How I gave up golf and saved my sanity

Perseverance is a big deal in my husband’s family. You don’t quit, no matter how tough the challenge. Pick the cliché of your choice: Stay the course; dig in; when the going gets tough, the tough get going; anything worth doing is worth doing well. These mantras hum in the background of our lives.

I didn’t grow up with the ethic of going to the wall. I was raised with the sensible, middle-of-the-road notion that you do your best at a task and if you don’t succeed after a reasonable amount of effort, you don’t try, try again. You quit. More practical than inspiring, I know, and it’s a philosophy that doesn’t fit very well into a cliché.

But I married into a family that was driven to succeed, no matter the price, no matter the pain, no matter the sacrifice. It seemed admirable at first glance, but this thinking led me astray.

In particular, some 20 years ago I took up golf, mostly because my husband loved the game. I played a lot, very badly, but I took comfort in the weather, the camaraderie, the cart snacks I brought along and the hope that my game would improve.

After five years of applying myself to the stance, the “keys,” the pre-golf exercises, the new clubs, the right swing, the latest videos, I played with a friend who said to me, in all candor, “It’s amazing that someone who walks upright can play as poorly as you do.”

I was not deterred. We went on golf vacations and golf charity outings. I paid gazillions of dollars to drag myself around courses, hitting the ball sometimes 10 or 15 times on one hole. Truly, I was astoundingly bad.

At various times, I hurt my shoulder, my knees and my ribs. One year I endured mammograms, MRIs and X-rays because of a mysterious hematoma on my chest. I realized eventually that I had poked myself rather severely with the end of a golf club as I powered the ball 10 yards down the fairway.