Reading the Green, Part IX

Here is part THREE of THREE contributions I have made to the local Pioneer Press newspaper. All three have also appeared in the Chicago Tribune's special insert, Trib Local.

Reading the Green, Part IX
By Chris Happ, PGA Assistant Golf Professional at the Winnetka Golf Club

By most accounts, it’s a painful, heartbreaking, silly and gut-wrenching game. If you Google the words “Why Play”, the popular search engine completes your query with a few suggestions, the second of which is “Golf”. To somebody who has never seen or heard of the sport, the laundry list of adjectives used to describe its nature begs the question: Why do you play golf?

The game cannot be perfected; it takes way too long to play; it can be very expensive; and, depending on where your first tee grows, the season is way too short. You always top the ball into the same pond, slice into the same bush and very consistently remain incredibly inconsistent. If golf were a person, there’s no chance we would be friends with it.

So the question remains: Why do people subject themselves to a game that is mostly cruel, only sometimes nice and forever dangling content in front of our face to see and smell but not grab hold of? For some, the answer is quite simple. Golf offers a front row seat to nature at its best while providing the deceived with some exercise to boot. Their immediate response is more an indication of their disinterest in trying to perfect a technique or attain expert status than anything else. Nonetheless, both are popular reasons why people at least begin to play the game.

There has to be a more complex reason though.

A couple hours before this question was en route to going largely unanswered and chalked up as a selfish idea brought on by a recent personal disagreement with the game, the answer hit. Of course, it came about as a result of another golfer’s slight misfortune.

New Trier junior Phillip Purcell, one of the Trevian’s brightest young stars, had just missed out on an opportunity to qualify and play as part of the six-man team travelling to the next weekend tournament. As he hopped in the cart for a ride back to the clubhouse after the sudden death playoff, I asked him if this opportunity would make him work harder to get into the top six players on the team or discourage him from working to improve.

“I always work hard,” Purcell said.

And with that simple, mature answer there was a little more clarity as to why people put up with the unfavorable ratio of peaks and valleys in golf.