Every life must learn what is important and what is not. It took me a while but I managed to realize the value of hitting a golf ball. Here is a semi-humorous tale from my youthful experiences which eventually led to my Las Vegas Golf Package.
As a teenager interested in sports of all kinds I felt that I really should have learned how to properly play the game of golf unfortunately that came later in life. Now, I certainly wish I was one of those people who play the game as if they were born with a golf club in their hand but alas that is certainly not the case. Although I was raised as a child only a couple of miles from a top notch golf course with its far stretching fairways and rolling greens it wasn’t until I grew older and I learned the rudimentary principles of the game that I really had the opportunity to explore the true golf experience.
With living so close to a major course as a youth I had noticed many of the golf balls failed to hit their mark and landed outside the boundaries of the golf acreage dotting the landscape. They appeared like they were little white mounds waiting patiently for a caring hand to retrieve them and put them to a good use. Free time after school usually netted me a few extra hours in which to wander around the greens looking and watching the various players hit the innocent white ball into a small hole. I soon noticed that many of the golf balls were merely left lying perfectly still and never retrieved by the person who hit them originally. I decided it was high time that I began a golf ball collection. I quickly hauled as many of the white balls to my bedroom as I could stick into my lunch pail. I figured if nothing else I could always use them to smack around in the field with a baseball bat.
I had always been considered a serious competitor at sports such as baseball, basketball or football. It was nothing as a teenager to begin a sports game at the crack of dawn and before I realized it the sun was slowly making its way down to the horizon and everyone was packing up to go home. When I grew up the game of golf simply did not exist in my world. It was one of those games that the older adults would sit in front of the TV on Sunday and watch as a man in the background whispered what was going on. It was one of those games where my Uncle Anthony would sit at the Sunday table as we had dinner and talk about people named Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer.
Today, after some serious golf related soul searching, I have been playing the game for at least the last twenty years although I can not honestly say that I am any better now then I was when I played my first game. To me even today the letters PGA do not hold much meaning but I manage to occasionally play a few holes of the game.
My real excitement in life was when I received the Las Vegas Golf Package from my current boss. He had somehow heard that I was a fair golf player and felt I would enjoy the trip and the experience. I believe that he must have mistakenly heard one of my co-workers jokingly saying how well I play while they laughed at the water cooler, but either way I got a free trip to Las Vegas and to the golf course.
As I arrived at the golf course golf course I watched some of the players tee off and was truly impressed at the distance that they could make that ball travel. I never was very good at teeing off. Actually when I think about it I wasn’t very good at anything relating to golf! I finally arrived at the tee off area and looked to the players on each side of me. One by one they began to hit the ball with the skill of a professional golfer. I knew that my face was going to get red as I brought back the club in preparation of my swing. I kept my eye on the ball and slowly started my swing. Much to my surprise the ball went a good distance. Not an Arnold palmer hit but a justifiable start.
The rest of my game went about in a similar manner and in the end I was not as embarrassed by my score as I thought I would be. Although I didn’t even come close to being near the top ten in the game it was still a great experience. Getting the Las Vegas Golf Package was an opportunity that I would not care to pass up. It provided me a chance to get around other golfers and meet people who cared for the game as much as I care for it. I found that during my time on the green I am really provided an opportunity to reflect upon my life and think back to those pleasant days as a youth when I actually learned to really appreciate the game of golf.
