Tommy Snell:Thanks for the Memories
Golfers give and have much for which to be thankful. Let's stop and really give thanks this week for the opportunity to shank balls into the woods, horseshoe putts around an inadequate circumference and duff shots into crafty hazards.
I talked with an old friend this week who doesn't play golf anymore. He can't play golf anymore. The once confirmed golf nut wants to play, but his back problems won't let him. "I miss it terribly," he said with a sadness that made me shudder. I'm thankful that I can still play, even though my handicap is 10 strokes higher than it was 30 years ago.
A 7-iron turned into a Cobra Helicopter a few months ago. I thought: I'm thankful the game does not evoke unacceptable moments as it once did. I felt his pain, but needing a helmet and quick feet is not my idea of an enjoyable day on the course.
Friends with thick skin and a quick wit are as sugary as sweet potato pie. I'm thankful for the moments when friends can laugh at my chunks and skulls, those moments when birdies and pars turn into bogies and doubles.
"I was nervous over my first birdie putt," one fellow chirper once said after I pulled a short opportunity so badly that my partner threw up on the fringe. I'm thankful for my own hard-shell ego.
I'm thankful I have a home, grateful for my job, pleased I don't have to make that one call, completely satisfied with my life, appreciative of my friends and family, and content with my golf game.
I'm not going to gripe about the Walmart built between my drives 20 years ago and my puffs of today, complain about the rising cost of golf balls, grumble about the aches and pains that 18 holes yield, or protest the anchoring rule. Nobody wants to listen, and nobody does. I won't refuse the guy who relives his round.
"You won't believe what happened to me on 18," a golfer once said.
"Okay, I'll listen as long as you don't start on No 1," said Tom Garrott. That lives in 19th Hole infamy as one of the best comebacks ever.
No, no objection from me this year. I'm just going to be thankful this season that I can walk the fairways, see the beauty in the good and bad shots I hit, and hear the game's moments that bring me back again and again.
Tommy Snell, golf coach at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, writes a column for the Sun Herald.
This story was originally published November 22, 2015 at 12:12 PM with the headline "Tommy Snell:Thanks for the Memories ."