Why Golf Drives Me Crazy

In my expansive amount of time in the off season, I've decided to take up golf. This was supposed to be a fun endeavor that would be as easy as playing Tiger Woods on my XBox. Not so.

I've been an athlete my entire life, and for some reason the simple act of hitting a ball thats laying calmly on the ground eludes me. I'll pull off the ball and miss it entirely, or jump up and just hit the very top of the ball, or my personal favorite, hit it about 50 yards straight and then watch it slice like a Mariano cutter. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not hanging up the sticks yet. The feeling of hitting a ball pure is so seductive that even if I just hit one ball well out of an entire range bucket - I'm still gonna go back for more. I would just like to point out the difference in how easy it looks and how hard it is. 

I don't think this really applies to any other sport. The moves that DRose pulls on a basketball court look really hard to me. Kobe going up and under looks really impressive and by watching I know I can't do that. Ray Lewis pummeling some poor WR crossing over the middle is enough for me never to want to play in the NFL, and I simply can't skate well enough (plus I like my teeth) to play in the NHL. Basically that leaves baseball (which although I can do - I rarely think looks like something someone could just pick it up) and soccer (which seems easy in theory and then just exhausting in practice).

Then you have golf. I don't think just cause some guys on TV can do it, I can drive 350. I don't think I can make shots over a tree with backspin that fades around a helicopter and hits the flag - that's not what I was misunderstood about. The misunderstanding comes when I figured that because I can hit a baseball pretty well, I should darn sure be able to hit a tiny little golf ball while it just sits there. And let me tell you, when you can't hit it - there is nothing more taunting about a golfball that you just swung and missed at. I'm pretty sure if you listen closely you can hear it say "Na Nana Nana Naaaa. You can't hit meeee."

But now I've been cured of this idea that it's easy and have now joined the ranks of all the other desperate humans determined to prove to themselves that they're not so unatheletic that they can't play what looks like the easiest game in the world. I think at the end of the day, that's what draws people to golf. Not the open air, or the spacious courses, or the good times with friends - its the nagging thought that anyone who can walk and chew gum at the same time should have the wherewithal to hit a ball in a straight line at a little flag a few hundred yards away.