Golf is Stoopid

Golf, is what you hear. Snore, is what you may think. Hitting a ball into a hole with a stick, really? Pfft. What a waste. For what possible reason would any half-wit spend a day…

Woah, okay, just woah. If anyone rants, it’s me. My rules. Consider, if you will, that just just just maybe you need to know more about the game. I admit that I get where you’re coming from. At first blush, it doesn’t wow many people. But then the same can be said of the dearest people in my life that’ve ruled and/or demolished my heart.

Most people unfamiliar with the game view a golf course not unlike my dog. Bucolic. Grass. Trees. Open space to run and nap. But perhaps curiosity gives way to investigation. Like a farmer turned Civil War historian viewing pastures outside of Appomattox, once inside the game they begin to see the emotional ghosts left out there, the bits of soul-shrapnel littering the fairways, the grinding heartbreak on the greens from missed putts and lip-outs. And also, in relief from the tragedy, the sublime beauty of a pure shot.

Back in 1999, I could feel the heat from my now-wife-then-girlfriend peering at me as I watched the Ryder Cup. She was flummoxed – and maybe a little worried – at why this guy who didn’t watch much of anything was groaning, clapping, and white-knuckling a Saturday away to these men walking around a gigantic garden. She sat down. I began explaining the game and match play. We watched. Seeing reactions of the players, she sensed what was at stake. Drama ebbed and flowed. I filled in with background on individual players. Though not my plan, she was reeled in. By Sunday morning she was panting for the tournament’s final day to start. Little did I recognize the eerie foreshadowing of this scenario playing out with our unborn son about 12 years later.

In her teenage years, she’d lived for 6 years in a house bordering a PGA National course in Palm Beach Gardens. Her brother had a cottage business. He’d dive and harvest balls from a murky pond right out their back door and positioned to swallow any quasi-duck-hook off the 3rd tee, then easily sell them back to golfers. Her dislike of golf was cultivated by the limited view of the game out of the back patio doors, and by her father who, having never played, considered it as requisite background for his home and its real estate value, but deemed the ones who played it suckers on the sorry end – The Unfortunates that every winning business transaction required.

Her dismissal of golf based on its sedentary appearance is understandable. And now it makes even more sense given the growing deepest, haunting fear of our culture: Boredom. Silence, stillness, and a lack of certified stimulus is thought of as a black pit of nothingness that triggers palm sweat. The thought that there’s a place we reach beyond and because of boredom, a place of more complete understanding, is incredible to most people. I’ve seen more than a few friends – usually the people who need it most – run from the idea of meditation like a spooked wildebeest from a T-rex. Golf is similar. It offers stillness. Scary.

The way my now-wife might’ve seen the game – hitting a (stoopid) ball with a (stoopid) stick into a (stoopid) hole – isn’t wrong. Yet therein lives the beauty. And this beauty embellished by simplicity is baked into the rules. Mind-bendingly simple: You play from the tee, play it as it lies, until it’s in the hole. Essentially, that’s it. For sure, there are adjunct rules for dicey situations. But as with the game itself, those rules can appear senseless at first blush only until they’re understood to follow the core tenet of ruthless and indifferent fairness.

Elegance. Beautiful. Simple. Absolute. And those rules feed the starkness. The ball goes in, or not. Period. There’s no referee to negotiate disputed gray area, or to whip up controversy with a game-deciding call. There’s no interpretive strike zone on every pitch, or borderline infraction on every snap, or belligerent bad acting to plead a yellow card to a striped jury. In fact, there’s essentially no jury – the golfer is left to officiate himself, with only himself to ultimately harm if there is bias or an integrity hiccup.

Like a crafty heiress in an evening dress, this elegance isn’t always kind. With this simplicity and fairness comes brutality. Clean lines are rigid and sharp. There’s no diffusion of fault or responsibility to teammates or officials – and even if you try to accept fault as the caddy, the player knows. Bad and good breaks happen – the indifferent, deaf ref that balances out the calls is our physical reality, our universe, our existence. What’s more, from this unspoken acceptance, a funny thing happens. What-ifs evaporate. I can’t remember ever hearing Monday morning quarterbacking from golfers – at least, golfers who display any wisdom about the game. You won’t hear an experienced golfer saying Man, if Tiger would’ve only sunk that putt, or If Rory’s 5-iron would’ve kicked toward the pin, he would’ve tied for the lead. Instead of a discussion, he’d probably get an O…kay, and if God would’ve materialized to kick it in the hole…followed by the back of someone’s head. It’s a game of mistakes and recoveries and reality. Golf and life.

As with most people who take up the game, kids love this brutality. Maybe not at first. It causes pain. But it’s truth. Just simply what is. Sure, sometimes any of us can’t handle the truth. We bitch or tantrum. But this simplicity and brutality serves to frame the poetry of the game – that real stuff, underneath, undetected, only unlocked and valuable by being carefully excavated through one’s own labor. It’s also why, when you hit a good shot, it feels so, so, so over-the-top damned sweet.

As I described it, you can easily deduce that this is a crap setting for parenting. Depending on how you look at it, you’re either so right or so wrong. I’m certainly not saying it’s void of masochism – the convergence of golf and parenting is for those who choose to walk into the fire, prudence be damned. For those who suspect that the journey is inevitable, which it is by most accounts, why not depart now? Maybe agitation is strengthening, obstacles are opportunities, and intensity is truth serum – yes, I know, as if parenting begs for more agitation, obstacles, or truth. The possible problem might be it’s too much of a setting for parenting.