Why we love golf
Don’t fret the end of the 2025 “Majors” season — although the books are now officially closed for this year’s Masters, PGA, US Open and Open Championship, it only signals much more excitement lies ahead with the upcoming FedEx Cup, Ryder Cup and LPGA CME Group Tour Championship events. The blend of natural beauty of the various courses where these spine-tingling contests will be played and the emotional exhilaration of golf played at its highest levels, spring thoughts of love in the air — the love of golf, I mean.
I love golf — there, I’ve said it unabashedly, and if you ask, I’ll shout it from the clubhouse rooftop — I love everything about golf ! Just like Bubba, in the “Forrest Gump” film loves shrimp, “You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, sauté it…” I love golf.
We all have our own story about how we were first introduced to the game. It may have been a parent placing a golf club in our hands for the first time or nervously playing with some work colleagues in a company outing or simply knowing there had to be more to the game than rolling a brightly colored ball into a clown’s nose at your local miniature putt-putt course.
For me, it was a five-lesson junior clinic held by the Pro at our county golf course’s driving range, located in an expansive pit, which aptly served as an ice-skating rink during the winter months. I’m not really sure what it was about the game that took hold of me, but I was instantly captivated and clearly remember taking an illustrated golf instruction book out behind our house, wedging a tee in the rubber runners of our door mat and teeing up a whiffle ball to test my skills on the 6-hole course I designed in our much too small backyard.
The 18th at Pebble Beach may be considered one of the most beautiful and challenging holes in golf, but it can’t hold a candle to my tortuous par 3 fourth hole, which required a high soft fade to clear the roofline of our house and gently land on the green, defined as the large mulched area at the base of a spreading crabapple tree. You can imagine the disappointment of a stroke-and-distance penalty as a ball landing on the roof slowly trickled into the eagerly awaiting house gutter.
No matter what our skill level, we all hit some shots that rank at the top of our personal, best-of-the-best category. In one of my favorite golf films, “Tin Cup,” driving range pro Roy McAvoy, played by Kevin Costner, philosophizes, “Yes, that’s why I love it. If you hit one good shot, that tuning fork rings in your loins, and you can’t wait to get back.” Well, Roy may have been overly demonstrative, but golf certainly does present a Wordle-on-steroids type challenge and achieving success to any degree can instantly make us infatuated with the game.
Whatever the magnetic attraction that first endeared us to the sport, we golfers love the game for a variety of reasons. For some it’s the beauty of the courses, for others the uncompromising, relentless challenge, and for some the congenial camaraderie of spending a day with friends — the list is truly endless. Our best round, our favorite golf trip, our special foursome, beating balls at the range, the funniest golf joke we ever heard, our favorite pro to follow on TV, The Majors, the Solheim Cup, a treasured golf book, the Ryder Cup, our best shot ever, the Presidents Cup, the nineteenth hole, our new driver, the bucket list course we got to play, our beloved putter, our shrinking handicap.
Even on those days when we love golf, but golf doesn’t love us back, let’s try to remember all the reasons we enjoy this wonderful game. After all, playing and loving the game of golf is a lifelong pursuit.
Rich Bernstein recently moved to Sun City - Hilton Head. Rich has been experiencing the joy, challenges and frustrations of golf since his selection as the 6th player on his 5-player high school golf team.
