Driving around the magnificent Pearl Valley Golf Estate in a golf cart in late November, meandering through the big competition field as they went about their business, brought home how hard we are on ourselves when we play.
The occasion, the Windhoek Lager/Compleat Golfer National Pairs final, brought together some very, very good golfers, including a smattering of top amateurs and club PGA pros – as well as those who were along for the ride. As the saying goes, ‘A bad day on the golf course beats a good day at the office.’
But, encountering the number of golfers who apologised for hitting bad shots was a fairly different experience for me, given that we mostly are preoccupied with our own fourball.
In a way, we are all in our own ‘bubble’ for 18 holes, before we enthusiastically swap war stories at the 19th. Seeing it from hole to hole through the groups brought it home a bit more.
Golf is tough enough for us mere mortals without having to apologise for a miscue off the tee, a duff from the rough, an errant approach or a putt that has someone shouting, ‘Taxi!’ We leak shots all over the course – and the apologies come because the format played – the progressive alliance where there’s one score to count on one hole, then two, then three, and then back to one again – piles on the pressure. I love it!
We judge the top players in the world based on their score to par, but when we hand in our cards we realise how good they are. And they’re off the back tees.
We don’t get a chance to play tennis against a Djokovic or Nadal, or face Anrich Nortje, or be tackled by Duane Vermeulen or run a lap with Wayde van Niekerk. So, we contest those sports against ourselves, or people similar to us.
Which is why golf is unique – you can play against Jon Rahm and beat him on the handicap system. But, you’re still thinking about out-driving him, hitting irons as perfectly and putting as beautifully.
The pros themselves make mistakes; more than you think. Their strengths are in their powers of recovery, and, as Louis Oosthuizen said as we went round Pinnacle Point a few years ago, ‘Take your spoon of medicine on the course when it comes around and just get back on the fairway.’
Remember too that a professional golfer’s job is to play golf. That’s the case too for many of the top amateurs. Drag them into your own professional environment and you’ll see how they fare when judged to the same standards as you. That’s how life works. We’re all cut from a different cloth – even if we’ve all encountered those who think they can do a better job than you, but blatantly can’t.
So, why do we apologise when we mis-hit a ball on the golf course? There were more than a few golfers who said, ‘I hope you weren’t filming my embarrassment.’ Why the embarrassment?
All that self-berating has a negative impact on your game. It carries itself over to the next shot, the next hole. One thing we can learn from the pros is to accept we’re going to hit poor shots – in our case many more than the best in the world.
But golf gives back so much too. At the par-three 3rd hole I watched as someone pulled his ball into the rough on the left. His second shot then saw him roll into the deep bunker on the left of the green. He apologised, got his sand-wedge, putter and rake. He then holed out from the bunker. ‘Three for three.’ That’s golf for you.
– This column first appeared in the January 2022 issue of Compleat Golfer magazine. Subscribe here!
