What if you couldn't play well anymore?

[Bob_Huntley]

This is something I think about a lot. I used to be a very good player who wanted to play on tour, I even tried but at the time I played and practiced hours per day. Now days I don't practice and I play once a week, I don't enjoy going out and shooting 80, I really don't. Sadly I could see a scenario where I decide to quit because I can't bring myself to hitting the ball that much.

Sam,

With respect, I feel sorry for you.

Bob

[Sam Morrow]

This is something I think about a lot. I used to be a very good player who wanted to play on tour, I even tried but at the time I played and practiced hours per day. Now days I don't practice and I play once a week, I don't enjoy going out and shooting 80, I really don't. Sadly I could see a scenario where I decide to quit because I can't bring myself to hitting the ball that much.

Sam,

With respect, I feel sorry for you.

Bob

It drives me nuts to even think about it but I could see myself getting to that point someday. I guess it's another piece of evidence that this is a fickle game.

[Tommy Williamsen]

Over the years I have thought about this more than a few times.  I have a friend who is a fine singer piano player.  After illness deprived her of the ability to play the piano, she said, "I can still sing." Years later she lost her voice and said, "I can still listen."

I figured that golf has so many different kinds of shots that I could never run out.  If I can't hit full shots I can always practice shot around the green.  I remember telling my wife that when I get old and senile just drop me off at the first hole and pick me up a fews hours later at 18.  

I remember telling my son that when you hit the ball in the woods it gives you the opportunity to be exceptional.  I suspect that physical problems and age allow the same thing.  We just have more opportunity to be exceptional.  There are a few ways to be exceptional.  The first is to vision the shot you need to make.  The second is the ability to make the shot envisioned.  The third is the courage to try.  The later may be the most difficult and the most important because it reveals the character of the person more.

[Mike_Cirba]

You know, the really funny thing is that when all is said and done, does anyone actually remember what they shot last year...5 years ago...10, 20??

Ok...perhaps a few memorable low-scoring rounds do stick with you (I'll always recall shooting under par on the back nine at Riviera a few years back, for instance), but overall, don't we just tend to remember the good shots and forget the rest of the muck and the fuss over time?

I used to be such a card-and-pencil guy as a kid and as I got into my 30s and beyond came to realize that;

1) Nobody was paying me to do this.
2) The realities of life meant that I couldn't play/practice more than a couple of times per week if that.
3) I couldn't have been much fun to play with.
4) I wasn't having fun getting pissed off every time I didn't hit a shot to my "standards".
5) If I was going to spend my free time tense and aggravated, then what was the point?

Thankfully, I decided that I would accept whatever happened on any given day/round/shot and just try to find the glories of the open air, the golf course, the sights, smells, sounds, friends, architecture, and all the other aspects of this amazing game.

Over the past 10 or more years I've played rounds from the ridiculous to the sublime, but I've never had more fun and on some of those days (like this past weekend), I've shot a bunch but laughed like a kid.

It's a game, folks.  

[Mike_Cirba]

On a related note, I had the pleasure of playing golf this past summer with Robert Trent Jones Jr., who was just coming off hip surgery and needed a cane to just walk from his cart.

It was evident that he had been quite the player in his day, but now he was happily content to drive it about 220 down the middle, and take on whatever challenges were presented at that level of distance.  

Although i'm sure it was quite the step-down from his prime, he was delightful, and was as apt to recite poetry before putting out than he was to chip this third shot close from 40 yards on a long par four.

In this game, we can find challenge putting on a rug in the living room.   How anyone could ever tire of it, or be so vain as to give it up because they can't play the same game they did in their 20s is a mystery to me, thank God.

[A.G._Crockett]

AG, I after 35 years of sermons, I can make just about anything to fit in with the lectionary.  I missed the boat with All Saints Sunday though.  There really is some good material here. The depth of the contributers on this site and the wealth of knowledge on a variety of subjects.

Understood; with three passages a week and 35 yrs. experience, you could probably preach on golf every week.  

A few years ago the ushers, unbeknownst to me, started a pool on how many minutes it took for me to mention something about golf during worship.  It took a few weeks for me to find out, but I was suspicious when money exchanged hands before the offering was received.

That is a great story!  I play a lot of golf with my former pastor, now retired, who is a frustrated stand-up comic.  He will love this.  Thanks for sharing.

[Peter Pallotta]

Tommy
I'm quoting this from memory and so I'm sure not getting it quite right, but I thought this line from CS Lewis might strike you:

"If a man loves even one thing, and loves it for its own sake and not for what it can give him, and cares not a whit about what others may think about it, he's thereby protected from most all of the Devil's snares".

Golf does the trick quite nicely, don't you think?

Peter

[Tommy Williamsen]

Tommy
I'm quoting this from memory and so I'm sure not getting it quite right, but I thought this line from CS Lewis might strike you:

"If a man loves even one thing, and loves it for its own sake and not for what it can give him, and cares not a whit about what others may think about it, he's thereby protected from most all of the Devil's snares".

Golf does the trick quite nicely, don't you think?

Peter

Peter, good quote,

It has been a while since I read Screwtape Letters, but I do remember your quote.  I think he adds that we are "forearmed against the subtlest modes of attack."

Golf indeed has done it for me as well.  It has since I was but a lad.  When I was about 14 my Dad was stationed in Berlin, Germany.  I started to get into some trouble.  Dad bought me some golf clubs and drove me to the course every day after school.  It didn't take very long before I was hooked. I don't think it is overstated to say that golf put me on the right track.  
There is something in golf, more than any other sport that can bring out the best in a person.  My love for the game came when I was playing alone on those afternoons.  No one was watching.  There was no one to say, great shot,” or “Boy did that shot stink.”  Just me and the course.  I learned to love the game for itself and not the ancillary by products of companionship, competition, or praise.  To this day I still play many an evening round alone.  It has “protected me from many a snare.”

I think that is why for me score has become secondary. "The play's the thing."