Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Learning From A Game

I learned a lot about life from playing the game of golf as a teen and young adult. Probably the biggest thing I learned was not to get caught up in prolonged elation when things were going well, or too down-in-the-dumps when things didn't work out as I had hoped. Just keep plugging along, with mental reasoning faculties in control of impulsive emotional reactions.

When I was sixteen-years-old, I qualified to play in the National Junior Golf Championship, which was played that year in a suburb of Washington D.C. It was Match Play, which means you play against one other person.

My first match paired me against the city champion of Cincinnati, Ohio. We flipped a coin to see who would hit first. He won the coin toss, and proceeded to hit the ball far down the fairway. Then, instead of waiting for me to hit, he and his caddy charged off down the fairway, as if I didn't exist! I was the only person in the tournament who carried his own bag. What, I'm sixteen-years-old, and can't carry my own bag? Give me a break!

This guy continued to ignore me all the way around the golf course, so I played very deliberately (slowly!), and won the match.

The next day I lost my match to the city champion of Seattle, Washington. We were tied coming into the final hole. I had a short putt to tie him. In those days the rules of amateur golf prohibited players from fixing divots before putting. There was a large, unrepaired divot between my ball and the hole. After "reading" the green, I determined that if I putted around the divot, I would miss the hole; so, I putted staight to the hole, and the divot caused my ball to careen to the side of the hole, and I lost the match.

When the tournament was over, I got a cool tour of our nation's capital, since I had one aunt who was the secretary to the Secretary of the Army, and another aunt who was secretary to a U.S. Senator. The tour included a civil rights debate in the Senate, the White House, the Pentagon, and, of course, the Smithsonian.

I returned to my home in Iowa the same way I traveled to D.C.: all by myself on a train. It was a very cool experience.

I did go to college on a golf scholarship, but was never good enough to play on the pro tour, and did not want to be a country club pro. After becoming a born-again Christian, I got interested in a career in social work, and haven't played golf in over thirty years! Nevertheless, I learned a lot from the game of golf.

1 comment:

Terri Wagner said...

It's funny how the lessons from a sport's activity can teach you so much. I was a very small very young girl when I got involved in a softball team my one and only time. I was pretty bad, but the only game my team lost was when I wasn't there. So from then I was the mascot. It made me feel a part of the team and gave me a purpose thanks to a sensitive coach who pointed this out. We went on to win first place in our division. I've never forgotten how important it is to make people feel a part of something, especially when they aren't particularly good at it.