I call my study the ‘war room’. I muse that, from here – alone – I can control the universe. At the very least, I can control the universe of my mind. My mind is the place where I truly exist. It was from my war room that I transformed the idea for my first novel into reality.
Life is strange. Golf is stranger. We – people who play sports and those who commentate sports – have used sports as metaphors for life. We speak of the dedication, struggle, discipline, adversity and commitment required to play a sport and draw parallels to real life off the playing field. In Wintering Into Wisdom, Doc believes that golf is the best sporting metaphor for life. It is the only sport in which the player is solely responsible for the outcome. In football, for example, a great quarterback can throw the perfect pass to a great wide receiver only to have it intercepted or knocked down by a great defensive back. No one player is in control of his football universe. A great pitcher can strike out a great batter in baseball. Only in golf is the player alone responsible for the outcome of his struggle. The rules of golf prohibit an opponent from interfering in any way with the play of another. Every time the golfer makes a play, he or she has the opportunity to hit a perfect shot. The only real opponents are lack of skill, lack of training or lack of commitment to the game.
Like all other sports, golf has well prescribed rules. Unlike other sports, golf has no referees or judges. Each golfer is responsible for his or her score and bears the responsibility for his or her own conduct on the course. In football, a defensive lineman may think that he has done well if he holds the opposing offensive lineman and it goes undetected by the officials. This is not the case in golf. If a golfer violates a rule of the game, it is up to the player to report the error and assign himself or herself the prescribed penalty. Failure to do so, even if unnoticed by others, may cause lasting guilt.
In most sports, the game ends when the clock runs out and whoever has the highest score wins. The clock is reset when a new match begins. This is not the case in golf. There is no perfect score nor any handicap that can be achieved that says, “I have mastered this sport”. The struggle to play better golf is a journey without end. Like life, there are good days and bad days but always the journey continues.
Golf is the best metaphor for life because it is a struggle of the individual. While its triumphs and travails can be shared with others, no one can play the game for you – there are no substitutes.
Still – golf is a strange sport – and, if it is a good metaphor for life, it is for the individual to identify the parallels between the sport and his or her life. It may be said casually that the way one plays the sport is a reflection of how one lives life.
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