I don’t believe golf is like life. It’s more complicated than that and golf has facets to it that are inscrutable.
However, as we approach the final of the four “Majors” which tees off Thursday morning, I want to talk about golf and tell what it means to me:
Golf is a jealous mistress, requiring time, money, attention, long-suffering patience, and secret obsession. Egalitarian and often blind, watching others play golf sometimes confounds: I have seen people who “look-like” golfers play poorly, and those street urchins on a public sandlot play like Seve Ballesteros, always known to attack the course and any opponent on his way to par. Real pressure in a golf game with Seve would be playing for $10 when you only have a $5 in your pocket!
Because golf has gone global (as FedEx® says it has) its future is probably as bright as any major sport. Like basketball, with numerous multi-national stars, and competition played worldwide, the post-Tiger era seems promising. A strong wave of young guns arrived on the golf scene a year ago, comers who surely began the game as 8-9 year olds when Tiger started his legendary run.
It is a unique game, historic and humbling; anyone can play, the great players with the hackers, boys and girls, old and young. It affords players a social opportunity as well as one grounded in nature.
Truly hitting the ball without “thinking about it,” when it leaps off the clubface with the crack of a good shot, gives me a childishly fun and pure reaction. Like life, the hazards along the course infuse fear into the average player, taking away the trusting mindset required to swing freely. The combination of physical, mental, and natural processes make it a challenging, lifetime sport, requiring concentration, dedication, and ethics. I’ve learned a lot about respect, about values in life, to be honest with yourself whether you hit it well or in the hazard because you're the only person who can give yourself a penalty, if you do something your playing partner hasn't seen.
The year’s last major is the PGA played in Atlanta (AAC). The PGA suffers from a bit of an infereriorty complex, the tournament invented a tagline with a branding twist: “Glory’s Last Shot!” Mathematically it is one-quarter of all majors just like the other ones, except in almost all the metrics of modern golf it comes in fourth place in importance.
Maybe it is just so damn hot in August, football is heating up, baseball going into a pennant race; nevertheless, hoisting the huge Wannamaker Trophy pays in multiple exemptions for the winner (means he gets invited to lots of tournaments without qualifying), as well as a $1 mil check. It was once the only match-play major until television convinced the PGA to change the format in 1958. With this year’s field almost 156 players (98 out of top-100 ranked) including Mr. Woods, any golf fan can find a horse on which to bet. Speaking of football and heat, the PGA was twice played in Dallas!
It does help that almost a third of this tournament’s champions are big names, such as: Gary Player, Lee Trevino, Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Lord Byron Nelson, Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Walter Hagen, and Sam Snead (28 PGA titles among those names).
“You know, I started thinking back there on that last hole. All I’ve done my whole life is play golf, work at golf, study golf, listen to golf, read about golf. I’ve worked to build a game I can rely on, make a living with. Find a ‘repeating swing,’ as Hogan called it. I’ve experimented with all the equipment—graphite, metal, titanium. I’ve found what works best for me, for my body, my swing. This year I come up with some solid chances to win a big one. After all the years and all the hard work out here, my game’s ready to win a major. But what happens? I get a lousy ruling in Augusta… I get a lousy ruling at Pinehurst… and I get another one here. Each time I let it beat me. I really let it beat me. So I’m thinking my hard-headed ass has finally learned something. Golf’s not about equipment… technique… distance… practice… saving shots… the putting stroke… any of that. Once you know how to hold the damn golf club, golf is only about one thing. How you handle bad breaks.” –Bobby Joe Grooves in Slim and None, by Dan Jenkins (Doubleday 2005)
If you wish to hide your character, do not play golf. It strips you naked and forces you to strategize in an area as small as 5-inches across: your brain!
Every hole contains chapters like a book: the big opening salvo off the tee, winding through the hazards finding the way home to the green—the climax. Then the soft finish as the putting closes the story. I find the chance at renewal after each hole refreshing; as you walk to the next teeing area, leave what happened yesterday at the previous green. The new day dawns as you push the tee into the ground and look forward down the fairway, new opportunities and dangers await you.
Dealing with the reality of my game, I have come to the conclusion that it is more satisfying to be a bad player at golf: the worse you play, the better you remember the occasional good shot! That shot is the one that brings you back next time, the one fantastic glass of Cabernet in a week full of $9 Chardonnays.
Sex and golf are the two things you can enjoy even if you're not good at them, so the best thing you can try to do, is go out there and have fun!
©Mark H. Pillsbury
Murphy's Law applied to golf:
ReplyDelete1. Your best golf shots always occur when playing alone.
2. Your worst golf shots always occur when playing with someone you are trying to impress.