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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, this weekend a squirrel stole a banana out of my golf cart, and I believe if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share a lesson I learned from a round of golf.
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What I Learned Yesterday:
I played golf over the weekend. You might be impressed to hear that I shot a 68. You might be less impressed to hear that that is just my score for the first 9 holes. In case you don’t really know that much about golf, professional golfers will easily score below 68 for an entire round of 18 holes. Unfortunately for me, golf is one of those sports where a higher score is better.
I really enjoy playing golf, but I am also really terrible at it. I hate that it’s so expensive to play, and I’d play more often if it didn’t cost so much. In fact, it had been about 2 years since the last time I’d played a round of golf.
I typically play with my dad and brother. Before we ever approach the first hole it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that my dad and brother will be competing for the top spot and I will claiming third place. That was certainly the case this weekend. After the first hole I was down by 3 or 4 strokes and that was the closest I would come to the lead all day. Since I know that I’m terrible at it, I adjust my expectations accordingly.
If you’ve listened to the previous episodes of Stuff I Learned Yesterday, then you should be very aware that I am not athletically gifted. You may think that golfing is not an athletic activity, but I believe it is. At the very least, it requires having good eye-hand coordination, and that’s usually a problem for me.
I have no expectation that I will hit a shot that Tiger Woods would be proud of. I don’t even have an expectation that I will hit a shot that Happy Gilmore would be proud of. My expectations are simple: have fun, do my best, and try to improve as the round progresses. Because I know I can’t really compete with my dad and brother, my competition is with myself.
This competition may seem false or insignificant, but it’s enough to push me to do my best and cause me frustration when I fail to achieve my goal. My dad and brother are both very encouraging when I hit a bad shot or a good shot, and they give me pointers along the way.
My biggest problem this weekend was keeping my head down throughout the entire duration of my swing. Even though I knew I was pulling my head up, I couldn’t seem to overcome it. Time after time, hole after hole, I’d hit the ball poorly because of lifting my head up. Sometimes I’d hit the top of the ball and drive the ball into the ground. This causes the ball to lose all it’s momentum. It won’t get any air, and it won’t go far.
Other times I would hit the ball with just the edge of the club. This causes the ball to be struck by a part of the club that’s not flat, and it will fly dramatically off course. Still other times I would hit the ground before making contact with the ball. This also kills momentum and causes the ball to only travel a very short distance.
I kept working on my swing and tried to be aware of my muscle movement. I could feel my shoulders rising or dipping, I could feel my arm pulling inward, I could feel my head snapping around before making contact. I had no visual memory of seeing the club come around to make contact with the ball.
Another Issue I had was simply being comfortable with each club. The driver is a longer club and requires a different stance than say, a 5 iron. I also have a club called a driving iron that has a longer shaft and can be awkward. If you then mix in random shots where I’m trying to stand at an awkward angle, hit around a tree, or hit through dense grass, it makes it even more challenging for me to figure out how to stand or swing properly.
However, these are the inherent challenges of golf. Obstacles abound on each hole, most of the time those obstacles are put there on purpose. The obstacles cause you to be challenged, explore other, less obvious solutions, take risks, and learn from failure.
As we made our way through the course I tried to approach each shot with a fresh perspective. That is, I didn’t let the mistakes of my previous swings cause me to become discouraged. Another goal I had was to take my time and try my best on each shot. There were a few times when I rushed through a swing, and it never once resulted in a better outcome.
Here’s what I learned.
Just as I said that I didn’t have the expectation of playing as well as Tiger Woods, it’s important to be realistic. However, just because I know that I can’t play like a professional golfer today, does not mean that I’m not capable of it. I also said that I set personal goals to challenge myself. Goal number one was to have fun. I had a great time.
Goal number two was to do my best. I don’t think fully I achieved this goal. I did allow myself to rush through some shots. Rushing the shots caused me to under perform. Otherwise, I think I achieved this goal.
Goal number three was to improve as the round progressed. That’s not to say that I expected every shot to be better than the previous one, because the circumstances of each shot are different. However, I wanted to see a steady improvement in my game as the round progressed. I definitely achieved this goal. While I shot a 68 on the front 9, I shot a 61 on the back 9. Neither my brother nor my dad made that type of improvement. My best holes were the last two. It felt good to finish strong.
I also learned the importance of utilizing tools that I was comfortable with. It was tempting at times to try to use a club that felt awkward or had the potential to send the ball farther. However, I realized that I often didn’t have the control to utilize that club. Several times I opted for a lesser club that I could control better, and when I did, it always paid off.
However, at the end of the day, I still walked away with a final score of 129. Par for the course is 71. What could I do next time to improve? Well, quite simply, I could play more often. We will never get better at anything if we only ever do it on occasion. If we seriously want to live up to our potential, we must work at it as often as possible, likely every day, and make sacrifices. I could have arrived early to the course and visited the practice facilities. If I’d taken advantage of the driving range or the putting greens, I would have had a better feel for the clubs before we started keeping score. I probably would have been more comfortable with more of the clubs and been able to use more of the resources in my bag.
Lastly, if I had never set goals, objectives, aspirations, whatever you want to call them, then I wouldn’t have had a way to measure my result. What is it you want to accomplish? What are you doing to measure your progress? Are you utilizing your tools? Are you simply using the tools that you already know, or are you spending time learning other tools that can help you in for future challenges you’ll face? Are you taking risks, looking for other solutions, or learning from past mistakes?
Yes, life is very much like the game of golf. Keep your eyes peeled for banana stealing squirrels.
I’m Darrell Darnell and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
If you’ve enjoyed this episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday, I would be grateful if you’d leave a review in iTunes.
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