Tulisan Softskill " What Is Golf ? "

Golf is a simple game. You’ve got a bunch of clubs, and you’ve got a ball. You’ve got to hit the ball with a club into a series of holes laid out in the middle of a large, grassy grassy field. After you reach the 18^th hole, you may want to go to the bar and tell lies to anyone that you didn’t play with that day about your on-course feats. If you are like most of us, you play golf for relaxation and a chance to see the great outdoors. If you are like Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, and Greg Norman, you do this and make a bazillion dollars on top of seeing the great outdoors.

Of course, there are some obstacles. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, who called golf “a silly game played with implements ill-suited for the purpose,” the game isn’t always so straightforward. Golf is the hardest game in the world for two reasons. First, the ball doesn’t move on its own. Second, you have on the average about three minutes between each shot. In other words, you don’t react to the ball as you do in most sports. A baseball is thrown, hit, and spit on. A football is passed, tossed, kicked, and run up and down the field. A basketball is shot, rebounded, and dribbled all over the place. A golf ball just sits there and defies you not to lose it.

In most sports, you have but an instant to react to the ball. Your natural athleticism takes over, and you play to the whim of the ball. In golf, you get to think about what you’re doing for much too long. Thinking strangles the soul and suffocates the mind. Score is everything. As you se in chapter 8, most scoring occurs within 100 yards of the hole. If you can save strokes here, your score will be lower than the player whose sole purpose in life is to hit the ball as far as possible. So practice your putting, sand play, and short shots twice as much as your driving. Your hard work will pay off at the end of the round, and your friends will be the ones dipping into their wallets.