Why I Walk

I almost always walk the course when I play. Some courses are very easy to walk. Others are rather difficult. But in the end, the rounds are always enjoyable. In the end, the reason I walk when I play can be boiled down to three reasons. First, I feel like I play better golf when I walk the course. Second, walking gives me a few hours of much needed exercise. And finally, I am generally too cheap to pay the additional money for a cart.
My first reason for walking is that I feel I play better golf when walking. Who wouldn't want to play better? By walking, rather than riding in a golf car, I feel that I have more time to relax myself and clear my mind between shots. This lets me go into each shot with a clear head and determine what I need to do. I am also able to prepare myself for the shot as I am walking up to the ball. I am able to determine the yardage prior to getting to my ball, something I would not be able to do were I riding in a cart, at least not with any accuracy. I am also able to look at the hole and determine what kind of shot I need to play into the hole, high, low or whatever the case may be. Being able to do these two things allows me to make my club selection within 5-10 seconds after arriving at my ball and from there I am ready to play. When riding in carts, I tend to feel rushed and when I feel rushed, I begin to make poor swings. So I have long felt like I play better when I walk and that playing better on the course tends to be a good reason to do just about anything while out there.
But, of course that is not the only reason I walk. I also walk to get exercise. I, like just about everyone, tend to eat a little too much, drink a few too many sodas, and do not go to the gym enough. But by walking the course, I am afforded anywhere between 1 and 5 hours of rather vigorous exercise. Let's just face it, walking a full golf course, probably 4 1/2 miles with a bag of clubs on your shoulder, is no easy task. Add in the fact that many courses have some substantial hills and walking a golf course can be pretty strenuous. Going out when I play and walking the course allows me the exercise to keep myself in reasonable condition, something that is always a good thing.
Finally, the reason that really should have come first, I am simply too cheap to pay for carts. I feel certain that my home club, with three definite cart tailored courses, somewhere, deep down, dislikes me. In thirteen months as a pass holder at the club, I have taken a golf car once, and then only because I was part of a tournament and the cart was included. In general, I take carts only when they are mandated. Thus far in 2012 I have probably played a total of fifty or more rounds. I have used a golf car in five of those, each time either because my playing partner wanted to or because it was mandated. So that's at least forty-five rounds played without a cart, given the average cart fee is $15, that amounts to $675 saved just in the first two-thirds of this year. All because I choose to walk rather than ride.
Some people I know like to talk about how they choose to walk the course to keep with the traditions of the game or some other noble goal. There is no such nobility in why I walk. I don't look down upon people who choose to ride, not those who are able to walk but choose to ride and certainly not those who are unable to walk. Nor do I put the walkers up on some high pedestal. Walking is nothing more than a choice. A choice that I choose to make the vast majority of the time because I feel like I play better, I get good exercise, and because I'm cheap. Golf owners and operators love me.

The Evolution of the Best Course I've Played

Everyone who plays golf has a "best" course. And of course what makes that is different for everyone. As people play new courses, the "best" likely changes, either due to playing a new, better course, or a person's tastes in golf courses change. I, of course, have seen an evolution in the course I have thought to be the best I have played. The evolution goes something like this:
1997: Star Hill
1997: Silver Creek
1997: Bryan Park (Players)
1999: Bryan Park (Champions)
2005: Tobacco Road
2007: Eagle Point
2010: Old Town
2011: Pacific Dunes
2011:  Pebble Beach

I am fully expecting another large gap before another course comes up that can take Pebble Beach down from the top spot. Without a trip to the UK, Ireland or Australia, the options are limited to some very private facilities. But I'm not losing hope.

Pressure in Athletics and Life

As we have seen in sports these last few weeks, in the Olympics and Open Championship (Golf), there have been a lot of athletes who failed to perform under the pressure of the big stage. In these situations, to me, there are two types of athletes. The first type is the young athletes competing in the sport more or less for love of the sport. Young athletes like the gymnast Jordyn Wieber or golfer Beau Hossler (US Open Championship) are still young and even though they spend hours and hours training at their respective sports, they are not professionals, the sport is not their job. As such we should view their short comings as, perhaps, moments of learning and growth. The second type of competing athletes are the professionals. Guys like Adam Scott at the Open Championship or Jim Furyk at the US Open are professionals, sport is their job, and as such I feel like we should view their failures as we would any other professional.
What do I mean when I say that? Well consider how you might feel if a surgeon, a professional in his field, were to fail as completely at the end of a major surgery as Scott did at the end of the Open Championship. Consider how you'd feel if an airline pilot failed on landing? No, we as a society tend to wear the white gloves when we talk about athletes and their failure in competition. Yet if a surgeon failed so completely at the end of a surgery and the patient died, a literal failure where he knew the proper way and simply did not do it, he would, at best, be liable for thousands, if not millions, of dollars in compensation to the family, and at worst sitting before a jury of his peers facing significant time in prison.
With athletes we always like to talk about how great a pressure they faced in a given situation. But is that pressure any greater than the pressure faced by the surgeon or the pilot? I think not. But as I said, we treat athletes with ease. Why not simply say it how it is and admit that these people have failed at their jobs? I took some serious heat two years ago when I was quick to say that Hunter Mahan choked and failed to do his job at the Ryder Cup. But is that not the case? His job is to play golf and hit solid shots. He flatly did not do that. Same with Adam Scott at the Open Championship. He failed to do his job. If I were to fail at my job as they did, I would, be standing tall before my commanding officer, wearing my dress uniform, and waiting for him to dispense punishment. But again, we simply brush it aside when athletes fail.
On top of this, we often berate fans who dare try to put the screws to the athlete who failed. We would have no such sympathy for the real world professional. It is a different world, to be sure, but the sympathy that people shot athletes while showing none to professionals in the real world should not be the case. Show your sympathy to the seventeen year old girls who gave their best effort and did not succeed. She deserves it. But the professional who fails to complete his job deserves none of our sympathy, unless, of course, you'd show sympathy to other professionals, real world professionals, when they fail.