What Do I Want?

Written on 4-14-18.

     Danielle is here for the weekend, and the main purpose of this visit is for her to go to her first day of work in Pagosa Springs on Monday.  She will meet the others, get a tour of the place again, and observe some of the fitness trials.  She plans on driving back that same day, though, because she thinks she will be done by noon.  We are having a potluck dinner for her in about 49 minutes, so I am taking advantage of that time to do some writing.

     I have much to write about, so I am going to get started.  First, Patrick Reed held on to win the Masters.  He made a gutsy two-putt on the 18th green to seal the deal on his first green jacket.  I learned a few things about him after this major win.  He does not...

have a sponsor for clubs, and he has had some unfavorable issues from his past.  Who knew?  Only he knows what really happened, but there’s no doubting his golf skills, especially now.  Congratulations, Patrick Reed.

     On that scorecard from over a month ago at Hidden Valley, I scrabbled down a few more notes, so I will do my best to extrapolate what I was trying to say.

     I recently binge-watched the entire Chronicles of a Champion Golfer series on Netflix.  It showcased these British Open champions: Tiger Woods, Greg Norman, Tom Watson, Ernie Els, Darren Clarke, and Jack Nicklaus.  I gobbled them up like jelly beans on Easter Sunday.  

     This goes to the point of one of the notes on that scorecard.  I don’t know what made me think of it, but I was probably thinking about other golfers who became “expert” golfers so immediately.  I remembered Greg Norman talking about how he became a scratch golfer in a very short time.  Ugh!  Good for him, but I’ve been playing since September of 1999, and I am not a scratch golfer…still.  

     I wrote something about I wish I could be that guy (fill in any golfer who is amazing).  Then I thought better of it.  I don’t want to be anybody else except myself.  So, I rethought it, and I wrote I wished I could have his game (or her game).  I immediately thought better of that one, too, though.  I don’t want somebody else’s game either.  I want to have my own game; golf is a very individualistic sport after all.  What do I really want then?  I want to be able to shoot their scores with my own game.  There.  That’s what I really want.  

     I want to be myself, have my own game, and shoot the same low scores that they shoot…all the time.  

     The other thought was actually a new golf “sing” thought.  It comes from the song Safety Dance by Men Without Hats when it goes, “We can dance if we want to.  We can leave your friends behind.”

     This fits into my rounds of golf in plenty of situations.  For example, if I want my golf ball to bend seriously from left to right, I simply say in my mind, “You can slice if you want to.  You can bend right towards the hole.”

Or, when putting, “You can break if you want to.  You can break right in the hole.”

     Or, my golf ball might be going too far, so I can say, “You can stop if you want to.  You can stop right there right now.”

     See, it has many possibilities.  

     Okay, it’s almost time for guests to arrive, so I am going to shut this down for now.  Next time I write, I am inspired to write about Becky Porter or my 3-pointer from when I was in college.  I recently had a dream that I was trying out for college basketball again, a recurring dream, so that’s what made me think of that.  

Until next time…