Golf Is Art Not Just A Product

     So, I'm confused. What am I supposed to be doing when I play golf?  Am I supposed to be thinking that I should score better?  Should I be thinking about how far I hit my driver or five iron?  How about this big one, do I spin my wedges.  Oh, and what about which ball I should be playing.  Should I take a lesson or not?  That opens a great big can of worms itself.
     There is one thing that a lot of us have lost sight of. This game, no matter how well we play it is a lot of fun.  How about we put aside all the complexities of the game and all the discussion and just go out and play. Let's go out to the course, simply enjoy the game and have some fun no matter how well we play. Why is that so difficult?
     Golf is like art.  I enjoy looking at a great masterpiece, the product of an artists work. It is meant to be enjoyed for what it is.  Here's what happens.  Experts come along and dissect the merits of the piece almost to the point where a warm, living piece of art becomes cold and technical. That is a shame, because the piece probably was created with the artist's feelings and eye, not by cold technique.  Technique probably played a role, but to concentrate on technique totally misses the point of the art.
     Golf is also like that.  Golf is a work of art that is created by the player. Yes, there is some technique involved but the experience is unique to the golfer. As golfers, our golfing experiences are similar but each golfer experiences the game in their own unique way. It is the golf that is important--the playing of the game and the enjoyment of playing it--not the technique.  Technique is part of the game and has its own beauty, but that's not all there is to the game.
     I have had my coffee so it is time to post this.  Thank you for waiting.  Take a look at our website at Golf Is For Everyone;  http://golfisforeveryonemd.com.  As I said, we have great plans for it. Make sure you invite someone to play golf with you and most importantly, have fun.

Come on, let's have some fun.  The first tee is waiting for us.

Golf Is Fun At An 18 Handicap

      I have a confession to make.  I am an eighteen handicapper.  I have the potential for a better game but that is just where I am. There is one fact that a lot of people in the golf industry seem to overlook in their quest to get me to improve my game.  I have a lot of fun playing golf and when I do play I am very comfortable at an eighteen handicap. This is for certain, I haven't been placed on the Las Vegas Odds Board as the golfer to next win a major and I will never be better than say a fifteen handicap but that is my decision.  For me, the dream of being a scratch golfer has evaporated long ago.  Here is the bottom line in all this. I love the game of golf and I have a lot of fun playing it.
     I totally understand the generally accepted notion that I should want to improve my game.  If you look at my history of scores, I do improve but not for the reasons you would think. I get better the more I play.  When I play more golf than the once every three months that I am doing now, my scores go down.  My "feel" comes back in my short game and that is where I shave strokes off my game. What can I say, its just that simple for me. My index goes down.
     I have seen comments on the fact that most golfers never get better than an eighteen handicap.  As an average golfer who happens to be an eighteen handicap golfer I have a something to say about all this.  First, golf is a game.  It is not life, although to some golfers golf is life. This has got to be put into perspective. Most of us have other important things in life such as families and that wonderful thing called work.  We after all have to devote time to family and pay the bills. This kind of gets into the way of our time devoted to the game we all love. Life doesn't stop and the priorities of life come first. Golf is a game and should be put in its proper place.
     We sometime focus too much on our scores. There is more to golf than a handicap number or a score.  Par is not a number that is going to get you into or keep you out of heaven--whatever your heaven may be.  So, many of us think that our golf scores are part of our identity and forget why we play golf in the first place. There is more to it than just counting the number of strokes it takes to get that little ball in the hole. A score becomes an obsession and we miss the real reason we are playing golf. Concentrating on a score kind of gets in the way of the real reason we play the game and that is for the enjoyment and fun of it.
     How many of us actually stop and look at what golf really is in all of its parts.  Yes, actually playing the game by striking the ball in order to get it into the hole is a very important part of the game, but golf is more than just playing the game. If you play golf by yourself, that is very important and you probably are well tuned into just playing the game.  However, most of us don't play alone. We play with other golfers and we are together for several hours playing and enjoying the game together. We talk about the things in life and swap bad stories.  We tell bad jokes and generally have a good time together, whether we know each other or not.  Some of my best times in golf have been when I hooked up with three other golfers whom I didn't know.  I have shared in the past how I met for the first time two friends from Alberta, Canada at the top of the Palm Springs Tram and wound up playing a round of golf with them.  We had an outlandishly great time, eh.
     Yes, golf is an individual sport.  We don't play it as a team.  That's not to say that we play the game alone.  There is always the group that we play with and the rounds in the clubhouse after the round. There are the stories we can tell and all the exaggerations that come with those stories.  It is more than just a game and score is just a part of that game. I am having a lot of fun at an eighteen handicap. Go out and play some golf.  Have fun, no matter how you play or what your score is.

Says it all.

No Golf Today--Too Cold And Foggy

     When is it too cold and damp to play golf.  The answer to that in my younger days was it's never too cold or foggy.  There was a day in a cold January that I even played in a rare Central Valley of California snow storm. Those were the days my friend and I thought they would never end--Thank you Maryanne Faithful.  Things have changed as I have aged. I confess that I have a different attitude and has gone from a "Let's do this" to more of an attitude of Danny Glover's character in Lethal Weapon when he says "I'm getting too old for this sh..."  Times they are a changing my friend.
     We have had a wet and cold winter here where I live. Today's high temperature will soar to about 48 degrees--Fahrenheit by the way--and we will not see the sun due to a persistent winter overcast that forms and stays until a rainstorm breaks it down. I realize that is a heat wave in some parts of the world in winter, but it is still cold and damp. If you live in the Southern Hemisphere and are reading this you are probably in shorts enjoying the warm weather.  Enjoy it while you can because your winter is coming sooner than you think.  I thought I would throw that in there.  Here where I live, you can still play golf, but you have to bring out the thermal underwear and layer your clothing. You can still play though.  At this point, I prefer 55 degrees or warmer and sunny.
     My wife and I had a tee time for today which I made last week when the sun was still shining. The fog rolled in Friday and stayed for its annual Central California California vacation.  The past few years it went somewhere else, but this year it is back.  Saturday and Sunday it stayed cold and got even colder and foggier, although the fog never got on the ground here yesterday.  It was still cold.  I asked my wife if she still wanted to play even though it was cold.  She said, "Yes, kind of but I am really tired and haven't had an occasion to rest this weekend."  I am getting very good at translating wife speak so I know that she didn't want to disappoint me.  Truth is, I didn't want to go in the cold myself. I canceled the tee time.  We might go see a movie in a nice warm theater. Its cold out there.
     For those of you on the East Coast or who live in areas that the courses shut down because of the snow, please don't get mad at me.  You are probably saying that my wife and I are wusses and you are envious of us here in this part of the country being able to play during the winter.  Well, I am envious of my partner Mark who lives in Yuma, Arizona where the sun is shining and it is probably in the 60's.  We may not see the sun until Mid-March or April here in the Central Valley. Brrrrr...Its cold out there.  I'm getting too old for playing in the cold like this.  I can handle cold and frost because usually the sun comes out even though it is cold.  When it is overcast, dreary and cold like this my bones are no longer taking the conditions. Hey honey, what do you want to see today?

Yep, that's what its like out there today.  Most of all, its cold.