Lesson Nine: Learn to Golf

Maybe questionable advice coming from a guy whose game is more unpredictable than polished. If you watched me play, you’d see a mix of brilliance and absurdity, often within the same hole. But that, I’ve learned, is precisely why I love it.

The Misunderstood Game

Golf is easy to dismiss if you’ve never played it. A small white ball. A set of metal sticks. Expensive clothes that don’t make sense anywhere else. And people willingly pay for four hours of frustration. To the uninitiated, it’s a slow, confusing ritual.

To the initiated, it’s something else entirely. It’s a love letter to struggle. A spiritual exercise disguised as sport. A search for answers that often don’t come, but you keep asking anyway.

Some people don’t just play golf. They feel it in their bones. It lives somewhere deep, as if stitched into the fabric of their being, inherited along with the color of their eyes or the curve of their smile. It’s not a game to them. It’s a reflection. A mirror held up to your character, patience, and willingness to endure.

The Highs, the Lows, and Everything Between

Some days, you’re locked in. Focused. Smooth. Every swing feels like destiny fulfilled. Other days, you’re just out there because you don’t know what else to do with yourself. You hope that you'll find one pure shot between the slices and the shanks that makes it all worth it.

And then there are the days you swear you’re done. You’ll sell the clubs, quit the game, and walk away forever. Until the next morning, when you search for a tee time, convincing yourself that this may be the round, it all clicks.

Golf and life share that same rhythm. Sometimes you do everything right, and it still falls apart. Other times you coast, barely trying, and somehow it all works out. Some days, the swing feels foreign. Some days it feels like home.

But no matter how good it gets, you know it won’t last forever. You can be flush with success, in golf or life, and still sense the fragility of it all. The ground beneath your feet never feels as steady as you want.

The Hazards of Life

Standing over a ball without any certainty about what’s coming is a feeling that doesn’t stay confined to a course. It shows up in boardrooms, hospitals, and living rooms. We don’t know what’s next. But we swing anyway.

Life carries the same hazards as golf. Injuries. Illness. Heartbreak. Loss. But like golf, you can prepare. You can do the work before the storm comes. Save when the checks are steady. Have the conversations with the people you love. Build your strength so you know how to piece it back together when your body breaks.

My Golf Chapters

I’ve collected my own stories from the course, and each one feels like a mile marker on the journey.

There’s the round I played with my dad at Harbour Town, a place I’d seen on TV as a kid, a place I thought was meant for someone else, someone with more money, more access, a different life. But that day, we belonged there.

There’s me putting with an open stance because that’s how my grandfather did it. He made it look easy, draining putts from all over. My dad picked it up, and then I tried, hoping that stance might transfer some of their magic to me.

There’s the time I blew my knee out on the course, kneecap halfway up my thigh. I was laid out in the grass, the seriousness of the injury setting in, and I asked for a beer, a cigarette, and a moment to think. It was pain wrapped in comedy, because what else could it be? We laugh about it now, because laughter is sometimes the only way to smooth the jagged edges of memory.

There’s the shit-talking with friends, the trips we plan months in advance, the laughter that echoes louder than the groans over missed putts. The part where we pretend to want to win but secretly want to see our buddies succeed just as much.

The Stories That Matter

Golf does that. It gives you more than scorecards and statistics. It gives you people. It gives you places. It gives you stories.

And much like life, most of us will never be great by the standards we measure greatness. We’ll be average. Maybe a little above. Maybe a little below. A rare few will reach elite. But the point was never just to be great. The point was to show up. To play. To swing.

When things are good, take notes and build habits. When things are bad, return to your fundamentals—your faith, your family, your foundation—the things that ground you when everything else feels like it’s spinning.

Laugh when you can. Forgive yourself when you can’t. Celebrate the pure shots. They don’t come often, but when they do, they remind you of what’s possible.

There Is No Mastery

There is no mastery in golf. Just moments. Fleeting, beautiful moments when everything aligns and you feel whole. That’s life, too. It’s not about staying in that place forever. It’s about knowing it exists, even if only briefly, and chasing it with everything you have.

And when it all falls apart, as it sometimes will, find a reason to keep swinging.

Because that next shot, that next swing, might be the one that brings it all back.

And that’s enough.