What a game!

For people who have seen my previous blog (The Greatest Game Ever Played) in December, you'll have guessed that I am, of course, talking about Golf!

I meet a lot of people who don't understand the game at all. From an outsiders perspective, it just looks like knocking a small ball from one end of a grassy patch to another & putting it into a hole in the ground. Well, simply put, that's exactly what the game is all about.

So where, you may ask, is the challange, the difficulty? Aha, the simplicity of the game is also it's most dreaded feature. Let me explain.

As opposed to any other game, the object of attention is a stationary ball. Look at any other sport. There is always a ball in motion which is the object of desire. Not so in golf. The golf ball lies innocuously on a patch of green, begging to be hit (hopefully in the right direction).

Also, every other sport asks you to play against someone. So you always play against someone else's strengths & weaknesses. And if you are a good player, you try to exploit the other players weaknesses as much as possible.

With Golf, you play against the course & against yourself. Sure, you might be playing with a few people, but the score that you post is devoid of any interaction with your fellow golfers. You play your own game & let them play theirs.

You may say, that's easier. Let me assure you, it's not!

Now there is a way to efficiently hit a golf ball. By efficient, I mean that when you execute your shot, the ball flies in the intended direction & the intended distance. Unless you are a Pro at this game, there is no way that all your shots go where you want.

So the challange is to adapt on the course. If you know that your ball goes from right to left and lands 30 yards off the mark that you intended to hit, you need to make adequate compensations like aiming a bit more to the right. Problem is, there might be a tree or a building in that line.

So all these things contribute to making the game of Golf a lot more challenging.

And remember, the game demands you to get the ball from A (the place where you tee off, very conveniently named the Tee) to B (the hole in which the ball is to fall in ... which is surrounded by a green space, also very conveniently nemed the Green) in the least number of strokes.

All in all, this is the toughest game I have ever played. And believe me when I say this, I have played quite a few of them, some at very high levels of competition.

And there is no other game which can make you experience all the emotions that we have been blessed with. A good shot will make your heart sing. And a bad one (these are the most frequent ones) will blister your soul so bad that you feel like giving up the game. Only, I dont know anyone bitten by the Golf Bug who has given up the game.

And this, my friends, is the achievment of the sport. To keep at a game which can frustrate you to no end and still finish the round & plan your next round is truly amazing. And the game does reward you for the amount of work you put into it.

Yes siree, take this game up & you will realise what you were missing all this while. Hit one good shot & you'll be dying to get back for more. After that one good shot, all the bad ones are aspirations to hit the good one again.