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REAL LIFE IN ABOUT FOUR HOURS

Writer's picture: drhancurdrhancur

Updated: Oct 29, 2024

Golf.  Some of you get it and some of you don’t.  If you don’t, this blog may be irrelevant unless you know or love a golfer.  If you do get it, I think it will resonate deep into your soul.  Star athletes from other sports like Michael Jordan, Seth Curry, Tony Romo, Ivan Lendl and others became nearly obsessed with golf, while playing and in retirement.  What is it about golf that would appeal so strongly to these supremely competitive athletes and satisfy their lifelong desire for challenge and achievement?  Golf widows and widowers underscore the addictive power of golf to occupy a person’s focus and attention for decades.

 

Let me begin with a little background.  I first hit a golf ball when I was ten years old.  My childhood friend, Paul, and I would play eighteen holes most summer days at a course, aptly named Par 3 for it had nine par 3 holes.  Paul’s mother was an illustrator of children’s books and could work at the course—a rarity in those days—while we played.  The first nine cost $1.25 and the second nine a dollar.  We both had the same clubs, a set of Robert T. Jones, Jr Junior Stars.  It consisted, I think, of a 5, 7 and 9 iron plus a driver, 3 wood and putter.  There may have been a 3 iron but the chances of our hitting a good 3 iron ranked just below Jack Nicklaus’ one iron on 17 at Pebble Beach so I’m not at all sure there was one.  We carried our own bags and would hit a shot, run to the ball and hit it again, sometimes arriving just as it was rolling to a stop.  As I said, we did this almost every day in the summer and never tired of playing.  Sixty-eight years later, I’m still hitting the ball but am using a golf cart to catch up to it.

 

Unlike almost any other sport, the golfer is solely responsible for the outcome.  There is no defender in your face, no one has to throw the pitch for you to hit or the ball for you to catch.  There are no blockers or Djokovic-quality serve returners to contend with, only you.  There may only be three other players watching or millions on TV if you’re a tour pro, but you have to make that three-foot putt all on your own.  Therefore, in golf there is enormous pressure/anxiety.

 

One of golf’s most famous sport’s psychologists, Dr. Bob Rotella, called golf a “game of misses”.  Virtually all shots are “missed”, meaning that they could have been hit straighter or longer or softer.  Golf then is frustrating because the golfer is almost always dealing with the reality that the shot failed, that it could have been better (disappointment).  Even if a shot actually goes in the cup, the feeling is almost always that it was more luck than skill.  If you are skilled, shots go in the direction you’re aiming but rarely do exactly what you had in mind.  Shots that are badly mishit or three-putts often cause intense feelings of anger, self-loathing and name-calling.  But also a commitment to do better the next shot, to improve.   I like to say that the ability to handle frustration separates the winners and losers in life.  In any given round, golf will give all the frustration you can handle and then some.  In a parenting move never reported to Child Protective Services, the teenaged Jack Nicklaus famously was barred by his father from playing golf for an entire year because he threw a club.  We’re all glad Jack didn’t take the car without permission or Tiger Woods might hold the all-time Majors record.  However, not everything in golf is negative.  Long putts are made (pure joy).  Solid drives and crisp irons are hit (satisfaction and pride).  A mishit shot stops short of a sand trap (relief).

 

Tour pros are often interviewed before a tournament and many tell the interviewer that they just want to go out and have fun playing.  Mind you, the pro hits hundreds of golf balls a day and countless hours practicing every conceivable golf shot in preparation for the event.  When I hear a pro say that, I think they are trying to rationalize away the anxiety they are feeling about playing well because golf is not fun.  Winning is fun.  Competing with and torturing your buddies with sarcastic comments about their golfing abilities is fun.  But golf, itself, is not fun.  Golf is frustrating and disappointing, golf is joyful and satisfying, golf is challenging and consuming.  So why do so many get hooked on golf because golf is, after all, real life in about four hours.  

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