Just Another Day on the Links

     Every life is filled with a few moments in time that freeze frame while every sense is heightened and forever remembered. Sometimes this results from joy, sometimes fear, and sometimes just a sense of wonder at the moment. I have a few such moments in my life, but the most recent occurred a couple weeks ago at St. Andrews, the home of golf. As I stood on the first tee of the New Course warming up and trying to keep hyperventilation at bay, I took a practice swing and looked up to a view that I have imagined looking on to after a shot so many times. There it was - THE backdrop of golf - and I was looking at it and preparing to hit my first tee shot. I will always remember the rush of joy, the sense of history, the sea breeze, and in an odd way a feeling of homecoming. Golf has been something I have loved throughout a fair part of my life, and I was getting to play it in the place it was originally designed to be played.

     My friend Dan accompanied me to play the course, and his comment described my emotions exactly as I walked up to the clubhouse. "I keep waiting for them to come tell me I can't play here or even be here." It feels like such a historic place that you don't want to make any mistakes ever. But everyone was so nice and helped us with everything. We got paired up with some very Scottish gentlemen, one from St. Andrews and the other from Inverness, and I felt like I was invading hallowed ground that they had fought alongside Mel Gibson to protect. But they were very nice and were quite good players which was nice to play with.

     So with knees knocking and palms sweating I hit my first tee shot. Certainly not the best ever, but it was past the women's tees and playable, so those two fears were not realized and for that I was thankful. I managed to par that first hole, and thought maybe it wouldn't be too bad a scoring round of golf. That was wrong, but I stopped caring about how I was hitting and chose to just enjoy the experience instead of getting frustrated and working on my swing. It was a beautiful day with sun, hardly any wind, and it was at St. Andrews, so on that day the score on my card was way less valuable than the memory I brought back of the experience. It was phenomenal.