Golf and Life

September 2025

I’ve played a fair amount of golf this summer.  Especially over the last several weeks.  September has been a perfect month for it.  Pleasantly warm and dry.  I’m retired, so I’m almost “required” to play golf.  It’s like an unwritten rule of retirement. I hear, “I bet you’re golfing all the time”, literally, all the time.   But to be honest, I used to play a lot more when I was working.  It was a guilty little pleasure back then.  An escape.  A means to get 4-5 hours away from family, work and the world. A time just to be with my buddies.  And of course, to compete with them. It is really one of the last ways of having a real competition as you age.  At least it was for me.  I sure loved it then.  I still love it now but just in a different way.

After a recent round, I started to think a little more profoundly about golf.  It’s such a great sport.  Maybe the best sport.  At least the one in which you can be a lifelong participant.  As I pondered, I began to see how golf is in many ways very similar to life itself.  The first thing I wondered was why I hadn’t pondered this before now.  I can’t understand why I haven’t written about it.  It’s been such a big part of my life. My family’s life. One I have dedicated many, many hours to perfecting.  Which of course is a futile pursuit. But of course, perfection being unattainable, passable was always enough.

No one that knows anything about golf can deny how playing it is analogous to life.  Golf and life are journeys.  In both, you spend a ton of time navigating hazards. Learning how to stay out of trouble, knowing that you also need to be proficient at getting out of it, once you get into it. Even great players, like great people, get into trouble. There are bunkers, water hazards and out of bounds in golf and metaphorically, in life.

In life and in golf you have to take what it gives you. Even the good things you do can sometimes yield bad results.  And that is frustrating.  The bottom line to both golf and life is that you are essentially competing with yourself and nature. In golf, success is more dependent on your strength of mind and character.  And it’s always nice to get a few good breaks.  Sounds a lot like life does it not?

Both frequently seem so easy, other times almost impossibly difficult. And what works one day often doesn’t work the next.  Neither is really fair, and both have some weird rules. They say that fear and doubt have no place on the golf course.  But, like life, a round of golf is full of these things. And by the way, in each, failure is a given.  But in both, you get up, dust yourself off, and move on.

In golf and life, integrity is expected, but of course it’s not always so.  It is easy to cheat in golf, like it is in life.  But everyone knows about Karma, especially golfers, and they are far too superstitious to think cheating won’t impact their fortunes somewhere down the line.  Like most of us in life, we know that shortcuts all too often end up with negative things happening.  Like someone said, golf is really like a good walk spoiled.  Yet no matter how bad you play, every round has one shot or hole that always brings you back. 

I grew up watching and playing golf with my dad.  It was a nice bond in a relationship that had very few of them. But I have golf course memories with him I will never forget. It’s the only place that I think I was able to impress him.  I certainly got more compliments from him there than anywhere else.  Those one or two times!

I taught my son golf early in his life, and he got better than me very quickly. I never beat him after age 13.  By the time he was in his early teens, his passion for golf was off the charts and his skill level went up quickly with that level of obsession. He went on to be a State Champion and participated in and won his share of tournaments.  He shot a 62 once, which is an amazing score.  For a couple of years, he generally shot in the 60’s whenever he played.  Of course, as skilled as he became, he was still several steps from the professional level.  They truly are elite.  He is in his late twenties and is still an amazing talent. We don’t get out enough together, as life has gotten in the way.  But I hope for more in the near future.   

This week, it's Ryder cup weekend.  Which in the golf world is a huge international grudge match between the US and Europe.  Many of us will be glued to our TV’s.  I have seen so many of golf’s best moments on TV.  Jack Nickolas with my dad, Tiger Woods with my son.  It’s truly an eternal sport.  I hope in today’s immediate gratification world it can carry on that way.  It does take a minute to play it, and it’s not fast paced like everything that is popular nowadays.  What a shame it would be if it faded into obscurity.  Especially because it teaches so many lessons about life.  We would all be better off taking note of this.

Regardless, I’ll carry on playing as long as I can. My skills have faded but my passion has not.  I am stiff and sore both before and after playing.  I usually laugh more on the golf course now than anywhere else.  It is still overwhelmingly frustrating.  I swear at least once a round that I am going to quit the game, but something keeps me coming back for more.  I can always do better, so I play on. Just like life.  We may get old and only be a shadow of our former self, but we still play on.  They are eerily similar aren’t they! Fore!