ONE WITH CLUB, BALL, AND TARGET
Why write Golf as Guru: Mindfullness, Awareness and Self-Restraint?
WOW! What a learning journey golf has opened for a student of life and the game of golf, all the way from growing up in Northwestern Ohio playing golf with Mom and Dad, circling the globe, and arriving here in Arizona and simply working out at LA Fitness, playing golf, and enjoying life. As the title and subtitle offer, the sport of golf has been a great coach and teacher; has evolved a concept of mind”full”ness; has breathed a peek at how awareness really differentiates professional golfers from average golfers; and has been a mighty fine instructor when it comes to the learned skill of self-restraint. It really is fantastic to remain sane after two shots in the lake to the right of the fairway! Everything is OK the way it is! All one has is now and the passionate intent to play the cards dealt.
A significant experience has been that if a golfer is open to new learning and is psychologically ready, golf offers infinite messages: at practice on the range; on the golf course; while perking reflections about the sport and relishing golf literature; during a work-out; and just sitting in silence and solitude to experience personal behavior in life and on the golf course. Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, a widely read English author and scriptwriter, nails it: “To find a man’s character (and personality), play golf with him.” Woody and Birdy Ball, Golf as Guru’s entertaining characters, chuckle on every page as they think about playing partners and continue to dream, learn, reflect, and experience set-up, ball position, ritual (becoming one with the club, ball, and target), unconsciously squeezing the trigger, turning and tilting, the backswing, transition, forward swing with turn, tilt, hip-turn and pull, release, impact, extension, and finish; and contemplate smoothness, timing, tempo, and rhythm on every putt. Quite complicated, to say the least…simply takes a quiet mind, awareness, patience, and lots of practice to program the subconscious to squeeze the trigger and swing or putt to a target!
Golf as Guru is a thank you to golf as coach, partner, and therapist. It is indeed integral (individual inner and outer; and collective inner and outer) and reminds of General Douglas MacArthur, in the context of football at West Point, when he remarked, “Upon the fields of friendly strife are sown the seeds that at other times and places reap the fruits of victory.”
