Peter:
I think you pretty much answered the question in post #9 of what the game of golf is if not just with others. No wonder you and I have come to feel we might think some of the same thoughts about golf.
You asked the question if anyone on here has ever played golf alone. I sort of hesitate to admit it but when I think back over the last 38 years of playing a lot of golf I believe I've played more golf alone than I have with others and that includes about 35 years of a lot of competition in formal tournaments.
Playing alone is basically how I practiced for years. I'd hit some balls almost every day and then play alone for five holes or nine holes or sometimes more. Some of the most enjoyable memories of my life of golf is playing alone like that week in Mallow Ireland where I played alone every day at daybreak and then I'd be back before the rest of the family was even up. That week remains the most enchanting I've ever had in golf not the least reason being the nature of that little golf course in Mallow but I do need to understand and probably appreciate that I was always alone and what that might mean to me.
I guess it's never really occured to me until now how lucky I've been to have belonged to a golf club for so many years where one is so able to play alone easily if one wants to (one of the really attractive themes of GMGC is it's never crowded and that's become the reputation of the club and the reason it was started in the first place in 1916). After hitting balls playing alone on the course for however many holes was also some of my favorite times, on reflection. I guess in some way without anyone else around one might start to use one's imagination in interesting ways they may not if others were with them.
Golf also has those two very different formats---eg match play and stroke play and they really are so different from one another even in the context of human competition. What other game has two formats that are so different and are used so much? Probably no other game.
I'd never thought of it until this thread but in either match play competition or stroke play competition I believe I was so much more able than anyone else I know to just play my own game in either one without really concerning myself with what opponents or fellow competitors were doing. In that way human competition got to be more of a study in general percentages to me. In other words, I was so used to my game (from playing alone so much) and I felt pretty confident in knowing what I could do and probably would do but not reacting much to what others were doing probably made me observe better that most others, even good golfers, tend to beat themselves in little ways over a round or tournament, and in competition that was so much my feeling from observation I just sort of waited for it to happen and in most all cases it did.
I guess I must have become that way in competition in stroke play and even match play and it must have become the way I looked at golf because I did play alone so much.
But again, if one is inclined to play golf alone for whatever reasons, and you take out human companionship and human competition from the experience what do you have really but yourself, the golf course, and of course your imagination! In my opinion, imagination is a funny thing, and probably a very powerful thing, including in golf.
I'm not saying playing golf alone is the only thing or even a good thing, but it is an interesting way to go, in my opinion. It sure worked for me!
