Strictly speaking, I was first introduced to golf in high school. My brother had been working for a few years in the corporate world and he had picked up the game. Well that and scuba diving, ice hockey, and airsoft guns. At the time, my young naive mind considered his activities "pretentious". One day he convinced me to hit the driving range and take a few swings at some golf balls. I had thought to myself "Sure! Why not? Seems easy enough with all these old farts playing it." I was a high school varsity basketball player - arrogant, self-absorbed, and cocky. Needless to say I had embarrassed myself that day. I swung helplessly at a defenseless dimpled white ball. I could have sworn it was alive and dodging my mighty swings. After flailing my arms and screaming like a little girl whose barbie just got taken away, I gave up and forever swore off the game of golf. I called it "a game that only people with no athleticism played."
About 15 years later, I'm playing basketball with my regular Saturday group. I am accustomed to being one of the better players. So when one of the newer players in the group bring some young guns to the court, I have this instinctive urge to prove to the youngins how it's done. I had done it before, put punk kids in their place and show them who's the alpha male on this playground. Of course it had been a few years since we had any new blood on the court but in my mind it made no difference. I'm the king of this hill and these boys will bow to me.
The game proceeded as expected. And by "the game proceeded as expected" I mean we picked teams and started the game tied at zero points. After that, the game DID NOT proceed as expected. We were getting our asses kicked. I remember one play, I was coming off of a missed shot by the other team and was sprinting down court for a fast break. Actually it may not have been so much a "sprint" than maybe a brisk jog but I remember it to be a sprint and this is my story so we'll stick with it. I had one guy left to beat. It was one of the youngins. I thought to myself "OK when you get to this guy, you're going to faint right, crossover left, go behind the back, and if by some miracle he's still in front of you? I'm going to spin move and lay it up right passed this bum!" I could almost hear the "oooh's" and "ahhh's" from the guys on the sidelines watching. It was going to be an epic show of skill. Except it wasn't. It was like my body didn't get the memo from my mind. The faint to the right didn't even happen! It was like my body said "If we're going left anyway why bother with a fake? It's too much effort. Let's just go straight to the crossover." And it may have been all right except that when I tried to cross I dribbled the ball off of my left foot. And as I watched the ball drift out of bounds in slow motion, I could see the corner of the young punk's mouth rise into a grin of satisfaction. The same kind I used to get when people would crumble at my weekend-warrior's crippling defensive stare! Alas, those days were long gone and that play was the first basketball plays of many that reminded me of it. It's almost criminal how life just takes that away from you with age but doesn't take away the competitive mindset. My mind still feels like it's 23, unbeatable, and able to leap the tallest building with a single bound. My body humbles me and tells me that unless that building was built by tiny elves, I have trouble just jumping over my son's stack of legos.I still play basketball once in awhile but some time around my late 20s and early 30s I decided it was time to change sports. My ego and pride couldn't accept the demotion in stature even if it was just on a playground basketball court. So one day I found my brother's old set of golf clubs in my parents house and took it. I thought to myself "Let's try this again." There was something comforting about starting over and being a beginner. No expectations. No insecurities. No baggage. I just wanted to learn. I took that old set of clubs and started swinging...
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