Boxing Day 2004

These are the darkest days for the unrepentant golfer. I’ve dug holes into my basement carpeting with a MacGregor wedge “practicing” my swing, as well as one can with a seven foot ceiling. Foam practice balls driven into the wall. Putts into a plastic hole (the carpet breaks left- take a line about six inches wide, and it’s faster than it looks).
I surf golf web sites. I idle away time in golf stores. I watch Golf Channel coverage of the Asian Tour, all for want of a club in my hands, and soft bentgrass under my feet.
Having just been gifted with some wonderful things (including the iBook I am using to write this), I find it somehow not good enough. I want a driver, a five wood, new irons, and lessons. Really, the only clubs I feel confident with are my spoon (a Cleveland three wood I got from my father, which I can hit about 260, and straight as a pin) and my putter (twenty bucks used, go fig).
Golf is a Zen koan- the object is to be the least imperfect player around you, knowing that perfection is impossible. It is a game of opposites- to hit the ball far you must hit the ball hard; but if you try to hit the ball hard you will not hit the ball far. The equipment I so unabashedly covet will not likely help me play the game- it is just another impediment to overcome.
Why covet, you may ask? Because improvement in golf is so hard to achieve that you think making a change- any change- will help. Some invariably do, as when I practiced my swing tempo, focusing on rhythm as opposed to mechanics. Some do not help at all (my belly putter comes to mind). Actual improvement does not come from a change in clubs, or balls, or a lucky hat- it does not even come from practice. It comes from within.
This is principally why I golf as often as I do. It triggers that part of my brain that has lain dormant since my childhood days, when I felt deeply the call of the priesthood and the serenity of an unquestioning believer. Golf makes me a better person, the way I used to think that The Church did (capital T, capital C- ever the Catholic). Golf reminds me how imperfect I am; it also reminds me how greatly capable I am, as when I cut a five wood hard around a tree from 190 yards to about eight feet from the pin (missed the birdie, of course, because golf reminds me how imperfect I am ).
Golf gives me a chance to commune with the divine, as God is never nearer than when you are staring down a 175 yard carry over water with no obvious bailout. The shot is within you- you just have to get it out of you. No matter what you may think, getting it out of you has little to do with your clubs, your hands, or your hip turn. To make that shot, stop thinking about how to make the shot. That is nothing short of a leap of faith. A Zen koan, a parable of Jesus.
I do my best thinking on the course. Keeping my body focused on the game allows my mind to focus on other things. I never think about sex while golfing. I do think about work, about art, and about life. This would probably shock my coworkers, as well as most of my friends, who think that sex is on my brain all the time. Not while golfing- the physical being is too busy to interrupt the mind with low concerns.