Golf and Life–Keeping Score

If I never hear another politician or motivational speaker use football or baseball as an analogy for living, striving, or in celebration of some feat that has been accomplished, it will be too soon. 

It’s time they learn that the only sport that should be used when making these comparisons is—-are you ready for this? Golf. 

Yes golf. That much misunderstood and often derided game is the only sport that approximates life as we know it. 

It has all of the dynamics and frustrations of life, and all of the big and small rewards as well. 

Picking up a golf club and going to a course for the first time is like being born. You play the course as you find it and the ball as it lies. In life that’s exactly what one does as well. 

Golf has to be learned, and can never be mastered no matter how much or how long you play. Life is like that. 

Golf is an individual game where you play against the course, and there is nobody to rely on but yourself. Life is like that in the final analysis. 

Every course is different, and every day on every course is different. In life every place is different and every day in every place is different. 

In golf there are penalties for straying off the fairway too far, or going out of bounds, or landing in the water. Life has its penalties as well. 

Golf is anxiety producing, like many events in life. Just ask anyone who hasn’t played that much what it feels like on the first tee when there is a crowd around and all you hope to is get the ball down the fairway a bit and not dribble it off the tee five yards or so. Life has many events exactly like that such as heading for that first job interview. 

Golf is a mental game in that you can talk yourself into trouble, and you can make mistakes that cost you strokes. Life is like that. 

Golf, like life, can have moments of high drama as well as moments of great hilarity, not to mention humiliation. 

Golf has rules to pay by as life has rules to live by, and woe unto those who don’t know the rules. In golf as in life, ignorance of the law is no defense against a bad score. 

Golf has its share of people who bend the rules, or break them altogether. They jack up their ball in the rough, ground their club in a hazard, forget to count that stroke they thought no one saw, inflate their handicap to gain an edge in the skins game, or a trophy. The latter is known as a sandbagger. It’s a term used to describe those of that ilk. Life has its share of liars, cheats and thieves as well, which accounts for the number of prisons we have in this country. Not to mention some in Congress. 

There are slobs and jerks on the golf course just as there are in everyday life. 

Golf is not fair. Neither is life. 

And remember above all golf is just a game, not life. So the next time you hear some pompous orator pontificating or motivating using football or baseball analogies, tell him to sit down and shut up…he’s using the wrong ones.