Скачать или смотреть Can You Play Golf Without Anger if You’re an Angry Person?

Voice over: Michael Robles
Written: Shane Ryan
Music: David Cutter
Video courtesy of: Golf Lads
On Monday, I watched this video of an enraged golfer attempting to throw his bag in the water and failing:


Lads Golf ™
@Lads_Golf
Another golfer quitting......AGAIN! 😂

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5:10 AM - Oct 21, 2019
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I laughed because it’s objectively very funny, but I also cringed because it’s all too familiar. I have to go back only a few years to remember my bouts with rage on the course—broken clubs, the humiliation of losing your cool in front of other people, the shame of admitting to the pro that you need him to fix your 60-degree wedge because, yes, you’ve done it again. I wrote about this anger once, at a time when tennis was overtaking golf as my sport of choice, and the last line of that piece conjured up a hypothetical moment when I might return to the links:

“ … there will come a time, if I can live long enough, when even the forgiving surface of a clay tennis court is too hard on my knees, and the endless sprinting after the yellow ball is more than my lungs can handle, and the green fairways, plush and long, shaded by oaks and pines in the late afternoon sun, appeal to me again.”

The words were prophetic, and I didn’t have to live very long at all: Earlier this spring, I tore the ACL in my right knee playing tennis. I had reconstructive surgery in May, and though it will still be months before I can get back on the courts, I can already take full swings on the course. When the brutal and long recovery from this injury finally gives way to actual athletic activity, there’s no turning it down. In other words: I’m back.

It’s been only three weeks since I returned to golf, and I’m delighting in the honeymoon phase. I have no right to expect anything remotely competent (my best 18-hole score from my earlier short obsession with the game was 85, so I was never great to begin with), but I’m stupidly grateful just to be playing, and I’ve actually surprised myself with how well I’m hitting the ball. It’s not consistent yet, but I’m not murdering whole colonies of grasshoppers with topped shots as I assumed might happen for the first month or so. I even shot a 48 in the first nine holes I played last week, and when I made par on the last hole to break 50 after two gorgeous 4-irons, a short pitch and a two-putt, I felt a rush of pride commingling with the return of the love I’d once felt.

But as I improve, I can feel the slight irritation returning as well: The annoyance when I decel/duff a short pitch with my 60-degree wedge. The frustration when I inexplicably hit six inches behind the ball even though I insist that I’ve done everything right. The sudden flare of anger when I move my head forward too soon on a long approach, or swing too hard, or lift my shoulders and hit a shot thin, or make any of the avoidable errors that a little focus would have prevented. And I wonder: Is it possible to play this diabolical game without anger, when your natural disposition is prone to it?

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