Golf

Introduction: I am Not Here to Bore You

Nor am I here to whinge about golf not getting the respect it deserves as a “sport.”

Nor am I here to proclaim that it is the true test of an athlete’s skill.

Nor am I even here to convince you to play golf—likely, this will achieve the opposite outcome.

I am here to dissect golf and inspect its innards in a personal attempt to understand why it is one of the most maddening, most addictive, and most divine experiences available, legally, on any random Sunday morning.

Let us begin.

Important Thing to Understand About Golf:

Everyone Sucks

This is, of course, not a blanket rule. There are pro golfers out there who do not suck. But, as a heuristic, it is correct to assume that any player you are matched up with sucks at golf. Because, I have learned, the average golfer sucks at golf.

Like, not just kinda mediocre. I’m talking digging huge chunks out of the ground while the ball rolls seven feet to their left. I’m talking putting the ball so far past the hole it rolls into the cart path. I’m talking smashing a drive into a gaggle of geese two fairways away. And these “average golfers” are not amateurs. These are people who have been playing golf for decades.

Case in point: I am one of these people.

Though, and this is another truth in golf, you will never know, talking to a golfer, that they suck. They will speak in tongues, using phrases like: hit it thin, sliding putt, dog leg, skulling the ball, greens in regulation, etc. They will possess arcane knowledge of courses they have never played. They will know what a stimpmeter is, and would likely defend its utility. They will understand which way grass grows. And, most importantly, they will know Golf Etiquette.

Now, this is a key point. Golf Etiquette is something which must be gained through real-world experience and social pain. You cannot know the number of ways in which you can “mess up” someone else on the course, until you have done them all. Some fun ones that you will probably do (read: I have done).

• Walk directly on the path where another person’s putt is likely to go, (even though you are tromping all over the green, where other peoples’ balls will eventually go).

• Stand directly behind a person when they are hitting a bell. The proper thing is to stand perfectly still to their front or back, out of eyesight, like hiding from a rhinoceros.

• Don’t make loud noises during any point of a person’s swing, so they don’t have anything to blame it on when they duff their ball under a shrub.

Golf Etiquette is the mortar keeping the edifice of golf together. It is the only way to know that you’re doing something right, consistently, while the rest of your game is as reliable as your great-uncle with the gambling issues.

So, if you are able to get on the tee, grab a driver, and hit the ball in a way that does not immediately cause it to duck hook thirty yards into the woods, you are an average golfer. Heck, you might even be good.

Important Thing to Understand About Golf:

Anyone Can Hit a Pro-Level Shot

If you are a conscientious objector of golf, you will likely not understand the allure. From the outside, golf does not seem terribly enticing. It takes half a day to play a round. You hit a stationary ball. Most of the people who play are old, grumpy, or, most likely, both.

Well, I can tell you clearly why people play golf. And I can tell you because it is a singular moment which every golfer has experienced. We will call it The Shot.

The Shot is not the same for any two people. At its core, The Shot is when what the player has imagined actually happens in reality. For example: you want to hit a tight little fade juuuuust through a two-foot gap in the foliage of that massive oak you’ve jonked your ball under. So you take your 7 Iron back—just like you have every other time—and then… you do. The ball flies through that narrow chink in the foliage, it wraps around the green and then rolls up to about three feet from the pin.

This is when you think to yourself: My God, I might just be a golf genius. That you might have what it takes to achieve the rarefied term “Scratch Golfer.” This might just be the first step upon a long path to golf glory.

And then you push your putt six feet by the hole and take two more putts to get it in.

What I mean to say is, there comes a time that you will actually hit the ball like you hope you would. And it is absolutely exhilarating. You watch the ball hurtling away from your club and you are filled with the primal joy of sending an object far from oneself to exactly where one wants it to go. The same titillating jolt of joy passed down to you from the Cro-Magnon man who once speared his first antelope from across the plain. And golf is a game that involves the farthest and most precise sendings available in all of widely enjoyed sport.

So, this ambrosia of “the exact shot I wanted to hit” is what all golfers yearn to sup. And that takes us to our next point.

