My desire to set and reach a few serious goals with regard to my golf game took on a pressing importance this year. Along with a few other long delayed aspirations, mostly involving diet and exercise, the fact that I turned fifty this season really lit a fire under me. Quite apropos, many days I wake up feeling like I’ve been shot out of a cannon.
When my brother faced the same notable age, he decided to run a marathon to prove that his youth was not entirely lost. I admit running 26.2 miles is an admirable achievement but it is not, and never will be, on my to-do list. Running from the parking lot to the first tee is more my style. Actually, to me, any round of golf under four hours feels like an aerobic work out. Not to belittle the training of a long distance runner but, after all that work, it really doesn’t matter if you run, walk or even crawl across the finish line; when it’s done, it’s done. The good news is that once completed, the accomplishment is yours forever. I fear my aspiration - getting, and keeping, a single digit handicap - will be a bit more difficult to hold onto, more like running a greased obstacle course that changes ever time around the track.
Golfing my way to a nine handicap or better has been a dream since I first picked up a golf club. I was lucky enough that when I first started out as a new player I was able to play four or five rounds a week and had the additional benefit of nearly unlimited lessons from a very caring PGA professional. I was also young and fit and had the naivety to believe that was all it would take to learn to be a good golfer. It took me years to realize just how wrong I was.
I was pretty proud of my very first official USGA handicap card boasting a 38 index. After that it seemed fairly simple to drop it, again and again for the next few years, leveling out at about an 18 handicap index. That’s when I hit the skids… and that was ten years ago.
Then I turned forty and started another chapter in my life; new residence, new job, new love, new golf course; less time to play golf. Somehow I managed to slowly eek down a few index points and for the last few years have bounced my handicap around in the mid to low ‘teens. Not playing nearly enough golf to be comfortable over the ball, I waffle between wanting my handicap to stay at its lowest point and really preferring it jacked up for the extra strokes I am sure to need. Just like loosing the last few pounds on a diet, it is tremendously more challenging to move your handicap down four or five digits when you feel like you’ve already pared down as low as you possible can. Finding the fat to trim off a 13 is harder than when you weigh in at a 38.
And now… I’m fifty years old. It is only a little less scary to type it than to say it out loud. Now I spend time scanning the golf news for over-forty players on the leader board. I take heart in the fact that there are plenty of seniors playing a lot of excellent golf, not just on tour but at local golf courses everywhere. Golf is a game for life, I’ve always heard. Besides, fifty is the new thirty, which is actually something you only hear from people over 50, never from anyone in their 30’s.
Another of my current objectives is to find the twenty yards I’ve lost off the tee… along with my car keys, my glasses and the ability to sleep through the night. I am completely aware that extra length off the tee doesn’t guarantee a low score but it sure doesn’t hurt. Unless, of course, you consider the Gumby-esque flexibility that used to cause me to continually smack my left ankle with my backswing. If I can find my lost yardage and a fairway at the same time, surely the course knowledge that comes with my wise and wonderful new decade of life will carry me safely through the green.
Leaving behind the wild swings of my youth can only serve to improve my golf game and perhaps my health as well. At my advancing age, I find I heal less quickly from the muscle pulls and bruises that come from that kind of torque apply to my spine. My skin is more susceptible to the thorns and prickers and the poison ivy that haunts the woods that shade my errant drives. I will gladly sacrifice some power to walk, instead, in the sunshine down the middle of the fairway to my ball.
I would like to age gracefully to a nine handicap and to possess the even tempo and steady game that I imagine goes along with it. As I make the turn to middle age, I want to rid my scorecard of triple bogies, to trust my swing and to putt with confidence. I want to be a player.
