Golf as an Escape with Nowhere to Go
I’ll be blunt: the last 18 months have really sucked.
The world has changed to a place that nobody recognizes. When I wake up, I shuffle to my office down the hallway, log onto a computer, and start my workday. Long gone are the days of driving to the office, beating traffic, listening to my favorite podcasts, and trying not to spill coffee on myself. Convenience reigns, but familiarity is absent.
While at the computer, I’m bombarded by reminders of how awful life can be. COVID continues to shake the globe, and people continue to pretend it’s not there. Politics are everywhere, in every flavor you want, enough to drive you mad. World events, like the horrors of Afghanistan, become pawns in a chess match of proving who was “right” and who was “wrong.”
While working, the stresses escalate. Colleagues turn against one another, focused on trivial matters that mean nothing while overlooking years of comradery and progress. You can’t help but wonder what the entire point of it is, considering the alternative: choosing to be happy and to care about what’s important.
After work, the charade continues. Friends want to gather but are faced with the same differences of worldview among each other and those around us. Why doesn’t he have a mask on? No, I don’t want to talk about politics. I don’t know where to stand, to sit, or if this drink is finally the one that pushes me into a program. I want to be left alone but can’t stand not being around others.
Family remains inconsistent, ripe with its own challenges that have always been present but never quite in this way. Deaths mount, health remains a moving target, and phone calls almost certainly equate to bad news. God bless the ignore button.
Golf, however, remains my security blanket. Just as it has for over 25 years, it’s there, waiting, welcoming.
Whether it be an hour at the driving range hitting balls at targets with no meaning, a late afternoon stroll on a par-3 course with a handful of clubs I barely know, or speaking into a microphone to an audience I’ve never met, golf remains the backdrop.
My worlds collide often – golf and everything else – and at times it’s been ugly. I’ve lost friends, gained new ones, argued on topics until my blood boiled, all under the veil of “well, at least it’s about golf!”
I’ve been called an idiot, a socialist, a fraud, a woke liberal, a child, and a fake. Sometimes for offering an opinion on a golf club. Other times for trying to educate. Most times, for simply expressing myself.
This is life right now. This is where we are. This is what we’ve become.
Golf has no ears while offering an auditorium of the grandest sounds you could ever want. It has no eyes yet showcases the most extravagant scenery possible. It has no lungs to support the entity that often leaves us breathless.
I pick up my clubs, adjust my grip, find my target, and make a swing. The result doesn’t matter as much as the motion, of which I have complete control, just to feel alive. Golf will be there until it isn’t, and perhaps even after.
Of that I am sure, and find comfort.
