Life on the Golf Course and The Shot Before Us

Phil Mickelson at Oak Hill East Course, 11th Hole, during 2013 PGA Practice Round

The game of golf can be a useful life teacher.  My son-in-law and I attended a practice round of the 2013 PGA Championship at Oak Hill Country Club's East Course.  On the par 3 11th hole we watched as Phil Mickelson gave the other golfers in his practice round foursome (his students) a lesson in hitting out of the thick rough that surrounds this expansive green and engulfed the ball which is not visible in this view.  I remember him explaining in great detail, then demonstrating the need for the golfer to sweep the club through the thick grass to loft the ball onto the green.  Technique is essential for success in the game of golf.

During this COVID-19 pandemic, the combination of reduced business related travel, including the daily one hour round trip to the office, has opened up more time to enjoy friends, the outdoors, and the challenges of golf.  As all golfers know, it is a game where being able to consistently execute the proper technique is the key to a more enjoyable round.  The reality of golf, for me, is quite different.  Other than the tee box, where all golfers begin a hole with equal opportunity, our second, third and so on shots are often made from many degrees of challenging locations on the course.  But the shot we have from those locations is the shot before us, the shot that we need a strategy for and the shot we need to execute.

Golf is a mentally challenging game, where I find myself constantly needing to forget about the last shot and the last hole to focus on the shot before me.  In yesterday's golf round I found myself in many locations on the course that I didn't want to be, but my ball was in the field of play and if I was going to follow the rules of the game I needed to hit my next shot from that spot.  I couldn't change the tee shot that drifted left on a dogleg par 4 hole, so I took the suggestion of one of my golf partners and played down the left side.  Playing the hole in that manner required that I hit my second shot over some trees, so I played my second shot with the 5 wood, instead of the 3 wood, to gain loft at the expense of distance.  On a couple of other holes I needed to hit a low shot to avoid tree branches, so I played a long iron, addressed the ball with my front foot behind the ball, and did not follow through with a full swing, all to keep the ball low.  In another spot where there was too much trouble around to do too much of anything, I hit a wedge to position me for a makeable approach shot to the green.

Navigating life with the choices we now have in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic is a little bit different for each one of us, but greatly different than it was prior to the pandemic.  Just like life on the golf course, it does no good to live in the "what might have been" but rather in the "what can be".  So dispite not having the choices before us in life that we would prefer to have, with sincere prayer and with the Holy Spirit's guiding, believers can still have a path forward for whatever shot we have before us.