I played five holes today, walking. For the first time since April 1985 I walked and played golf. (after a successful hip replacement in Feb.) This post is not about me. It’s about the game. It’s about everything I’ve missed and forgotten about for the past seventeen years.
I walked and played my course Pajaro Valley, where I’ve been superintendent for two and a half years. It’s no architectural gem, but a course with some good holes, some blindness and some quirk.
I walked and saw things I’d never seen, even though I’d been there nearly every day for those two plus years. Most times I’d driven right by the best parts of the golf course on my way to the next shot. The shot was the most important thing there was while riding in a cart. That was the game I was relegated to for so many years. Yes, I think architecturally and see photographically, but today I “saw” the golf course and remembered the game.
I carried a Sunday bag with seven clubs and a balatta ball. I felt the turf beneath my feet, felt the wind change direction several times on one hole, and really felt I was playing golf. I got slightly winded walking up one hole, and wasn’t even upset when I had to go back fifty yards and pick up a head cover I had dropped. On a par five I got warm and took off my jacket. I smelled different fragrances, cut turf, pine, flowers and adjacent berry fields.
Placing foot in front of foot, I gained a different perspective of the hole every step of the way. I discovered new vistas and found little bumps and rolls I never knew existed. . I saw the character of the land. All this I sped by on four wheels in the past.
I guess this post “is” about me. But it’s also about enlightenment, awareness, discovery and the love of a game I’d long forgotten. Golf is a game to be played, and played walking. I will be walking 18 soon, and loving every minute of it! I’m a kid in a candy store, a new man, with a new passion. Golf, the way it was meant to be...walking.