I love sports. If you know me, this goes without saying. I will pretty much watch or play any sport that I find interesting, fun, or seems to be worthy of trying.
I am also ultra competitive, as many sport lovers are. I don’t like to lose. I’m not a sore loser (I once was, believe me, it took a long time for me to get to this point), but losing is a feeling I never want to experience. I don’t care if it’s basketball, bowling, beer pong, cornhole, you get the point.
With all that being said, this pandemic has made it very difficult for me to let my competitive juices fly. I haven’t played basketball with other people for almost a year, I played tennis a couple of times, and most of my competitiveness has been outsourced to an endless amount of Skip-Bo games (highly recommend this card game to anyone that hasn’t hear of it) that I play against Emily (my wife, who currently has the higher winning percentage…). With this competitive appetite not quite quenched, I have been thinking about starting up a new sport that is pandemic proof: golf.
Golf has been a sport that I have been intrigued by, but never really wanted to, or had time, to put in the energy to get better at. Why would I want to suck at a sport for hours on end if I could just go play basketball or tennis during that time? It wasn’t an excuse to not play golf, I just never really had the time to do so because I was more involved in the other sports I knew well. Now, I am grasping at straws, as I don’t have the ability to play the team sports that I have come to love. So, a year into the pandemic (I know, I’m a little behind on this) I have now started to entertain the idea of starting up golf.
When I say start up golf, I really mean dive into it as a sport that I am willing to invest time and money in for the rest of my life. I know, that sounds drastic, but knowing my competitive nature and the aspect of golf being you versus yourself, if I start, there won’t be stopping anytime soon. If I get to the point where I have broken let’s say 100 (which will probably take me a decent amount of time to get to, IF I can even get there), then I know the next thing I will want to do is break 95. This is one of the main reasons why I haven’t started. Don’t get me wrong, I have always loved going to the driving range and hitting the ball as far as I can (or trying to aim for the cart that picks up the balls for target practice), but getting out on the course is a whole other animal. I learned this the hard way from one of my lone experiences on it.
When I was younger (probably around 10 or 11) I went to a 9 hole course in Marin County with my Uncle. We warmed up at the driving range, and then we were off to the first tee. This was the epitome of an easy hole, straight fairway, about 180 yards (to be honest I don’t really remember the distance, but for the sake of the story we will go with this), and no wind to worry about on this calm and sunny day. I took a couple of practice swings, lined up my shot, and went on to shank it to the right, through a net, losing my ball. Great start. I grabbed a new ball from my Uncle’s golf bag, dropped it knowing I had just lost a stroke on this par 3, and lined up my next shot. I looked over at the green, then back at the ball, and took my shot. The ball seemed to glide in the air for an incredible amount of time before landing beautifully on the green. The only thing is, the ball continued to roll. Slowly but surely it approached the cup until...it went in! I parred my first ever hole on a golf course! But, as some of you may know, this high was short lived. Everything was downhill from there. I don’t remember every hole, but I do remember not getting a par or better on any of the remaining 8. At one hole in particular I lost at least 4 balls into a pond because I really wanted to shoot it straight onto the green instead of taking the easier route (recommended by my Uncle after the second ball was a goner) of going around the pond and chipping it onto the green. This was my first experience on the golf course, and it showed me the highs and the many lows of playing golf.
I never really got into golf after this, and realistically didn’t have that much time outside of the other sports I played throughout my youth and beyond. I have continued on playing basketball, tennis, flag football, rec softball, and didn’t really see a time to start up a new sport. But as this pandemic has continued to drag on, my optimism for going back to playing these sports anytime has slowly deteriorated. Now (as a last resort), I think I might be ready to try golf.
I started by weighing the pros and cons in my head. Pro: there are drink carts on the course so you can crack open a beer to lighten the load on how poorly you are playing. Con: you will probably be bad for the considerable future. Pro: you get to escape from the world around you and focus on just playing the game. Con: since you will suck for some time, this “escape” might not truly be the R&R you were thinking of. I could keep going with this list (the Cons reiterating how long I won’t be good for), but I noticed, similar to showing yourself self-love, I needed to take my judgmental thoughts out of the reasons why I shouldn’t do this. Yeah, I might not be good for a while, but isn’t the whole point of this to compete with myself to get better? I used to not be good at the other sports that I currently play, but I got better through time and practice with those as well. I started thinking this way in the recent months, and with the push of some friends and work colleagues I think my time has come to give golf a shot. Golf might finally be able to cure my competition fever brought on by the pandemic (not literal fever of course, just a metaphorical one don’t worry).
Also, when the time comes I can actually play with friends and colleagues in a safe and healthy way. Even during a pandemic, golf serves to be a socially distant acceptable sport. Don’t get me wrong, I won’t be playing with anyone anytime soon, but when I feel I have some semblance of a golf game I’m happy to know that is an option. The more and more I have thought about it, and now written about it, the answer to the title of this post has been made. I will golf. Now I just need to find some clubs, and balls, and shoes, and maybe some tees, and maybe (please fill in the blank if I am forgetting anything golf friends, I’m just starting out here)...
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