While I have long recognized the ancillary assets of golf, from being able to amble across scenic ground and enjoy the company of fellow players no matter how different our backgrounds and outlooks might be, I never forgot that it is first and foremost a sport and that the object is to get the ball into the hole in the fewest number of strokes. As a result, I always tried to score well when I played, whether by myself at the end of a sultry summer day, during a Sunday morning four-ball with my mates or in a tournament that features several dozen competitors.
To be sure, I always strove to smell the roses along the way, to say nothing of the salt air blowing across, say, an Old World links. And I took the time to admire the ocean views and swathes of gorse bushes with their butter-yellow flowers at such places. But I was also intent on breaking 80, or winning the $5 Nassau or making it to match play in a stroke-play qualifier.
... I find myself savoring much more modest accomplishments. ... A perfectly struck putt that hits the back of the hole and then plops into the cup, sounding like an ice cube tumbling into a high-ball glass.
These days, however, I am taking a decidedly different approach. Score has become a bore now that I am what golf associations officially describe as a “super senior.” And I find myself savoring much more modest accomplishments.
A driver smacked down the middle of a fairway, even if it travels only 220 yards. A well-struck iron that is as appealing from an auditory standpoint as a Stan Getz saxophone riff. A perfectly struck putt that hits the back of the hole and then plops into the cup, sounding like an ice cube tumbling into a high-ball glass.
There was a time that I wanted all those things to happen in succession, hole after hole. But as I have lost distance and competitive drive as well as an ability to concentrate on anything on a golf course for more than a few minutes at a time, I have come to realize – and accept – that shooting in the mid-70s may now happen only a few times a year.
In some ways, that’s a bitter pill to swallow, especially for someone whose handicap index hovered between 3 and 8 for much of his 30s, 40s, 50s – and even into his early 60s. But it is the sort of development that most golfers of a certain age need to accept.
The good news is that I continue to play 50 or 60 rounds of golf a year, and on some very good courses in some very nice places. I still relish any time I am able to tee it up. And perhaps more than ever before, I am able to appreciate the good shots I hit during a round.
I just wish they were not so few and far between.
John Steinbreder
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