Most years, March is a pretty good month. To be sure, the weather where I live in Connecticut remains questionable, with snow squalls as likely most days as temperatures in the 60s. And most of our lawns are still brown and strewn with dead branches. But with spring on its way, it is also a time to dream of longer days, greener grass and golf once again played in shorts.
But there’s been a madness to this March that I certainly could do without.
Start with the continuing fallout from Phil Mickelson complaining about the “obnoxious greed” of an organization that has helped make him richer than Croesus. Or the near-constant news reports about the new Saudi golf initiative that Greg Norman is leading and how unseemly that relationship with the Middle East monarchy feels, given its very low regard for basic human rights. Together, those things make golf sound like just another professional sport, with a lot of really wealthy people fighting over really ridiculous amounts of money (see Major League Baseball and the three-month lockout that just ended, or the NBA and its depraved business relationship with China). They also take away a lot of the pleasure of the early-year tournaments and watching the stellar play of up-and-comers such as Joaquin Niemann and Scottie Scheffler.
It has been a brutal stretch, and to keep myself sane, I keep looking for positives.
Most years, March is a time for me to watch bits of golf tournaments on TV, which is what I was set to do at the start of the Players a couple of weeks ago. But then came the rain, wind and cold. As a result, the event seemed to take as long to complete as a seven-game World Series. Just as I settled into my desk chair to read all about the Players on the morning after its Monday finish, news came of that tragic van crash in west Texas that took the lives of nine people, including the coach and six members of the men’s and women’s golf teams at the University of the Southwest. Soon after, I heard reports about Japan being rocked by a major earthquake and the Russian military leveling a Ukrainian theater where dozens of women and children had taken shelter.
It has been a brutal stretch, and to keep myself sane, I keep looking for positives. Such as Sam Woods’ beautiful speech earlier this month as her father was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. Or, Mykhailo “Misha” Golod, the Ukrainian junior golfer who successfully fled from his ravaged homeland to Florida, where he will study – and train – at the David Leadbetter Golf Academy near Orlando. And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy channeling his inner Churchill as he leads his country through these very dark hours.
Things have got to get better.
John Steinbreder
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