Walking the Line

Jonny Cash may have said (because that's how he sung) it best, "I walk the line." Living is walking a fine line between many extreems. Euphoria and saddness. Pain and extasy. Madness and indiference. Dead and alive. We are the tetherball of a pendulum that swings to and fro with every mighty swipe of fate. Life and our place in it is far more delicate than the spinnings of a spider's web. Fargile and malleable are our construction of reallity itself- a mere tower of cards built atop a rickety serving table by an old tremebling man with Parkinson's disease. So... what does all this figurative language have to do with golf.

In golf you have an objective: get the ball in the hole using the fewest amount of shots. But you have further focus. You can't just pick the ball up, and walk it to the green, and drop it into the hole, No, no. You have golf clubs to "assist" you. There are no rules about strategy, course management, or even what your shots have to look like. Yes, there is a rule book, but for the sake of making a point, the aforementioned "rules" are abundant in autonomy. But a player has seen the pros play, at least on TV, and they have, at one time or another, open a golf magazine or book. These mediums of golf information steal the autonomy from golf. You see the pros hitting 64 degree wedges from the fairway, and you never even consider running the ball up with a 5 iron. You read about "how to swing a golf club" when all this is impartant is to swing it. If you "swing" it in the direction of intent, you are in really good shape. The problem is determining where along the objective heirarchy do you focus your attention.

A. Your goal is to shot a low score. How do you do that? Take less swing on the golf course. How do you do that? See you are stuck since nothing directly relates to taking less swings on the golf course.

B. You goal is to make good swings. How do you do that? By understanding your golf swing. But this still doesn't translate to taking less golf shots which is the ultimate objective, because the intent is purely on the swing.

These examples are extreems and every player falls somnewhere between them, The secret to playing golf is to walk the fine line between the two. I can't tell you how to do it, no one can. Discovery happens in the mind of curious.

Bear