The noble game of golf is probably the most vexatious of all. One may have the best of equipment — expensive golf set, the best of clothing and a golf swing groomed by a top teaching professional, but money can never buy the psyche required to play this game. It is “the player” who has to tackle the most unpredictable challenges that this game throws up.
It's all mental
Golf’s recorded history has numerous instances of the player being unable to handle the pressure and succumbing to it.
As the most infamous in recent years, Adam Scott, leading by four strokes, handed over the coveted Claret Jug to Ernie Els by bogeying the last four holes of The 2012 Open Championship at Royal Lytham and St. Annes. It was heartbreaking for me to watch this up close, as it must have been for a million others. I have had the privilege of refereeing both Adam Scott and Ernie Els and as the world knows, both are extraordinarily fine gentlemen.
Hamartia
For many of my generation and before, P.G. Wodehouse has been a great source of entertainment particularly when it comes to tales of golf with affairs of the heart woven around.
In one of his books, the young protagonist proclaims, “What earthly good is golf? Life is stern and life is earnest. We live in a practical age. All round us we see foreign competition making itself unpleasant. And we spend our time playing golf! What do we get out of it? Is golf any use? That's what I'm asking you. Can you name me a single case where devotion to this pestilential pastime has done a man any practical good?"
While Wodehouse wove a story to explain this existential question, I can name a few.
Be it being able to communicate with Nature whilst on the course or playing golf for therapeutic purposes or maintaining links with business partners or being able to play competitively long after your prime (just ask Bernhard Langer at 57, Fred Couples at 55 and Jay Hass at 61, each earning over a million dollars a year on the Senior Tour) or discovering honesty, integrity and self-reliance, golf reveals the hamartia or the tragic flaw in every person.
Keep at it
Scottish folklorist, Andrew Lang, in the nineteenth century firmly believed that nothing, including old age would stop him from playing golf when he wrote “I hae play’d in the frost and the thaw, I hae ply’d since the year thirty-three, I hae play’d in the rain and the snaw, And I trust I may play till I dee.”
Truly, if I could live life all over again, it would be on the links, swinging the club. As my boyhood hero, one of the greatest golfers of all times, Ben Hogan, so eloquently put it “As you walk down the fairway of life you must smell the roses, for you only get to play one round.”
