On When Practice Doesn’t Make Perfect

A long long time ago I wrote about falling in love with golf. I talked all about how before the pandemic I played nothing but team sports: softball, volleyball, basketball, etc. When the pandemic came along and all those things went the way of the dinosaur, golf was there to satisfy all of my physical and competitive urges. Well, it’s been three years since I first fell in love and boy do I still suck at golf!

I mostly caught the golf bug because of my dad, a wonderful guy and dedicated reader of this here blog, and he has taught me a few key lessons about the game. Number 1: Never ever say, “I think I figured something out.” You haven’t figured something out, you just lucked into something that’ll be gone as quickly as it showed up. Number 2: Sometimes you just have to seek professional help! A coach (or a therapist if it gets REALLYdire out there) can turn your whole outlook on life around. And number 3: If I spent all the time I’d spent playing and practicing golf on anything else, I’d be a much better and happier human. If I spent the last three years learning to play piano, I’d probably be kinda okay by now. If I spent that time learning Italian, I’d be “l’uomo” instead of “un ragazzo triste”. If I spent all those days and weeks learning to play chess instead of golf, well I’d still probably be getting my ass kicked by old men but you get the picture.

It blows my mind how many people I know have gotten into this game in the last few years. I really don’t know many other things that people put so much time into and their main return on that investment is more frustration! Maybe fishing? But at least then when you do succeed, you can eat your success (I would highly recommend against eating a golf ball, no matter how good you are at the sport, just ask anyone who owns a dog how much trouble it is). Maybe gardening? But again, you can eat your successes…unless you’re just planting succulents. So few hobbies require this much practice and give you this little progress.

Here in lies the rub, though. The reason I love golf at this point, even after a day like today where I spent an hour at the driving range and feel like my game is completely lost and I’ve wasted years of my time, I can’t stop thinking about it. There’s something magical about an unsolvable puzzle. This isn’t a game that you can beat, you can just get a little less bad at it. Because I’ve spent hours watching YouTube videos, days visualizing what I could be doing better, and weeks at the various public courses around LA trying to figure out what the hell I’m doing wrong… and I still want to play more speaks volumes to the insanity of this game.

What about you? Do you have any hobbies where you feel like all you do is give and you never get any better?