Golf is inherently a game in which you need to keep score. In fact, the game cannot really exist without this obsession and fixation on score. It is baked into the game; you compete against your friends with the help of scoring; you win competitions based on the score you played; and you challenge yourself to play fewer shots with each game you play. However, after being immersed in this game from birth, I come to realize with every round I play that our fixation on scoring is detrimental to our enjoyment. In fact, I think our obsession with scoring in golf is merely a symptom of a larger and similar problem in life itself: we are so preoccupied with numbers that we forget about everything else. In this reflection post, I want to share with you my philosophical thoughts on this issue and thence how I think it is merely a symptom of a larger issue in our (mostly Western) society.
After a round of golf, one is often asked by friends and family "So, how did it go?"; meaning, they want to know what you scored. One is left in this strange position of either answering with a quantifiable number, or a strange rumbling of noises if you did not play that well. Two things can be said about this strange fact about golf:
There is a strange type of inherent morality built into golf that is directly linked to the number of shots you played: it is bad to play too many shots, irrespective of any other fact. If you say you played 100 whilst you normally play 90, you feel bad about this fact and you do not really want to disclose it.
The number of shots you played is more important than all the other aspects of the game; it disregards the psychological and physical aspects thereof.
This is rather strange but also not. Obviously, golf is a game of numbers, the total shots trump everything else. But this is when you want to compete. But are numbers really that important in a recreational game in nature?
I always get angry at myself when I hit a bad shot, "How could you do that?" I tend to mess up the subsequent shot as well. But this goes back to the fact that I want to hit fewer and fewer shots, thus, there is again this obsession with numbers. I want to tell people I played 72, not 75 or 80.
One might deduce a strange fact from golf:
I golf because I want to play X number of shots.
Reducing a complex game to a single sentence is also reminiscent of Western thinking; either or dichotomous binary thinking, and so on. But in any case, the point is so many golfers (in my family and friend group) play because of the score.
We tend to neglect that we are out in nature. We get mad at a single shot because it adds to the eventual total number of shots we desperately want to lower. We tend to neglect that we are so privileged to be able to spend four hours doing something we love and that we spend four hours in "nature" (nature in quotation marks because golf courses are anything but natural). We tend to forget the physical and psychological exercise we get from practicing a sport (hobby) we love to do (even though we might be doing it for the wrong reason). We tend to forget to find the moments of failure in our own potential as funny.
We tend to forget that golf is so much more than just about the score.
What does this have to do with society at large and our modern society? Well, I think that golf and the obsession with numbers are basically the same as our obsession with likes, for example. We have stopped doing things for the experience of the thing itself; rather, we drink the Starbucks coffee for social media attention, likes, and views. We do not go to the nature reserve to experience the animals and see a way of life untouched by modern technology; rather, we travel these thousands of miles so that we can show the world we traveled these thousands of miles.
It is no longer that we experience the experience first hand, we always experience it through the screen, through the eyes (and likes) of others.
And is this not very similar to the problem of keeping score in golf and the moralization of the number of shots we play? We play the game in order to not face the potential humiliation of saying a score we feel bad about. We upload and delete social media posts that might not have garnered a lot of views and likes because it shows us in a bad light.
The cost at the end of the day is our experiencing the moment for what it is. We do not experience the moment in the same sense as we would have if we did not, for example, have the camera on us.
In a truly absurd, funny, and ironic moment, I tried to capture a video of myself playing golf early in the morning for a potential post. But the camera fell just before I hit the shot. Is this not a perfect example of the absurdity of the whole situation? I ended up not playing the shot, I tried to put the camera back, but it did not want to work, I messed up the next shot, and I just laughed at myself (as I am not a social media savvy person). "All for the likes" and I messed up the hole. (See the video below:)
One sense of why having a bad golf score, or a low view or like count, is because of our fear of failure. Having a bad round of golf is seen as a moral failure. But why should this be the case when we can laugh at ourselves when we do indeed fail at something? As I tried to showcase in the above video, not everything goes according to plan, and this is fine. We should rather laugh.
In any case, I hope you enjoyed this reflection or philosophical piece on a strange mental game. This is my second post in this community, so I hope I followed all the rules, please do let me know if I did not and if the content is not what is sought after.
I really do hope that you enjoy what you do, and that you will not do what you do for some other reason! Play golf to enjoy every aspect thereof, drink a cup of coffee for the pure enjoyment thereof and not for the social media attention.
Be well, and happy thinking!
The photographs and video in this post are my own, taken with my iPhone. The musings are also my own albeit inspired by a stupid video of myself messing up!
