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The sport I love to hate
I love the sport of golf. I hate the sport of golf. For casual, citizen-players like me, I suppose that's par for the course. (I'd say, "No pun intended," but I'd be lying.)
Those of us who hit the links just a handful of times each summer regard golf as the sport we love to hate. It's far too technical and demanding an activity to be mastered in a few outings each year, but that doesn't phase Pollyanna-types like me.
The minute I pull down my visor, slip on my glove, and slide my three-wood from the golf bag, I fully expect to hit like Nancy Lopez. It's not logical, I know, but who said anything about golf is logical?
Pros practice hours a day, for years on end, and still manage to find the rough. I stand beside the tee box, line up a few gum wrappers, take a practice swing or two, and expect to send every shot down the middle of the fairway.
It's delusional, but I can't help myself. Golf is a sneaky sport. No matter how many months it's been since I picked up a club, no matter how many spiders have leased space in my golf bag, I always hit at least one beautiful shot, every outing.
It's dumb luck, but that's the injustice of it all. If I duffed every time, if I sent every drive out of bounds and every chip shot back and forth across the green 20 times, I'd quit coming back. I'd donate my clubs to science and take up dominos instead.
But in the midst of all the embarrassing shots I make, I always connect with at least one perfect hit, every time. Then, incurable dreamer that I am, I decide that I could master this sport if I only had the time. So I keep trying. In the meantime, ground squirrels are hyperventilating from laughter. People unfortunate enough to play behind me are wondering just how many times a woman can cross the fairway before she finds the green. (In my case, get a calculator.)
There are intangible benefits to golf. I'm outside in the fresh air. In this part of the country, fresh air whizzes by at a rate of 20 to 30 miles an hour most days, but that's part of the ambiance.
I'm walking. That's healthy, right? I'm contorting my back and rotating my shoulders in a way that will probably demand corrective surgery at some future date, but this is golf. It's worth the pain.
Sometimes, when I accidentally have a chip shot that rolls within inches of the pin, or hit an iron from the fairway that brings me within a foot of the green, I think I understand what kept Nancy Lopez in the sport.
It's an incredible, against-the-odds encounter with accuracy. It's like threading a needle with a slingshot. It's magic.
Then I hear a splash at the end of my next shot, and understand what kept John McEnroe coming back to tennis. Rage. The desire to beat a tennis ball, (or in my case, a golf ball) into submission.
I'll probably keep golfing, five times a year, until I retire. Then I'll take up the sport full time and really show what I can do. (Hit an exponentially higher percentage of worm-burners, no doubt.)
Golf is a great sport. I love it. I hate it. That probably makes it drama, evoking the full range of human emotion. Or maybe that just makes it golf, the sport I love to hate.