe’s golf writer and this appeared as his weekly “On Golf” column. It appears here with the permission of The Boston Globe.]

Terry Meagher (left) and Sid Watson forged a unique relationship in rinks and on golf courses. Each of them won more than 300 games as head coach of the Bowdoin College Polar Bears.

This is why we have memories, for a time like this, so Terry Meagher recalled a gem of a story that made him laugh even as the pain chiseled away at his spirit. His great friend Sid Watson — who happened also to be his old boss, his colleague, his mentor, his confidant, his icon — sadly had been taken from this world just 48 hours earlier, so Meagher did what he needed to do. He remembered.

It was Winchester Country Club, the chance to play one of the truly great golf courses in New England, a privilege neither man took lightly. “We had a caddie because we didn’t know the course, so we finished out on one green and automatically took our drivers and went to the next tee. Then we discovered it was a par-3 of about 195-200 yards and we figured we didn’t need the drivers.”

Instinctively, they headed to the cart to switch clubs, till the caddie interceded.

“He told Sid,’You’ve got the right club, sir.’ Well, Sid got so angry, and I just laughed. He was so upset to think that this caddie figured he needed a driver. And the more I laughed, the madder he got. I switched clubs, but Sid was determined to hit that driver and show that caddie that he didn’t need it for a par-3. He hit perhaps his best drive, and if not for the fact that it caught the bunker to the left of the green, it might still be going.

“I tell you,” said Meagher. “I couldn’t have paid that caddie enough money to come up with a way to get into Sid’s head the way he did. I can still hear the caddie, ‘You’ve got the right club, sir.’”

Meagher let the story hang there and he laughed, the finest novocain for when you get that hollow pain deep in your gut that comes from losing someone to whom you owe so much.

They were like father and son, two men who shared countless good times for more than 20 years. Originally brought together because of their passion for hockey — Watson retiring after 24 years as coach at Bowdoin College, hand-picked Meagher to be his successor in 1983 — they soon discovered that they had in common a lot of other things, mostly ideals such as honor and integrity and commitment, stuff that they truly felt was the essence of the Bowdoin experience and life in Brunswick, Maine.

What they probably never envisioned back in 1983 was sharing such a joy for golf, which is both a tribute to these two men and a testament to the glory of this sport. Often I find myself wondering how strange it is that I spend so much of my time writing about the miniscule percentage of the golfing population that plays for riches when, in fact, the heart and soul of the game remains the huge number of folks who partake because of all the priceless intangibles that the game teaches and provides for.

Friendship. Camaraderie. Competitiveness. Fresh air. The chance to talk. The chance to listen. The opportunity to always do better. The reality that, just like in life, good shots sometimes end up badly and bad shots sometimes end up looking good.

And in Watson, Meagher had that most sacred of golfing elements: a great companion. Not partner, mind you. Never partner.

“The last five years, I’d always say on the first tee, ‘Here’s something unique: Why don’t Tom and I play you and Terry?’”said James Dodson, who coauthored Arnold Palmer’s autobiography and wrote the heartwarming golf books “Final Rounds” and “The Dewsweepers.” Dodson lives in Maine, and for most of the past 15 years at Brunswick CC, his regular foursome has included Watson, Meagher, and a great character by the name of Tom Dugan, who once caddied for Denny Shute and himself a story for another day. Anyway, Dodson would make his proposal and Watson would snarl.

“Not gonna happen.”

True story, said Meagher, laughing. The great college hockey coaches, similar in so many ways, could never be paired together in golf. But they had to be in the same foursome.

“He brought the game to life. He made it real,” Said Meagher. “He made it easy to be yourself. He listened. He talked. There were times we would get so upset at each other, we’d walk different sides of the fairway, but always with Sid, what came came. He loved to play and loved to play with people from all walks of life. He loved everything about the game, and when you were on the course with him, it was a treat.”

Always, it was an experience, and each story reminded Meagher of another story because memories are the necessary tonic for such personal anguish. So Meagher talked of how his mentor would leave Brunswick in the fall with one handicap, head to Naples, Fla., for the winter, then arrive back in Maine with one that was higher, “and I’d question the system the state of Florida uses, and he’d tell me that this is why most golf matches are won on the first tee.” And he talked of how Watson had a name for everything and everyone (someone who got too many strokes was “Five-net-four So-and-So”); how he’d make the turn at Brunswick CC and head directly to the snack bar and make time for the kids working; how he’d complain that Meagher would always want to press on the backside because he had a length advantage; how if he lost a quarter because his successor made what he considered a lucky putt, he’d pay him off in five nickels; how the competitor in him shined through whenever one of his drives would stray left or right into the trees.

“Invariably, he’d make a par from the woods. At Brunswick CC, we call it a ‘Watson par.’ When he was in the middle of the fairway, I felt better.”

Years earlier, Watson had been an outstanding football player at Northeastern University, good enough, in fact, that he was invited to training camp by the Pittsburgh Steelers. His roommate was a young quarterback from the University of Louisville, but they didn’t share quarters past the summer, because Johnny Unitas got cut while Watson hung around to play three years. It was a story he loved to tell, one of those life-is-stranger-than-fiction types, but it was a very real part of what made Watson such a special person.

So, too, was his passion for golf. He took his family on a golf trip to Ireland, where they competed in “the Watson Open.” He had three sons — Michael, John, and Christopher — and annually they would play in tournaments at Brunswick CC. For years, Watson was a participant in one of the area’s most storied amateur tournaments, the Essex County Club Four-ball, in which he partnered with Fred Thorne.

“He was one of the most competitive guys I’ve ever seen — but in a positive way,” said Thorne. “He was one of a kind, and just as he knew how to get the most out of his players, he knew how to get the most out of himself as a golfer, and his partner, too.”

In “The Dewsweepers,” Dodson devotes a chapter to his rounds with Watson, Dugan, and Meagher, and writes about how the game brought them together and shapes so much of the life around them. If you’ve ever had regular golf buddies, you know how special they are, so you can perhaps appreciate how it unfolded late Sunday afternoon. Watson in his winter home, welcoming a visit from Meagher, in town for a coaches’ convention, then talking on the phone with Dugan, his friend of 50 years. The three-way conversation was about a golf date to be arranged. But it will never be realized, for Watson at that moment had a heart attack and died at the age of 71.

How often do we read or hear that technology is ruining the game, that golf courses are becoming obsolete, that players are hitting it too darn far? Rubbish, all of it. Surely, we need to generate more young players and more women players, and we need to soften the costs and be more flexible with accessibility and more conscious of time constraints, but those are issues for another time and make us stray from the point at hand.

Which is this: The fabric of the game still beats with a rhythm that can be felt.

For proof, just ask Meagher. He could tell you a story or two — or maybe a thousand — about his great friend, the very special Sid Watson.