“Golf is a game to teach you about the messages from within, about the subtle voices of the body-mind. And once you understand them you can more clearly see your ‘hamartia,’ the ways in which your approach to the game reflects your entire life. Nowhere does a man go so naked.”
~ Michael Murphy (author of “Golf in the Kingdom”)
It’s commonly said that to spend four hours with someone on the golf course reveals more about their true character than spending days with them elsewhere. I have always believed this to be a rather fair generalization. Most of the scratch or nearly scratch golfers with whom I’ve had the privilege to play have the calmest of demeanors both on and off the course. They all seem to have a bit of the Tiger-Woods-Zen-golf-thing going, which explains a lot about their nearly always impeccable games as well as their complete likeability and sterling characters. There are other times I question the thought.
What about all those other golfers? As another saying goes, you can pick your friends but you can’t pick your relatives. Nor can you pick your fourth if you’re signed up as a threesome and the starter has to shove out the guy who has been on the putting green waiting for a spot for the last hour and a half. You can end up playing with a lot of lovely people this way… on the other hand, some of these last minute additions to your foursome can make you swear off the game forever.
There are the weekend warriors, the transient hacks. In truth, they may be possessed of gentle, beautiful souls but what they bare on the course is anything but gentile. Does it mean someone is an exhibitionist if he pees off the back tee box without stepping even close to the edge of the woods? Or is he just lazy? For the occasional golfer, is an insistence on playing the way-back tees of a 7200+ yard course a sign of determined character or of a dreamer living in a fantasy world? What does it say when your playing companion slices his third drive into the trees and swears a blue streak… oh, sorry, that was me.
Then there is the silent, uncommunicative player. When things go awry and the flailing begins and a golfer remains eerily quiet, is this a sign of repressed emotions, of a dysfunctional character with the lack of ability to deal with reality? Or does this golfer possess the enviable ability to calm himself in crisis?
Composure (called `Stithaprajnatha’ in Sanskrit) is the ability to remain emotionally stable in the event of crisis. Peace is neither a target nor a goal. It is a stage where we are comfortable with the reality. Many a times we are not disturbed with the real problem, but with the worry, “what others think of us”.
~ from The Hindu, India’s Online National Newspaper April 2, 2007
And what should we make of the mutterer? Can we get a glimpse into his psyche in a mere four hours? Do we really want to? Recently my foursome was filled with a middle aged man, down for the weekend, playing his second eighteen holes of the day. A true golfer with an insatiable lust for the game, or so one would have thought. As the holes wore on, he rarely spoke to us but rather at us. Apparently his love affair with the game was waning. Eventually there was a constant stream of mumbled conversation, coherent only to himself, accented with the one handed swirling of his club after every shot. We were left cringing and waiting; would he ever actually throw the club? Would there be a final explosive release of not just the club but the emotions this man was barely keeping under control? With navy blue trousers and matching navy blue shirt under his vest we began to suspect we might be witness to a USPS worker about to go postal. But after the final putt on eighteen dropped, he calmly turned and shook my hand and smiled as if he had actually enjoyed himself the entire time. Who would have known?
After that round, I’d choose the college kid playing in sandals with his bag full of beer in a heartbeat. But it’s hard to tell if you’ve just met.
