This first appeared on LinkedIn.
At some point after I started playing golf a long long time ago (gosh, I forgot it’s been 17-odd years!), I was given a brilliant piece of advice by a wizened old man (he must have been 80 if a day) who was a permanent fixture at the club, having retired after an eventful and interesting career in his government and then having started, run, and exited a successful and profitable enterprise before deciding to stop and play golf full time, “not for the glory, but for the company”.
He said, and you may visualise Kenny Rogers, wearing cowboy boots and hat, playing his acoustic guitar, sitting on the barstool, with a beer next to him, singing this (if that adds to the flavour), though the exact point this gentleman gave me this advice was as I stood on the 18th tee, looking over the water at the Four Season’s (Al Badia) Golf Club in Festival City in Dubai:
The most important shot in golf, as in life, is the shot you are taking right now. Not all the shots you have taken till that point, not the immediate previous shot that landed you here, not the next shot you may have to play after this one, not all the shots you are going to take later in life. This shot. This ball. This club. This lie. This hole. This green. This day. This four-ball. This weather. This course. This round. This. Shot.
Take a look at the lie. Take a look at the green. Smell the wind. Gauge the distance and the roll. Choose a club. Chose a landing spot. Choose a swing. Keep your eyes on the ball. And swing with rhythm and confidence. All else is irrelevant. All else can be thought about later. Focus on this shot. If you can do that, you can play golf, you can run a business, you can hold a relationship, you can raise a child, you can learn a skill, you can live a life. If you can’t, you can’t even tie your shoelaces. That’s it, son. Now, go. Play that shot.
N.B: For those who care, I promptly put the next 2 tee shots in the water, and was 7 on the par 4 green. Yeah, I know. Life isn’t really like the movies, however much we want it to be.
