Golf Is Beautiful - William Huang
William Huang is a current sophomore and student-athlete at Princeton University. He is a member of the men’s golf team, where he was Ivy League Rookie of the year.
“Golf is beautiful kid,” said this old guy that was watching me hit balls on the range. “It’s a game that you will take for the rest of your life.”
“You can play it for years and years like me and still suck,” he continues as he chuckles. “Gotta take advantage and enjoy the beauty when you can still swing the club as beautifully as you do.”
Golf is beautiful. Ok buddy. How can a sport be beautiful? thought my 10-year-old self. This old guy must be tripping.
Looking back, that old man was completely right. I was just too young and inexperienced with the game of golf to understand the full depth of what he was saying. Golf truly IS beautiful. Like all beautiful things, its beauty is unbounded.
Golf is beautiful because it is the pinnacle of competition. It is a sport in which you compete against the greatest opponent of all time: mother nature. Everything can be the same about a golf course. The lay out, the hole locations, the grass conditions, but the scores can vary to upwards of 15 shots when the weather is not cooperating.
I first learned when I was in 7th grade playing an IJGT (International Junior Golf Tour) event in NJ during late March. During the practice round the day before the weather was ideal. Sunny, calm, and warm enough to only be wearing two layers in the Northeast early spring. I had just had a lesson with my coach down in Florida and I felt dialed in with my game. My score that day from the practice round reflected it: a 3 under-par 69. If I could keep that same momentum up into the tournament round the next day, I would most likely be comfortably leading the tournament. Boy was I in for a surprise.
When I tell you there is no other experience like trying to thread a tee shot in between the tree line when it’s blowing 40 miles an hour in 45 degree weather with heavy rain, there is truly no other experience. The tournament round was played in weather so bad that normal, sane people wouldn’t even go outside to grab the mail. In addition to the weather, adding on the stress of tournaments and knowing that any one shot could be the difference between victory and defeat was truly a humbling experience. I came out of that tournament learning how my expectations must change based off of the conditions. I learned when to be more aggressive and when to just take my medicine and play the golf course for what it was. Being able to plant both feet in the ground and face weather conditions like that demands a whole different level of self-confidence and self-commitment that no other sport calls for. That’s why golf is beautiful.
Clearly, as y’all can guess by the fact that I’m telling you what I learned, that I didn’t play very well. Yes, in fact, I shot 93 and finished second to last.
Looking at competition further, however, at its most fundamental level is about a competition against yourself. Golf is about trying to beat your personal best every time you step on the course.
My most memorable experience with this aspect of golf was a random night of the summer of my freshman year of high school. I was playing a match with my good friend and I was smoking him as I should have been because he had just started playing a few years ago. The interesting thing was, even as I was beating him hole after hole, he was happy and content. My competitive brain couldn’t wrap my head was confused by this and just kept focus on figuring out how to beat him by more. Soon enough, the match was over and I had beaten him by an embarrassing amount.
As we headed into the clubhouse for him to buy me the cookie that I had earned, I still couldn’t understand why he was still so happy. Was he ok with losing? Especially this bad? How could anyone still have a smile on their face? I had to ask him what was up.
“Hey Duche (his last name was Ducharme relax yourselves) why are you so happy? I just smoked you 4 & 3 for nine holes.” I asked.
Duche replied with something that changed the way I look at golf for the rest of my life.
“Yeah, but I beat my low score by 2 shots today.”
Even though he lost to his opponent, Duche knew what the game of golf was actually about. It was about playing and competing against yourself. Before that moment, I had lost sight of this. I always compared myself to the field, thinking more about where I placed in the tournament more than how much I improved from the last time. Duche had taught me an important lesson about golf that day. Competing against yourself is just as if not more important than competing with your peers. Golf is one of the few sports in the world where you can still have tons of fun even without an opponent. Because, there’s more satisfaction out of being the best that you can be than beating anyone else. Being in full control of your emotions and shots is the best feeling in the world. At the end of the day, you are your biggest opponent. That’s why golf is beautiful.
Through the process of becoming the best that I can be, I discovered another beauty of golf: the objectivity. In order to become a good golfer, only one thing needs to happen: your ability to consistently put the ball in the hole in the least number of strokes possible. That is the only thing that matters in the world of golf. This also means that good golfers come in many different shapes and sizes with different unique techniques. Only when I was a freshman in high school did I fully recognize this.
I was playing decently well in a tournament and was near the top of the leaderboard. All I needed to do was to make up one shot on the leader and I would win the tournament. This was all I was thinking about when I warmed up on the range in preparation for my round.
I scouting out the kids that were still there, wondering who the leader Garrett Engle was. Garrett was a legend. Oklahoma commit and one of the best junior golfers in the Northeast. Looking at everyone’s swings, none of them seemed to be super impressive and my confidence soared. This means whoever is leading just caught a hot streak and isn’t that good. To put it bluntly, I was judging books by their covers, or rather players by their swings.
However, out of everyone on the range, there was one kid that stood out. Not because of his aesthetically pleasing swing, but rather because of how ugly it was. Nothing about his technique was correct, but somehow he still made solid contact with the ball and it was coming off pretty straight. He must be at the bottom of the leaderboard with that swing. I thought. No chance anyone can play well with that. Turns out, that kid was Garrett Engle.
We played in the same group and he made birdie on the first hole and took off. I was never able to catch him, even when my swing looked way better than his. Garrett ended up winning the tournament by four shots over me. While I was disappointed about not being able to catch Garrett, I had learned a valuable lesson.
Golf is an interpretation of movement in order to become consistent. There’s no right or wrong technique, only what works and what doesn’t. The only thing that matters in the golf swing is how the club interacts with the golf ball at the moment of impact. The golf ball doesn’t care where the club came from, or how pretty the rest of the swing is. It only cares about what it is at the moment of impact. That’s the objective truth about golf, but everything else is room for creativity to thrive. That’s why golf is beautiful.
As I have grown older, I have recognized that all three of these aspects of golf that I have grown to love not only exists in the game, but also in life itself. In life there are other people you are competing against, whether it’s for a job or promotion, but at the end of the day, you are competing against the overall market and yourself. The better you can improve upon yourself the better odds you have at getting a job. The more friends you have in the industry, the more the market is in favor of you. Further, we can see many different styles of execution within an industry. Many different niches to attack and many different ways to become successful. Golf is truly a reflection of life and that is why it is beautiful to me and I hope you can see it’s beauty too.
