What's Important

I didn't get to watch much of the US Open last week. What I did watch was gruesome. It was also an excellent example of the fact that each and every golf shot you ever play is important.

Stuart Cink missed a short putt and his chance to join Messrs Brooks and Goosen in the Monday playoff. This occurred after he made the erroneous assumption that his previous putt was his last chance at a tie. He had missed that one, and faced what all witnesses thought was an anti-climactic two-footer. It seemed meaningless.

Wrong.

On the heels of his three- putt double bogey, Mr. Goosen unleashed a surge of adrenaline on an unsuspecting birdie putt. His effort breezed merrily past the hole and came to rest in the land of potential three-putts. Having just witnessed the woeful fortunes of Mr. Cink, his thinking was cloudy at best. He missed his next putt.

The earlier Cink miss for bogey was now a certified debacle. I was screaming at my TV like the rest of you.

Once I calmed down, I thought about how I had been taught to play every golf shot as if it mattered. In fact, I was taught that every shot mattered a lot.

My father, not a great player but a passionate one, lovingly scolded me on more than one occasion for indifferent effort when things weren't going well. He would always say, "you never know..."

I eventually got the message.

The 2001 US Open has given all of us a perfect example of why you never say die on a golf course. Sunday's example from the theatre of the absurd made a perfect Father's Day gift for any Dad trying to teach someone about the beauties and cruelties of the game. Let's hope they get the message as well.

This kind of thing happens on a daily basis at clubs all over the world. It rarely happens on such an international stage. It rarely happens with millions watching. It rarely happens with dozens of cameras capturing every twitch of the putter for posterity. We'll be talking about this for decades.

Dad was right. You never know.

Go To Page: 1

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic