There are many steps from the initial puppy love phase to cavalier impatience with pinheads who don't really care, but have pigeonholed you as a "golfer" and therefore incapable of conversation on any other topic.
When somebody discovers Christianity - just to pull a religion out of the hat - there is an initial tendency to be fanatical about it. To talk about Jesus, the quote the scriptures, to spread the gospel.
Golf architecture is very similar in my view - and like newfound Christians, there is a breathless tendency to view all aspects of life through a prism of belief in Christ.
At this point, golfers and Christians will talk all day and night about their favorite obsession to the exclusion of all else because it defines *who* they are as much as *what.*
However, in order to achieve true enlightenment, you must first evolve beyond prosaic recitations of birdies and tales of grief and woe at the capricious hands of the golf gods. Only then, when you achieved a state of equilibrium and perspective, can the study of architecture be undertaken.
By this point, like my father-in-law, who has been preaching from the pulpit for nearly fifty years, you are immune from the temptation of running around with a megaphone screaming "Jesus Loves You!"
He just waits patiently for the fish to come to him, knowing that everything comes in its time and not one moment before.
Personally, I long ago ran short of patience - even to explain golf to a sincerely interested person. To go fifty stories up the food chain and try and explain the brilliance of the Redan to a non-player requires more than I have at the moment.
For years I wrote column after column - some of them terrific if I don't say so myself - trying to "educate" my readership about architecture and "reading a golf course."
Oh, I think 5% of my loyal readers got a lot out of it, but the majority just wanted to read something light, entertaining and amusing.
For years, I would do an annual "Golf History and Trivia Quiz," loaded with questions about old architects and obscure history. The same 9 guys would score perfect or miss one at most - the rest were just guessing. After a few years, I gave up and wrote questions like this:
Who won the Masters last year?
A. Tiger Woods
B. Tiger Prawns
C. Jumbo Ozaki
D. Bebe Rebozo
The point is that almost nobody cared about architecture, so I quit writing about it and just tried to be funny and snide instead. Reader response went off the charts.
So, when somebody asks me about golf architecture, I play dumb and change the topic to pussy or college football.
I see there are a few - including Wayne - who got their wives to play golf, but not grasp the design aspect. In my case, it is quite opposite. The Redhead is a design savant with a frightening eye for golf architecture - all gleaned from being a lurker (sometime posting) and living with me. She has heard Neal and Tommy and Shivas in our living room often enough to actually walk a course and guess what numerical rating I am thinking - even in half and quarter points.
Uncanny really, but she is the exception to all rules, not just this one. If she were to start jabbering golf design to her girlfriends - even the ones who play - they would have her committed.