I remember my first hole in one. It is my only hole in one, so it’s pretty hard to forget. I was about 17, on a family vacation in Palm Springs. My dad took us golfing and there was no conflict with the surf since we were 2 hours from the nearest ocean, so my brother and I jumped on it. It was a very short par 3 – maybe 120 yards. I hit the highest wedge imaginable and it looked perfect off the tee. We waited for it to come down somewhere near the pin. It never did. It disappeared. I stood there, jaw dropped, trying to figure out how I could’ve hit the ball over the green. From ecstasy to agony and no way to explain it. I remember thinking that I finally did everything right, and I’m going to go from a birdie to a double bogey? This game isn’t fair. We went behind the green to find it and there was nothing but a road back there. Since we didn’t hear anything, we ruled this out. Confounded, I began the process of being reminded that neither life or golf are very fair and started the hang dog walk back to the tee. My brother decides to take a peek in the hole on the way back – and there it was. Wedged in between the pin and the edge of the cup, there was my ball. It had dropped from the sky and landed straight in the hole. From ecstasy to agony to ecstasy – all in about 5 minutes. And how revealing about my character. The outcome of that moment affected me way too much. Granted – I was a kid. It revealed a lot about me that all rears its ugly head from time to time, even today. Throw me a curve ball or a bad break when I feel I’ve done everything right, and I’ll whine like a little baby! And how many times does golf remind us of that? You can do everything right, hit a sprinkler head, and a snow man hits the score card. You can also do everything wrong, hit a tree, and fall into the bottom of the cup. I did that too once. It wasn’t a tree, but the cloth from the flag. It knocked down a rocket that I skulled with my wedge, and the ball was headed for another county but for the flag, that swatted it down and dropped it in the cup for me. Thank you. A snowman became a bird. Very undeservedly. We’ve all been there. It’s not fair, but it’s real.
Golf isn’t fair. Neither is life. Learning to accept this, both in life and in golf, is a process. There’s a maturity and a wisdom within those who understand this, and golf can help develop both in rapid order.
I’m actually convinced that those who have played the game of golf since their youth have a maturity borne of the roller coaster experience inherent in the game of golf. They’ve learned that they can do everything right and get a bad bounce. They’ve also learned that they can do everything wrong, and get a lucky break. A cart path bounce. A golf ball shot that walks on water and finds dry land on the other side of the lake. A perfect shot that hits the pin and richochets into a sand trap. A drive that’s striped down the middle, only to kick right and find itself behind a tree. Execution and outcomes are often out of alignment. It’s not fair. But it is golf. And it is life too. And many young golfers have made this correlation much earlier in life than had they not played the game. How cool is that? My son’s got it. My friend’s 10 year old son has it. They get it, because they’ve lived it out on the golf course. And when dealt a bad hand in life, they roll with it much more maturely than their less tempered peers. Thank you golf, for teaching us about life.