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Fun: 1a) lively, joyous play or playfulness; amusement, sport, recreation, etc. b) enjoyment or pleasure 2. a source or cause of amusement or merriment, as an amusing person or thing. –adj. intended for, or giving, pleasure or amusement.
“On the first tee, you should have two immediate goals. One is to have fun. The other is to get your mind where it’s supposed to be on every shot…Having fun shouldn’t be so difficult. You are after all, out in the fresh air.”
From “Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect”, by Bob Rotella
Sure, Bob. Now, everyone who is serious about playing golf and who actually has fun while playing raise your hand. If you’re not sure what I mean by “fun”, go back to the dictionary definition and think about it. The description of “serious” would be someone who cares about the quality of the shots they hit and about their score. I know that to me, the words ‘joyous’, ‘lively’, and ‘amusement’ have very little to do with my experience on the golf course. I take playing golf very seriously. There are many, I am sure, who won’t really have any idea what I am talking about because they are anything but serious about golf. I can’t ever remember going out with my buddies and a case of beer and simply playing golf for the fun of it, where each shot, good or bad, was sure to elicit laughter and another chug from the can. If you play this way, God bless you, but I am not writing this for you. Without being somehow altered I am afraid I am doomed to care about how I play. I tend, for better or worse, to measure myself by my performance and my score. When I play I am concentrated and intense, and the word “grind” comes to mind to describe my demeanor on the course. If you were to watch me play, you more than likely would not come away with the impression that I was having “fun”.
Not that I haven’t tried to enjoy the actual playing of the game. I think that just about every golfer who has laced up his cleats for any type of competition has at one time or another experimented with the notion that they were going to “relax and just have fun’. You’ll see it in the newspaper: the tournament leader will say something like “I was being too hard on myself. I decided that it wasn’t the end of the world, and that I didn’t care whether or not I played well as long as I did my best”. The player in question may even go on to win the tournament. What we never see, however, is the follow-up article a few weeks or months later when the same player, mired in a slump, is slamming clubs and firing caddies. The real issue becomes not whether we can have fun playing golf, but can we avoid becoming angry or depressed enough to ruin our chances of playing decently so that we can look back at the experience and eventually be able to call it “Fun”. Maybe, as Bob Rotella states, it shouldn’t be so difficult to enjoy yourself while you are playing golf, but from my experience as a player and a teacher it is incredibly difficult, which, in fact, is precisely why guys like Bob are able to make such a nice living doling out advice on just how to deal with the mental rigors of the game.
Whenever I deal specifically with the “mental” side of the game I always arrive at the same idea. In a nutshell, common sense rules. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that anyone will perform better if they keep their emotions under control and focus only on the shot at hand. You can feel any way you want as long as it doesn’t distract you from golf’s bottom line, which is to get the ball in the hole as quickly as possible.
But could anything possibly be harder than to keep your emotions under control during a round of golf? Whatever you shoot, be it 70 or 100, each and every stroke is followed by an immediate reaction. Do you like it?, do you hate it?, did you get lucky?, did you get screwed?. Whatever the result, you will have an emotional reaction. One of the cruelest things about the game is that you are the only responsible party. You had plenty of time to plan it out, line it up, and hit it, and the result is there for all to see. Each shot is all yours: there is no one else to take the blame, or the credit. And unlike many sports, you have plenty of time to see the results, assess the consequences, and react.
In a normal round of golf, the range of results is astounding, jumping wildly with no warning from the sublime or even miraculous to the loathsome and ridiculous. Just when you think you’ve got something going something awful seems to happen. How then can a normal person hope to keep his emotional reaction to each shot the same?
Anyone can be a great guy when things are going well, and anyone can momentarily have fun when they’re playing what is for them good golf. Playing well gives us many nice sensations and leads us to appreciate where we are and what we are doing. There is a real sense of accomplishment when we do well at such a difficult and challenging task. We tend to notice the beauty of the setting, for there are few places more serene and inspiring as a golf course. We feel grateful and privileged to be out in nature enjoying what is a privileged man’s game. We are focused and concentrated, but at the same time we feel a freedom of movement and a relaxed state that makes our efforts feel effortless. This, we think, is fun.
But then it happens: the first errant shot, the first bad break. O.K., we say. No problem. Just stick with the game plan and go through the same routine. Trust it, it will come back. But it doesn’t. Results go from bad to worse. What was the round of a lifetime disintegrates into a nightmare. Self-congratulation turns into self-loathing. No matter what we try, bad things happen. Our emotional state is in turmoil. Now, show me a person who does not react to this situation and I’ll show you a zombie. How can we deal with such adversity? And trust me, almost every round of golf will at some point test your ability to handle a bad situation. “Golf is a test”, writes Arnold Haultain in his wonderful book, “the Mystery of Golf”, “not so much of the muscle, or even of the brain and nerves of a man, as it is a test of his inmost veriest self; of his soul and spirit; of his whole character and disposition; of his temperament; of his habit of mind; of the entire content of his mental and moral nature as handed down to him by unnumbered multitudes of ancestors.” And it is true that if you want to really see what a person is all about forget their resume`, just play 18 holes of golf with them.
