Golf & The Game Of Life

I had a great experience this morning at the lake and I wanted to make it my Sabbath day post. This morning I woke with the light. It was streaming into my bedroom as if it were noonday but when I looked at the clock it was barely 6:20 am. Since it had rained the day before leaving a serious chill in the atmosphere I was exuberant to sense the clouds were gone and some warmth had crept in with the light.

As I lay there I hadn't even caught a glimpse out the window when something assured me it was going to be a gorgeous day. I snuck out of bed as not to wake Man With A Drill.  I dressed, choked down my Claritn, inhaled my Rinecort (it's allergy season which requires me to be a druggy), grabbed Goliath and his leash and headed for the green.

It is here I must declare my love for Bear Lake! I come here every chance I get because of how it makes me feel on the inside once I arrive. You could say I eat, drink, sleep, and breath Bear Lake. When I come to this place, it feels like life sustaining air to my soul! It is a strange phenomenon; I get in my car and begin the drive here and once I cross over the last mountain, it is as if every problem I own just stays on the other side. I think it's a magic place with a magic line and once I cross over it, I'm not allowed to be anything but happy. Bear Lake is the one place on earth where my entire being feels at home. Just being here creates a sense of peace in me I cannot describe. The minute I arrive my entire existence becomes drenched with it.

I love it when I'm here and I can step out my front door and go for a walk on the golf course. I love having a lawn in front of my cabin that I don’t have to mow and water! Goliath and I quickly made our way to the edge of hole #2 and I entered into my state of bliss. I stopped and scanned the horizon looking for golfers. I didn’t want to get smacked in the head with a ball. All my hopes of finding no humans on the course rested now on the fact that it was early and it was Sunday. People were sleeping in still weren't they? Spring doesn't seem to bring out the earliest golfers, maybe because it's still a little cold. I only saw one cart off in the distance so I was thrilled that basically I had the whole place to myself.

I looked up to get a glimpse of the sun barely peaking over the horizon now. I hung to the side of the fairway as I made my way down over the hill. I think a lot when I walk and my feet felt damp now. I noticed the dew on the tall grass was still icy. The tall blades drooped and bent with the weight of it. Sometimes that's how my thoughts feel in me when I'm walking.... heavy.

I could see the flag on the green now. That’s when I got thinking how this hole, is a five par. “So the idiot that designed this course thinks I can get to this hole in five shots” I conjured. "Ya, maybe in my next life!" That was when I got to thinking about my golf game and how I’d like to get to any hole in five shots!

Hole #2 on this course is long, it curves dramatically and you can't see the flag until well after you've hit your ball off the tee. When you stand at the tee box, you just have to imagine where you think the flag is and line up the best you can. We won't discuss the myriad of directions your ball can go in even if you lined up perfectly. You know all of those directions my ball usually takes! Whether or not your ball goes straight is an entirely different frustrating subject of golf that I could spend pages and pages on. I’ll spare the reader.

Besides the large hill that slopes downward, hole #2 has a water obstacle. It has a nice wide ditch that belts across its middle with large willow trees on both sides and a thin narrow crossing you can walk or ride your cart over. After that little precarious obstacle you have a sand trap to navigate. So as you can see it's not an easy hole to par.

As I walked I thought about how my son and his wife and I had golfed this hole yesterday for fun and even though my son said we weren't counting, serious golfers always count and besides how would I know if my game was improving if I didn't count? I knew I got a lousy ten on this hole the day prior and yes I counted every crummy stroke.

My game started out poorly with my ball getting absolutely no air off the tee. It ran along the ground like a snake in the grass, slowing with every blade it rolled over. I got very little distance and my next hit did the same.

Then my unskilled hands drove my ball into the ditch filled with water and I had to fish it out. My daughter-in-law said it was a good thing my ball was pink (her favorite color) because it was easy to spot in the muddy silt. I thought that the reason I was probably playing so miserably was because what serious golfer uses a pink ball? Well, I don't know, but it was a thought.

I no more got out of the ditch when I lobbed it right into the sand. At this point I was dying to use my favorite "H" word but this was just for fun right? My son could see my frustration. “We're just practicing Mom,” he said. I tried to lighten up. It took me two more strokes to get out of the stinking sand and up onto the green only to find my ball a few miles away from the flag. I was sighing now, breathing heavy and muttering under my breath. So like I said, I finished up the hole with three putts and a lousy ten.

Now as I was walking past the hole I was thinking over my game and my spectacular score I had gotten the day prior. I thought about how much I love the game of golf; really I do, even though it might not sound like it.

I was walking a little faster now as Goliath tugged at the leash. I quickened my pace as I headed up the hill to hole #3. I just kept thinking how much golf is really symbolic to the game of life. In golf I am possessed with an OCD type of intense determination to "get it right" and I just rarely feel like I do. Much of the time I feel the same in the game of life. My thinking is sometimes a curse. Most of the time in fact whether it’s golf or life, it just feels so d@#* difficult to be consistent with everything it takes to get a par in either one. Sometimes I get so frustrated with both!

I continued on my walk down the side of the course making my comparisons with life and golf all along the way. It is said that one of the most difficult things to teach a golfer is to slow down their swing. Golfers have this false idea that if they swing faster the ball will go farther. Not so! I thought about that and the speed at which we travel through life. We get so caught up in a frenzy of rushing, hurrying to get more, have more, and do more, thinking somehow it’s going to make us happier, and like golf it just isn't so!

