Life is full of ups and downs. Just by living your daily life, you experience moments of joy, concern, loss, sorrow, disbelief, tragedy, triumph, and pleasure. A well-rounded person is able to deal with these emotions without experiencing extreme periods of euphoria and depression when the next moment brings a disaster. Golf will prepare you and teach you to do this better than any other activity.
The first thing that golf presents you with is a challenge. As easy as it looks, you will find out quickly that the simple act of striking a golf ball with the head of a golf club is not that simple. You must learn to keep your body and your mind focused while moving in unity at great speed. Then you are faced with the challenge of hitting the ball where you want it to go. You find that delivering the club head to the ball at even slight angles can produce disastrous effects. You have to do things right for the ball to go straight. You find that applying massive amounts of undisciplined force produces much worse results than no force at all.
Then, as you begin to play, you find that hitting the huge fairways and greens is deceptively hard. Your frustration mounts as the things that looked so easy seem to be out of grasp. Sometimes you feel like quitting, but for some reason you shoulder on, unsure of what the outcome will be. As you play with people and they ask you your score after each hole, you are tempted to not count a shot that seemed somehow unfair. The look from your playing partner when you say, “6”, quickly causes you to say, “Oh. I mean 7”. You remember the shame the entire week.
As you become better, you begin to experience moments of triumph as the shots that you attempt start to find their mark. Then, just when you were doing so well, disaster strikes and you can’t seem to hit the broadside of a barn. Your smile turns into a rage and the more you rage, the worse things get. You calm down to a frown and things go a little bit better.
You get better, you get your first birdie, and you jump up and down for joy. Your next shot off the tee goes into the woods or out of bounds, but you are hooked and your disappointment doesn’t last as long because by now, you’ve learned that the only thing you can do is try again.
You stop wasting your time on things like going to bars after work or rushing home to plop in front of the TV or play video games. You are so hooked that you spend hours playing alone into the twilight trying to finish those last two holes in the dark. You keep your score and the first time you don’t do it honestly, you realize that the only person suffering from your cheating is you. You don’t find any pleasure in telling people you shot a 44 for 9 holes when you shot a 48. You feel somehow noble when you say the words, “Forty-eight”.
You learn that every time you play, a challenge is given to you and you look out onto the course with a competiveness in your sole that you have never experienced. You grin at the thought of having to par 18 to break 80. You hope that you get the chance. You want to be the first one off the tee, but you offer the opportunity to your playing partners.
For some reason you continue to play for a few years. Then one day you do something, or someone else does something, that makes you realize that you are not a liar, cheat, thief, or rude and you are generally calmer in moments of crisis. You find yourself eager to tackle hard tasks and you take pleasure in doing things right whether anyone else is around or not. You want to do it the best. You know that the harder the challenge is, the better you are going to feel when you meet it. Things that used to seem hard now seem easy, and you don’t struggle as much while you do them.
Best of all, no matter how bad or hard things get, you don’t quit.
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Web Smith has been writing and developing documentation for technology companies for over 30 years. He has been the founder of 7 technology companies and created the collateral that launched them. He has played golf for over 30 years.
He is an industry consultant and currently owns ewebsmith.com, ewebtelecom.com, and ewebproducts.com. He runs his own copywriting business from websmith.com/copywriting
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