golf imitates life

February 13th, 12:14am February 12th, 9:29pm Bing MatotoThe Eagle's Nest

Sometime last year, while playing golf with Willie Fernandez, the then newly installed publisher and president of the Daily Tribune, he asked me if I would be interested to write a column for the newspaper. Although we are fraternity brothers in the Upsilon Sigma Phi and over the years, we would socially see each other in fraternity gatherings, I can’t really say why he asked me, not even knowing if I could actually write. In any event, without much thought to it, I readily said yes. After all I had just retired and I figured I would have all the time in the world to write a weekly column.

Well, here I am, a good eight months since I started. Truth to tell, although it’s been a very pleasant and satisfying experience, it has also been getting to be more and more difficult to think of topics to write about that could elicit some measure of interest from the newspaper’s readers. Although my column appears in the business section of the Daily Tribune, I have observed that people generally seem more interested if my article is based on my own brushes with the particular topic on hand.

So, with this in mind, today I would like to write about the game of golf which I have been playing for more than several decades already and, like about 60 million other golfers (based on a Googled recent estimate), which I thoroughly enjoy especially after a bet-winning round coupled with a lot of good-natured ribbing from good friends. (A great topic for another time!)

What is golf all about? Historically, the game can be traced all the way back to the 1st century BC when Romans would use a bent stick to hit a stuffed ball of leather. There are other versions, however, such as a Chinese game called chuiwan, meaning striking a small ball, supposedly played in the 8th to the 14th centuries that was introduced in Europe during the Middle Ages.

However, modern golf, as we know it today, is a centuries-old sport supposedly originating from Scotland in the 15th century during the reign of King James, that basically requires a player to put a small (ping-pong-sized), hard (as a rock), white (usually), dimpled ball into a hole (about half-a-palm sized) using a club that looks somewhat like a hockey stick.

There are 18 different holes laid out over a wide area with different terrains of green grass, sand and water. There are also several types of clubs, referred to as a “wood” or “iron,” to hit the ball with depending on the surface where your ball happened to have landed in. The farther your ball is from the hole, the less lofted is the face of the clubhead and for shorter distances, more lofted. The object of the game is to put the ball in those 18 holes in as few strokes as possible. The winner is the player who emerges after 18 holes having used up the fewest number of strokes.

If soccer to millions of people is the “beautiful game,” I would venture to guess that for millions of golfers, golf could rightly be considered as the “game that imitates life.”

Well, try asking any golfer, whether he is a weekend hacker like yours truly or a seasoned professional if he hasn’t experienced the feeling that how he approaches his golf game actually is a reflection of how he approaches life. For instance, at the start of the game you

you take a hard whack at the ball with a “wood,” trying to hit the ball as far and as straight as you can towards the direction of the “putting green,” a neatly cut, trimmed, smooth, glass-like surface where the hole is.

By the way, nowadays, the club is not really made of wood anymore but some fancy chemical-blended titanium golf shaft that is supposed to be more “forgiving” — the ball will still take off straight as an arrow despite the player’s contorted swing.

To aid the player make a good hit, the ball is placed on top of a short pencil-thick wooden tee. After the tee-off, however, wherever the ball lands, whether it be on an unimpeded clear patch of green, a sand trap, a water hazard or, worse, in an out-of-bounds rough, tall grassy area, you play on and move forward as best as you can. You will likely be using a more lofted club to ease the fly of the ball or you take a stroke penalty and hit again from where you started.

Now, isn’t that similar to life? The tee-off is like nurturing love from your parents and loved ones, armed with the early learnings of life and newfound skills. You swing away, full of vim, vigor and confidence with great expectations of fulfilling your cherished aspirations. But then you encounter a rough patch, a sand trap. What do you do? You pick yourself up, figure out what went wrong. You know that if you lose your cool, the next hit will probably as bad, if not worse than the previous mishit. But then, you try again and again, until you finally reach the nice, smooth putting green and make a par or a bogey or even a triple.

But never mind, the point is you learn from the experience and move on to the next tee-off, the next phase of your life and try to score a birdie or even a hole-in-one, perhaps marriage or a new job!

Ahh, yes indeed golf… the game that imitates life!