(Written and posted 14 April
2003.)
I
had an opportunity to do something this past weekend that I haven’t done in
years – play golf. I must admit -- it was
the most enjoyable game of golf that I have had in probably over 10 years. The course was not crowded like so many
public courses these days. I didn’t
have to make an appointment or wait an hour to tee off. I just paid my fee, and blammo! Tee time!
It kind of takes the fun out of the game when you have to wait for what
seems like an eternity to even get on the tee, and when you do, you have a
bunch of cranky people behind you pressuring you to hurry up because they are
also tired of waiting for their turn to tee off. Spontaneity is the spice of life, and it is quite hard to be
spontaneous when you have to make an appointment.
Those
that were on the course were polite and patient. That is something that is unheard of in this day and age. The last time I played golf I had to contend
with Tiger Woods wannabes who had nothing better to do than scowl at my
woefully pathetic golf skills. I have
even had people comment that because I am basically a beginner, I shouldn’t be
on a golf course until I get better. Of
course, it remains to be seen how you can get better at something without
actually doing it, but that is just a minor thing. You are not supposed to play golf on any real course unless you
are ready to compete in the Masters!
Finally,
I did not have to pay two-weeks salary to play. At most courses these days, just a round of golf can set you back
$50. When you play on a course that is
at the end of a gravel road running through a trailer park, green fees are much
more reasonable, say the equivalent of a couple of McDonald’s burgers. I don’t know about you, but I am more than
willing to trade a couple of McDonald’s hamburgers for six hours of enjoyment
of a beautiful day.
I
think the thing that made this particular golf game so enjoyable was the
company that I played with. I had
intended to play by myself. As I was
getting ready to tee off, I met up with three older gentlemen who invited me to
play. Now let me just say that I am so
bad, very few people ever invite me to play, for most are embarrassed to play
with someone of my woeful ability.
Since these gentlemen did not know my past golfing history, I think that
they thought that being a man in my thirties I would be decent and a worthy
addition to their trio. It took one hit
off of the first tee to prove them wrong.
You see, I, a man of thirty-seven, was outdriven by men of
seventy-three, seventy-six, and eighty-six.
I thought for sure that they would decide that I was so bad that my
invitation to play would be revoked. It
wasn’t.
I
partnered with the eighty-six year old, who looked and sounded a lot like Henry
Fonda in “On Golden Pond”. Just as
Fonda’s Norman Thayer took it upon himself to teach young Billy not just about
fishing, but about life, this gentlemen, who had the same mannerisms as Fonda’s
Thayer, took it upon himself to teach young Michael not just about golf, but
about life. After six hours and
twenty-seven holes, I find myself felling better about myself that I have in a
long, long time. I guess that life has
a way of making you so jaded, so cynical, that you tend to lose focus of what
it is all about.
I
spent six hours playing with three gentlemen who were far better than I, but
who never looked down on me or were bitingly critical. Instead, what I heard were words of
encouragement, pointers on how to improve.
I heard that while perfection is okay to strive for, we will stumble and
fall numerous times along the way, and that we should never dwell on our
failures. Once you’ve made a bad shot,
it is over, there is nothing you can do about it, so go on to the next and try
your best. As I was told, “you will
have good shots, and you will have bad shots; be proud of the good ones, and
don’t worry about the bad.”
Driving
around the gold course for six hours brought back fond memories of those times
when my father and I would play on these out-of-the-way courses that have long
been destroyed to make way for yet more upscale multi-family housing, neither
one of us caring how well or poorly we were playing, but savoring every moment
of life along the way.
Reflecting
on how much I enjoyed my day, it makes me sad to see how the fun has been taken
out of just about every single sporting activity. Sports just aren’t fun anymore.
There is so much emphasis on winning that we have lost the ability to
actually enjoy playing sports. Ask just
about any kid these days if they enjoying playing sports, and I think the
overwhelming majority would say no. And
who can blame them. After all, it is no
fun sitting on the bench. I know; I
have been there. It is no fun being
publicly berated by an adult. I speak
from experience on that one, too.
I
have been appalled by what I have seen the past several years. I have seen coaches encourage kids to play
dirty or to cheat. I have seen good
coaches, coaches that actually care about the kids and teaching them skills,
callously discarded like a sack of dog doo-doo because they didn’t win
enough. Forget teaching the love of a
game, sportsmanship, effort, and teamwork, it’s all about winning. I had a softball coach tell me the other day
that he has kids on his team that have played five years that don’t know how to
hit properly, because they were never taught how to. If you don’t come out of the womb a superstar, then you are
relegated to being a bench warmer, never to be acknowledged. We don’t want “diamonds in the rough”; it
takes too much time to polish them.
I
remember in college that there were several of us that comprised our dormitory
bowling team for three years. For the
first two years, we stunk. The third
year, however, we gelled as a team, and made the playoffs. Our reward for making the playoffs was being
dumped for guys with better averages to “bring home a championship.” Sure, the scabs won the championship, but
the bitterness and hard feelings resulted never did go away. The championship was Phyrric, at best.
Up
until this past weekend, I was starting to doubt whether anyone cared about
effort and sportsmanship anymore. It
seemed to me that everyone was only obsessed with victory, no matter what the
cost. I saw one daughter leave a soccer
field in tears after being scolded by a coach.
I saw another have to sit out a game because she just wasn’t good
enough. (Required too much effort to
coach, I was told.) The third had to
brave freezing temperatures only to sit out one half of a game while others
played the game in its entirety. Then
the amazing happened. A softball coach
worked one-on-one for a good forty minutes to improve her batting. This same softball coach told me about the
golf course on the gravel road that runs through the trailer park where I met
Henry Fonda, who worked with me one-on-one to improve my golf game. Imagine that! In two days I met two people who cared about an individual. Alas, all hope is not lost.
I
have decided that I am going to try to play the gold course at the end of the
gravel road that runs through the trailer park more frequently so that I can
improve on my golf game. I hope that I
will run into Henry Fonda again, so that I can show him how much I learned from
him. And to thank him for making me
feel human again.