My surroundings felt peaceful now as I walked and settled into my pace around the course passing each hole. My pace slowed and I stopped at the crest of the hill on hole #7. Everything was up hill from here to the end, just like life I thought. Oh they say you are on the down hill side of the mountain after you turn fifty but in caring for my mom who is 87 I have seen that her life is anything but down hill. She is alone, she is growing feebler each day, and any task she has to do is anything but easy. Every day she fights to maintain the ability to do the most trivial chore. No, her life is anything but downhill and I would say she is on the steepest part of the climb right now as she nears the end. I think life is peaks and valleys. You might get a rest now and then from the intense climb but a good percentage of the time life just feels like it's up hill!

I stopped to reflect on my ideas. It was then that I started to drink in the beauty of the morning. Everything around me was dressed in a new fresh deep green. Spring is a spectacular time of the year in the Bear Lake valley and today it felt almost as good as shoe shopping. Any woman understands the rush of buying a brand new pair of shoes. Walking around the course and enjoying the morning made me feel like I had just bought a brand new pair and seeing the sun on everything felt like I'd just cracked them out of the box. The morning felt new and exhilarating as well as comfortable.

The beauty of everything deepened my thinking about the game of golf and the game of life. I thought about life with all of its demands and pondering over it all really made me stop and take stock of everything around me.

The intense blue in the sky now seriously complimented the deep green on every plant and tree. I looked out over the lake it was a vibrant blue. The sight was intense and it was then that my senses all kicked in at once. I could hear the birds, the magpies and the chickadees; I could smell the morning on everything and I turned my head just in time to see two fat ground hogs scrambling to get away from Goliath. They stopped and perched on their two hind legs to get a better look at us right before ducking into their hole. "Awe," I said to myself, “This morning ... I’m slowing down my swing in life.” It felt good.

Goliath and I continued past the big ponds and up the steep incline. Goliath was breathing heavy now and I was panting too. I wasn’t packing any clubs and I was so glad. I thought about the things I pack around in life that feel heavy, like grudges and negative thoughts and all those stupid things I hold onto that do nothing but pull me down. I made a conscious vow to leave them all behind now and let go of them as I walked.

As I neared the top of the last hill I saw two older men enjoying their game of golf. They were coming down the first hole in their golf cart and I was now on the top of the last hole. Suddenly the cart stopped and one man climbed out. He was hunting for his ball. He had no clue where it landed, yet I could see it perfectly, I had the vantage point, I was up higher and could see everything.

I hollered at him but he was oblivious as most men are sometimes – aw ahhahaha! Sorry! After yelling and screaming at him I decided to whistle as loud as I could. He turned to look at me. I’m sure he was thinking "Who is this crazy woman, and what is she doing?"

I pointed to his little white ball as I yelled, “Over there.” He started walking but still had a long way to go to get to it. He kept stopping thinking he was close. I yelled again, “Dead ahead, twenty five feet.” He picked up his pace now. When he got to his ball he looked up at me and belted out, “Thanks, I would have never found it.” “No problem, glad to help,” I clambered back at the top of my lungs.

I turned to pull Goliath out of some hole he was investigating and then the symbolism hit me, you know, God and His vantage point. I thought about His knowledge and how He personally knows each one of us. I thought about how he designed the course, how He knows it better than anyone. I wondered how many times He has wanted to yell at me, throw a golf ball at my head maybe, you know, to get my attention so that He could let me know He can see what I can’t! How disappointed He must feel when I fail to hear him, turn to Him, and trust Him. How lost I get when I don’t look up and listen and my life takes a slice into the rough because I didn’t. And how hard I struggle to hit out when all the time He is right there still hoping to help me if I would actively follow His directions.

I thought about all of the rules in golf, like those stupid white stakes that signify if you are a golfer, you are out of bounds. I thought about the white stakes in my life – God has given me boundaries. Those boundaries consist of living within the principles of the gospel. I thought of the times I disobey, drifting into the out of bounds. I thought of the penalty for doing so - in golf it's stroke plus distance. I really pondered about the symbolism of all that; all those times I've had to pick up my ball and walk clear back to where I first hit it. I thought about how low it makes me feel when I have to take a stroke for going backwards in the game. I thought about having to place my ball in the same stupid spot and hit it all over again. I hate it when I have to cover all the same ground I've already covered and it feels no different in life.

It feels me with fear, placing my ball in the same spot I just hit from; the same gnarly spot I just got out of. It feels me with fear knowing I could make all the same mistakes I made before and possibly end up in the same predicament all over again. It's no different in life, trying to re-learn the same thing over and over again. I have to pick up the same principle and take it back to the beginning, place it down and start again. Oh just thinking about it is exhausting!

I've had so many times in my game of golf and in my game of life when no matter how well I thought I swung - I have veered out of control and ended up in a bad lie. All this thinking though at least led me to think about the sweet spot on any club and whether or not it's forgiving. One thing I know for certain is that when it comes to anything in life God is so much more forgiving than any golf club.

I walked slower now as I made my way down the last dogleg home. I silently prayed my way home from this point on. Gratitude was expressed in every thought. I wanted to hug my Heavenly Father tight, symbolically wrap my thoughts around Him for all the times He’d brought me out of the rough, all the times He’d shown me where to symbolically find my ball. I wanted to thank Him for rescuing me, leading me, guiding me through every obstacle on the course and for gently reminding me to trust Him. Most of all I wanted to thank him for providing me with the ultimate plan that forgives every bad hit and gives room for improvement in any lie.

Golf is really a lot like the game of life. Sometimes I’m so afraid to swing and after I do I just want to scream the “H” word. But today I was reminded ---- just obediently follow through, that is the most important thing I can do in the game of golf and life---- follow through! We must endure to the end of the game! I was also reminded to enjoy it while I'm swinging. Life is to be enjoyed, not just endured. Today I was so happy to be reminded to slow down, just keep swinging, remember the basics of my gospel grip, smile while I keep practicing and above all, always listen for God’s sweet voice, that voice with the vantage point. It was a great walk today!


(While this article was just posted, it was written 5/26/08)