Important Thing to Understand About Golf:

It is Literally Addictive

A book that I have come back to in my head more often than I expected is Drugs Without the Hot Air by Professor David Nutt. In it, Nutt and his team break down basically all the most widely available drug compounds: Nicotine, Caffeine, Alcohol, Marijuana, MDMA, Methamphetamine, Cocaine, Acid, Psylocibin, etc. and talk about them frankly. How detrimental are they to your health? How addictive are they? What’s their cost to the user? To society at large?

And, in this book, there are two traits that the most addictive substances share. One: they have a high spike of pleasure. And two: that spike dissipates quickly. Thus, the addictive quality of these drugs is in the user trying to re-achieve that heavenly high high, over and over again. Nicotine has this. Cocaine has this. Heroine has this. Golf has this.

And, in golf as in drugs, that first high hits you hard.

Further, every single shot is the opportunity to experience that yearned-for rush of dopamine. Every drive an opportunity to just lace one down the fairway. Every wedge an opportunity to spin it back into the hole. Every putt a chance to roll one in from downtown. There’s a reason why golf pros will often twirl their clubs after hitting a particularly good shot. It’s hard not to when it just feels so damn good.

Though, perversely, there is another drug similarity here. The more one uses a drug, the more the brain builds resistance to the drug’s effects—which is why say, a seasoned drinker will feel tipsy after five beers, while a non-drinker will have two and be inviting you to their daughter’s wedding (You’re a good guy, y’know! A real… A real! Yeah! Y’know?!). Similarly, it may take five beautiful shots in a row to put a smirk on a seasoned golfer’s face, where the novice just needs one pure iron to make their entire week.

Important Thing to Understand About Golf:

The Ledger of Good vs. Bad

This is perhaps the most sinister aspect to Golf’s allure, and it comes from behavioral science. For a squishy human like you or me, it is significantly more painful to lose something than it is pleasureful to gain something. This has been dubbed Loss Aversion, and is a well-documented cognitive bias.

So, invariably, the shots that tend to stay with you as a golfer are not the good ones. But the missed putts. The errant shots that just leaked into the water. The too-much-club that sailed over the green and into the shit. Those sting. And the sting lasts longer than any good shot’s salve.

This also means that, because of the cumulative nature of golf scoring, you can have a round going where you are just smoking the ball. Shot after shot. Maybe you hit a ball or two loose but nothing disastrous. And you get into the clubhouse high fiving, shaking hands, offering a round of drinks, only to review your score card to realize, Oh My Fuck, you could have had your best score ever if you just hadn’t missed that two-foot gimme on the 6th hole. And then, poof, all that good play is basically out the mental window. All of those excellent shots turn to squat dung hills before the hulking monolith that is the one missed putt on the 6th.

This, my friends, is pure Golf.

As Vonnegut put it, “Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are ‘it might have been.’”

Important Thing to Understand About Golf:

It is Purpose, Distilled

In a narrow sense, golf represents what all humans crave: purpose. And I am one of those crusty, jaded people that believe humans have no inherent purpose, and can manufacture their own. Simply choose a goal, any goal, and work towards that goal. Choose to stack rocks beautifully. Boom, purpose. Choose to become the fastest F1 driver. Boom, purpose. Choose to want to help those less fortunate than you. Boom, purpose.

In golf, the purpose is to hit the ball gooder.

And though golf might seem like it would be a long, slow slog. It is not. Payoff of the sport’s purpose, I’d argue, is more immediate and consistent than any other sport. In tennis, you have to win the match. In soccer, you might score a goal, or two, in any game. In golf, every single swing is a synecdoche of the sport entire.

Every time you size up the lie, contemplate the distance, factor in the wind, choose the club, address the ball, and attempt to hit it to the place you want it to go, you are engaging in the sole battle of golf. And, with each swing, you can either win or lose that battle. Which is both glorious and daunting and what makes golf so special to idiots like me.

So there you have it. Basically everyone is bad at golf. But anyone can be good at golf. And it feels so, so good to be good at golf that it’s hard to stop once you start. So, maybe don’t play. But, if you choose to, let’s see if we can book a tee time.