A few years back I played with a prominent Tour player in the U.S Open Sectional Qualifier at Woodmont. He was going along nicely, 6 or 7 under for the day, when all of a sudden a mis-club on a par three led to a double-bogey. Up to that point he had been the model playing partner, engaging in pleasant conversation and being generally very helpful to myself and the other member of our group. After the errant tee shot he tossed his club angrily at his caddie, then on the green castigated my caddie for some phantom movement while he was putting. He proceeded to dump his second shot into the water on the next hole for another double, and we didn’t hear another word out of him other than a few choice profanities for the rest of the day. He did, however, birdie the last three holes to get into a playoff, in which he did eventually qualify. To this day, whenever I see this guy I think of two things, that he was a tough competitor, and that he was a jerk.
Throughout my 30 year playing career my reaction to tough situations has always been to fight and grind. I have had my share and more of tough breaks, bad luck, and crushing disappointments. But I have always been a fighter, and I have very rarely given up. I always hated being told that I “tried too hard”, or that I should just relax and have fun. The game never came that easy for me, and even now when I venture out for a meaningful round of golf it is more like going to war than for a walk in the park. Playing well means a lot to me. The game is so incredibly difficult, and can turn on you so fast, that I have never been able to really relax on the course. I have seen and experienced so many disasters during a round of golf that I know I can never let up and put it on cruise control. One of my students, responding to my question concerning having fun on the course, stated very simply that the only time he has “fun” during a round of golf is when he has a 6 inch putt to finish up a good round. “For 30 seconds as I walk over to tap in the last putt and I know I can’t screw up anymore, that’s when I have fun”.
Most of the people that I teach have no idea how to concentrate for a full 18 holes of golf. They are busy keeping a running total of their score (“I stand 37 up to here”), or are still fantasizing about how they could be this or that if only they hadn’t done that or this. There is only one way to approach a round of golf. Prepare yourself as best you can, try to hit your first shot in the fairway, then go chase it and give your full concentration to the next shot. The last shot is over with, and it is useless to think about any shot after the next one because you have no idea where that will be played from. “One shot at a time” is one cliché that should be learned, remembered, and put into practice. If you can have fun in between shots that’s fine, but when it’s your turn to hit you’d better forget about how much fun you’re having and focus on the shot at hand. When your emotions boil up, be it anger or euphoria or depression, try to remember that one good shot can completely change your entire outlook, and a round of golf can turn around at any moment.
Every shot you hit is a learning experience. If you give a shot your full attention it may just be the best shot you ever hit. It makes no difference if the last 10 shots were pathetic. It doesn’t matter if you are umpteen over par. If there are four holes left there are four holes you can birdie. Every par three is a potential hole-in-one. Every shot that can reach the green can go in the hole. Every putt can be holed. You spend so much time practicing and grinding, but when things go downhill most of us just want to feel sorry for ourselves and find someone to bore with our tales of woe. My father gave me one of my great lessons early on in my life when he informed me, after listening to me moan and groan through the first three holes of the round, that everyone was busy trying to play their own game and that no one cared to listen to me whine about my bad luck, and that I would be much better off to shut up about it and keep playing.
He was right, of course. Complaining is a great waste of time and energy, and since my dad set me straight I try not to annoy anyone with my problems. I have played with people who never seem to be affected by anything. Even the worst breaks wouldn’t make them angry in the least. I have never been like that. I basically play mad. I’m out there in the battle and it’s my goal to not only survive but to win the war. If I’m not performing I do my best to motivate myself, many times with a little self-flagellation, but I always try to be careful not to bother my playing partners.
I am 40 years old now, and I am still learning to be a bit less hard on myself and to take a more consistently positive approach to the vagaries of the game. If you ask me whether or not I have fun playing golf, I will tell you yes, absolutely. If you ask me how I feel when I’m in the hunt and under pressure, I will tell you that I am pumped, exhilarated, nervous, focused, and determined, sometimes angry and even depressed, and if I thought about it long enough I suppose I could arrive at the notion that in some twisted way I enjoy the extreme vacillations of these emotional states. But I definitely won’t mention fun until after it’s all over. Or, should I say, until I’m walking toward that 6 inch putt to close out a good round.