More Self Golfulation

I've had it.  I'm throwing in my golf towel.  This time, it's for good.   In the end, both my selves will be grateful.   My real self, actually, is thanking itself right now.   My false self is trying to regroup.

I had been a pretty good golfer.  I could launch straight and nicely arching drives from the tee box.  I could hit crisp and consistent irons that took toupee-sized divots.  I could pitch and chip short shots that mostly wound up near the hole.  And I was a great putter.  I could almost close my eyes.

But in golf, thine opponent is thyself.

Of course, there are the external challenges that lurk: the bunkers, the swamps, the woods, the ponds, the grasses, the humps, the dips, the mud, the rocks, the winds, the rains, the heat, the cold, the sun, the bugs, the crappy lies that befall unfairly.  Even alligators.  In Turkey, I had to watch out for wild dogs.

And there are two major man-made challenges.  The first is money.  It costs an arm to play and a leg to equip oneself.   Golfers fall, hook, line, and bank account, for the conspiracy that shiny new clubs and forty-five-dollars-a-dozen golf balls make some sort of difference.  They don't really.  The second is other human non-beings.  Not actual human beings, but golf-induced non-beings such as me.

At first, it can be hard to distinguish between human and non-human golfers.  I first saw the non-human variety in the form of my older brother when he was about 16 and I was 12.  I tagged along with him and my father on Saturday mornings at the Purdue University North Course.   My brother would become so enraged with his constant chunking and topping the ball, that with all his might, he would boomerang his golf club down the fairway.  One time after a lousy tee shot, he pounded the ground so hard with his driver that the shaft broke in half.

I know a guy we'll call Morton, who once couldn't get out of a bunker.  He kept chunking his ball about a foot in the air before it would roll back gently by his sand-immersed feet  After his last failed attempt, Morton hurled his sand wedge into a nearby pond.  This, of course, forever enshrined him in the local Golf Hall of Infamy.  A month later, a full four weeks later, someone in the pro shop teased Morton by asking him which brand of sand wedge he would recommend.  Morton recoiled like a shotgun, screamed a shrill expletive, and stormed out.

You can hear laughter on a golf course when regular people play the game.  They cheer at the flukish par and howl at the absurdities.  When an errant shot careens off a tree and plops back into water, they are overjoyed.  But I, like my non-human ilk, just simmer and stew below the boiling point.  I can't laugh at myself, the stubbed chip, the bladed wedge, or the fat iron shot that splashes like a breeching whale into a water hazard.  I may chuckle to dampen my embarrassment, but inside, and I hate to admit this, I whimper.

I know what you're thinking:  Dude, it's just a game.  Oh, how I wish this were true.  Those whose raucous belly laughs echo among the fairways surely feel the gameishness of it all.  Those who are enchanted by the carved landscapes, the lush greens, and the intermixing of waters and forests beneath blue skies can appreciate it as a man-made treasure in nature.  But as I've said:  In golf, at least in ego-driven golf, thine opponent is thyself.

One game, two selves.  There is that rare experience known as The Zone.  In that magical place, an effortless swing, without thought or expectation, finds the core of harmony.  The results speak on the scorecard in par after par after par.  In The Zone, the golfer finds himself in golf god gardens.  But enter into the mind a solitary judgement, for instance, "I am pretty darn good," and the synchronized love between club and ball becomes suddenly a strained thing.  The zen of golf is finding that freedom from the mind's golfishness.  If my mind is a simple and subservient tool, I'm golden.  When my mind takes over, I am a lost cause, and the result is bogey after double bogey after double bogey.

The final blow to ego arrived over the last few weeks on that biggest stage of golf masculinity:  the tee box.  When a man establishes himself as the longest driver, he owns virile superiority, becomes the big dog in the locker room.  While my foursome opponents continued to pound long and majestic drives down the fairway, I began to hook the ball:  low, left, and short.  I compensated by aiming to the right which caused the ball to stay to the right:  high, right, and in the swamp.  I began to strangle the grip when I swung which caused a worsening hook:  very low, very left, and very short.  I hit soft liners to third base.

I consulted the Internet, I scoured golf magazines, I sought the advice of friends, I went to the driving range.  Nothing made a difference.  My scores only ballooned.  As one friend diagnosed, I suffer from LOFT:  Lack Of Fucking Talent.  I could not think my way out.  Think, think, think, fail.  I think, therefore, I am not.

A black cloud infiltrated my world.   I became, inwardly at least, the locker room laughingstock.

The cure for my golf game, I'm afraid, is not to play it.  I must cease this ceaseless self-infliction of golf wounds.  I must snap at last this yoyo string of ego.   I must shrivel instead into the spaciousness of selflessness.  I must bury my golf clubs next to the septic tank.

Well, maybe not my driver.  My white-headed driver.  Call it Moby Duckhook.