Golf, to me, has become an addiction. This is using the common person’s understanding of addiction, rather than any clinical definition. It is that thing in my life that forces me to decide where and how to spend money. New handle for that back door at home, or…fresh sleeve of shiny new golf balls? Dinner and a movie with the wife Saturday evening, or…a round with the fellas for skins Sunday morning? Hmm.
I speculate that it is a personality disorder leading to subtle masochism in the hope of ultimately attaining that certain euphoria. You know the one, that moment when you are posing for the imaginary Golf Channel cameras in order that they might accurately capture your glory in digital imagery. Your take-away, backswing, tempo, timing, pause, shift, downswing, contact, and follow through all came into alignment with the I-Ching and the gravitational pull of Venus at just the right moment in order for you to knock that dimpled sphere tight from a hundred and seventy three yards, even though when you planned the shot you were guesstimating one sixty-five…or so. All this results in your playing partner grinning on your behalf, giving a low whistle as he tugs on his pull-cart and commenting that the shot was, “The One That Keeps You Coming Back.”
What is that, The One That Keeps You Coming Back? To the layperson (otherwise referred to as the non-golfer) that would make no sense at all. Why wouldn’t you come back? You say you love golf, right? So, coming back is a foregone conclusion, is it not?
To these uninitiated souls I say, “Nay!” This pairing is the purest definition of a Love-Hate relationship – an unequal balance. You have on one side of the scale the accumulated shanks, duffs, skulls, yips, duck-hooks, banana-slices, thins, fats, hosels, toes, pushes, pulls, yanks, and an uncountable number of other terms all used to describe the various ways in which to not hit a golf ball. Those errors, large and small, that have driven golfers of all ages and genders to drink, cuss, spit, kick small dogs, or wrap their seven-iron around an offending Maple or Fir and swear to their favorite deity to never-ever pick up a club again.
On the other half, intimately intertwined with the mistakes like Shakespearean lovers, awaits that purest of personal joys that comes with a single episode of The One That Keeps You Coming Back.
That shot, that ecstasy, is accurately if inadequately referred to by the character Roy McAvoy in the movie Tin Cup as, “The tuning fork going off in your loins.” It is a sense of all things being good, of colorful butterflies hovering over a flower filled meadow combined with the power of a Rocky Mountain spring thunderstorm and is the purest essence of golf.
It is as enticing as a wobbly-worm on a Texas rig to a fat bass, a surfer’s leg to a hungry shark, or new shoes to Paris Hilton. This inner drive, I have deduced, is the product of mankind’s eternal quest to achieve the ultimate truth and to attain a tiny piece of perfection in this imperfect world.
Therein lies the allure, the foundation for the addiction. To achieve that state of Nirvana again, without chemical intervention, is the real goal. To score better, be more consistent, lower your handicap, putt, drive, or play your irons better, all fall under the umbrella of accomplishing, once more and as often as possible, The One That Keeps You Coming Back.
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