| |
The Essence of Golf
Golf, to me, has become an addiction. This is using the common person's understanding of addiction, rather than any clinical definition.
I often wonder if it is a personality disorder leading to subtle masochism with the hope of ultimately attaining that certain euphoria. You know the one. That moment when you are posing for the imaginary Golf Channel cameras (in order for them to accurately capture your glory in digital imagery) because your take-away, backswing, tempo, timing, pause, shift, downswing, contact, and follow through all came into alignment with the I-Ching and the gravitational pull of Venus at just the right moment in order for you to knock that dimpled sphere tight from a hundred and seventy three yards, even though when you planned the shot you were guesstimating one sixty-five…or so. All this leads your playing partner to grin on your behalf, give a low whistle as he tugs on his pull-cart and to comment that it was, "The One That Keeps You Coming Back."
What is that, The One That Keeps You Coming Back? To the layperson (otherwise referred to as the non-golfer) that would make no sense at all. Why wouldn't you come back? You say you love golf, right? So, coming back is a foregone conclusion, is it not?
To these uninitiated souls I say, "Nay!" This pairing is the purest definition of a Love-Hate relationship – an unequal balance between the accumulated shanks, duffs, skulls, yips, duck-hooks, banana-slices, thins, fats, hosels, toes, pushes, pulls, yanks, and an uncountable number of other terms all used to describe the various ways in which to NOT hit a golf ball. Those errors, large and small, that have driven golfers of all ages and both genders to drink, cuss, spit, kick small dogs, or wrap their seven-iron around an offending Georgia Pine and swear to their favorite deity to never pick up a club again, intimately intertwined with that purest of personal joys that comes with a single episode of The One That Keeps You Coming Back.
That shot, that ecstasy, is accurately if inadequately referred to by the character Roy McAvoy in the movie Tin Cup as, "The tuning fork goes off in your loins." It is a sense of all things being good, of colorful butterflies hovering over a flower filled meadow combined with the power of a Rocky Mountain spring thunderstorm and it is the essence of golf.
Therein lies the allure, the foundation for the addiction. To achieve that state of Nirvana again, without chemical intervention, is the true goal. To score better, be more consistent, lower your handicap, putt, or drive, or play your irons better, all fall under the umbrella of accomplishing, once more and as often as possible, The One That Keeps You Coming Back.
The lure is as enticing as a wobbly-worm on a Texas rig to a fat bass, a surfer's leg to a hungry shark, or new shoes to Paris Hilton. The drive, I have deduced is the product of mankind's eternal quest to achieve the ultimate truth and to attain a tiny piece of perfection in this, our imperfect world. |
| |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
By 
