Golf as therapy

You would think it would be frustrating.  Shanking balls into the woods, visiting every bunker and water hazard on the course, sending chunks of grass farther than my ball travels.  You would think it would be torture, but it’s actually a sort of therapy, as far as I am concerned.  I have been missing from this blog for the last little while dealing with the loss of a close family member.  While she has been on my mind constantly since she passed, the only times that I have felt at peace and relaxed is the couple times I have been able to get out on the course in the last few weeks.  There is just something about being out in nature, drinking beer with your friends and failing at a nearly impossible feat that just helps you to take your mind off of things.  The weather doesn’t have to be great and by the end of the round the beers don’t even have to be cold. All you need is a friend or two, your clubs, and in my case at least 10 golf balls.  Even if you are playing solo, or if you skip the beverages, you can still get a lot of benefit from golfing even if you do it badly. 

Golf has been called, and I’m paraphrasing, “Masochism outdoors” and at times I can see why.  But, as was said by the Irish author Robert Wilson Lynd, “It is almost impossible to remember how tragic a place this world is when one is playing golf”. 

Maybe it is the friends, maybe it is the nature, maybe it is the self abuse and surely it is partly because of the beer, but golfing is the best form of therapy I have come across.  Both golf and life can be cruel, but in both cases you have to play it as it lies.