Golf

I enjoy a good game of golf. When I first started, I thought I was getting a great value. Some people would only get to whack the ball about 80 times for the green fees. I got to swing about 120 times.

I soon learned that one of the rites of passage for a golfer is breaking 100. My score gradually went down a bit, but I was having a difficult time. It was the psychological barrier similar to the difficulty runners had breaking the 4-minute mile.

I was enjoying the game even though I zigzagged down the fairways. I kept score by the number of balls I lost vs. the number I found. I had the knack of discovering lost worlds every time I played the game. One time I met another poor soul in the forest looking for his ball. I almost said, “Dr. Livingston, I presume.”

One day I entered a tournament. The format was “best ball”. This meant that you used the person’s shot that was the best and continued on from there.

The next time I played golf, I broke 100. Why?

When I was in this tournament, our team shot a 73. What was more important was that I saw what I would have to do to shoot such a low score. The next time I was on a course, I was able to visualize the shot I would have to make. Before my goal was to smack the ball as hard as I could every time, usually with disastrous results.

It is important to remember that in order to reach this great achievement, I was aided by three other people. Without them, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. If they had been terrible golfers, my quest to break 100 would have been more difficult.

I learned two lessons from this. The first is to surround yourself with good people. This will make it easier to achieve your goal. The second is that visualizing what you are trying to do is very important. Unless you can see how you are going to do something, you will have difficulty doing it.