Why do you love golf?

[jrbechthold]

Why I golf...
I am a competition junkie – have been ever since I first swung a baseball bat and tossed the ball around with my dad when I was 4.

I can’t compete as competitively in many of the sports that I once used to dominate. My arm no longer can toss a baseball 80+ MPH, and my bat speed can’t catch up with that speed anymore either. I can’t control a midfield like I once could, and having lost a step on defense, I am a liability on the back line as well. They used to say Bend it like Bechthold, but now it is pronounced Bechkam. My vertical is hardly vertical, and my arm swing and wrist snap just don’t seem to drive the ball down on the 10 foot line anymore either.

My body is worn down and tired. A decade in the Army can do that to you. But my body isn’t the only thing that was left bruised and battered by war – my mind has significant scars as well.

Enter Golf. From the time my wife bought me my first set of clubs last year for Father’s Day, I have been addicted. I love the competition and camaraderie that come from challenging the links, and the concentration necessary to play well has allowed me to forget, if even for a short time, the atrocities of war and terrorism.

Golf allows me to focus; it allows me to become aware of everything around me, but also to forget everything around me.

My pre-shot routine allows me to think about just the task at hand, driving this little white ball across a beautiful emerald lawn, and then moving on.
Golf also gives me something to think about when my mind wanders. For the longest time, I would spend my idle moments reading about friends and fellow soldiers killed in combat. I would read opinions on the “conflict” and those opinions would usually stir up feelings and emotions I have tried hard not to show frivolously. Not that by showing them I thought I was weak or soft – but simply because those are emotions best saved for quite reflection and reverence toward my friends.

Now I frequent message boards and communities devoted to the greatest game ever played. They allow me to read about fellow golfers, their games, their incredible shots and their struggles. Now instead of reading Guns and Ammo and the Army Times, I read Golf Digest and browse manufacturer’s websites and drool over different kinds of weapons. Instead of an M4 assault rifle and 9mm pistol, my arsenal includes a 9 degree dual point driver and an assortment of wedges, irons, and putters. I still wear a uniform of sorts, but the emblems aren’t a CIB and Airborne wings, they are my local course logo and the stripes of adidas sportswear.

Golf has given me something challenging and, for the first time in my life, a sport that didn’t come naturally. I have to work at it. I have to practice. I have to study to get better.

I golf because it is one sport I can still play with my Father, and I golf, not necessarily to forget, but to replace memories of harsh desert landscapes and bullet-riddled corpses with a beautifully manicured greenside bunker, and that ball mark only inches away from the hole.

I love this game.

[finalrequiem]

I love golf because it is an individual sport. I've never been into team sports much (except soccer). I also like it because it involves thinking... I always have a chance to beat my brother-in-law, even if he can drive the ball 75 yards past me sometimes. Its not all about power.

[Jarno]

For me it's because it a challenge, there is no two shots that are the same. So everytime you have to adapt. I play baseball, Industrial and church softball, played football and it still amazes me that I could hit 28 home runs my senior year, but still can't hit a consistent drive!