Nicholas Higgins 19/06/20

Musings from the Front 9

 ‘Golf is the closest game to the game we call life. You get bad breaks from good shots; you get good breaks from bad shots - but you have to play the ball where it lies’, Bobby Jones

Why do I play golf? For most golfers, it’s a hobby, a social event, a bit of sun and a little exercise. It is also one of the most beautiful games. That feeling of the sublime when you see your drive soar into the air, hang for eternity, framed by a lush green fairway below, and a clear blue sky above, only to drop down gently near its target. I play golf for all of these reasons, but don’t they all seem rather trite? Einstein told us to never stop questioning, so what if golf meant a little more? What if it was microcosm of life, indeed a training ground for a life well lived. 

As Tiger Woods put it, golf is a ‘ridiculously hard game’. Surveys examining the recent decline in golf club memberships found that it wasn’t because clubs couldn’t attract new golfers. It was keeping them in the game. Challenge is good, but when you spend a lifetime playing and still slice hook and top a ball, really? Playing golf is like embarking on a journey of mastery that you’ll never truly reach. A puzzle without an answer. A sudoku that cannot be solved. The game is unpredictable, uncertain and actually pretty random. One minute alteration in the shape of your swing and the whole shot will go askew. In every round you’ll be faced with wind, uneven lies, sloping greens, breaking putts and awkward distances.

If you’ve ever played around of golf you’ll know the pits of neurotic self-scrutiny and suicidal self-hate to which it’s possible to sink. You curse your bad swing, bemoan your bad luck and ill fortune that the ball is landed right in the bunker. You get angry, call yourself an incompetent fool. Set on the path to negativity, you might start the blame game. ‘Selfish partner who won’t stop talking when I’m teeing off! Stupid greenskeeper who can’t maintain a proper green! That idiot in the group ahead who didn’t repair his pitchmark!’ As Mark Twain so mildly put it, ‘golf is a good walk spoiled’.

Just as life throws up trials and tribulations, so too is golf a veritable storm of chaos. Life, like golf, is grindingly tough and fantastically uncertain. With many a twist and turn, life is also a very dififcult quest for mastery. Just as there are good shots and errant shots, so does life have its joys and sorrows and ups and downs. The golfers reactions bear marked resemblance to our own lamentations of the blows life deals us. ‘Why me? Why do these things always happen to me?! It must be someone eles’s fault!

What can we learn then from the true golfing purist, the ‘ideal golfer’, as a way to play the great game of life.

Golf is about commitment, overcoming mistakes and ‘never giving up’. It is the true Churchillian sport, requiring grit, determination and resilience. A good golfer might hit a duff shot, but he’s internalised the truth that ‘success consists of going from failure to failure without any loss of enthusiasm’. He’ll be steadfast in the face of all the uncertainty the game constantly throws at him. He chooses to accept each and every shot, rather than react like a spoilt child. He takes responsibility for what happens after the ball has left the club.

Of course said golfer will never exist, but it’s a heady lesson that golf is more than a pastime for old age pensioners. Instead of meeting life’s struggles head on, too many people retreat. Worse, their sufferings come to define them, limit them, imprison them. 

This is like the amateur golfer who lets a few bad shots at the beginning of the round scupper the entire game. They’ve let the toxic residue of those first few shots contaminate the next 18 holes. Our ideal golfer does not let this happen. Every shot is a new shot, irrespective of what’s happened in the past. At the 2019 Indian open, Stephen Gallacher, scored a quadruple bogey on the 7th hole of his final round. Yet he went on to win. Why? Because he didn’t let his bogey dictate the rest of the game. ‘If you are still thinking about the last shot, you can’t possibly focus on or pay attention to the next one’, he says.  What a valuable lesson to not let your past define your future.

Where ‘woe is me’ is the internal cry of every amateur hack, our ideal golfer does not wallow in self-pity. Victimhood is of course awash in social media. In this ‘age of entitlement’, my problems couldn’t possibly be an error of my own, some circumstance or some person must be at fault. Of course it is much much easier to abstain from taking responsibility than to embrace it. If we can lay the blame at the feet of others we often take that choice. 

Stephen Gallacher, however, owned his reaction and response to that terrible score. He chose not to level criticism at anyone or thing, even himself. He knew that becoming the victim would only lead to anger and frustration, which would thwart his reasoning and judgement, and ultimately lead to the loss of the tournament. As he put it, ‘If you are still angry with yourself because you hit a bad shot, that one bad shot can turn into a run of bad shots, bad holes, bad bogeys’.

Rather, he took responsibility for that shot, accepted it and directed his attention to the next shot. He moved on, he grew, he won. This is the stoic ideal: letting go of the things you can’t control (a quadruple bogey) and taking responsibility for the things you can (your emotional reaction). Mastering reponsibility meant Gallacher treated his setback not as a prison, but as a platform. From something that could have crushed him, to that which made him.

When you decide to take responsibility you create the conditions to liberate yourself from the tyranny of blame and guilt. This is a wonderful thing. What would it be like to never again feel entitled to expect someone else to behave a certain way or to be entitled for the world to provide you with certain circumstances? 

It might also be added that golf inculcates honesty, integrity and respect in its players. Golf appears to be the only sport in which even professionals are required to keep their own scores and call penalty strokes on themselves. The whole game relies on the simple premise that only the golfer knows how many swings were made during the play. Decorum takes the place of showmanship. As P. G. Woodhouse put it, ‘the man who can go into a patch of rough alone, with the knowledge that only God is watching him, and play his ball where it lies, is the man who will serve you faithfully and well’. Golf is about decency and honesty just as much it is about achievement.  

What a far cry from the rampant rule breaking in other sports, note footballer ‘flopping’ to falsely accuse others of fouls. Golf etiquette also exercises self-restraint, like not talking when you feel like so someone can hit their shot. This isn’t being classist or inegalitarian or traditionalist, as many have criticised golf for being, it’s upholding honour as the principle of the game. Golf then, presents an image of a good community, one that harmonies the pursuit of self-mastery with civility. In a world where manners have gone the way of fish forks, this is more important than ever. 

Golf is not simply a sport for the rich, powerful, famous and tenured. It is a game for all those who wish to live the examined life. For those who wish to face adversity and take responsibility; for those who want to move on from the past, grow and mature; for those who long to revive courtesy, civility and grace. Though most sports are driven by rampant competition, golf sharpens the character like no other.

Golf is like life. Play it well.