The great Gary Player once said, “Golf is not a team sport where the ball is passed. It is a game where once you hit the ball, you are on your own. Today you can be the best player in the world and tomorrow you can be a chump.”1 This path of success and failure can be experienced by the best of players. Whether an amateur or professional, golf requires more than average patience and adversity. Success in golf revolves around an individual commitment to improving skill, physical strength, and most importantly, personal ethics on and off the course.
To truly be successful in golf there are certain ethics each player must exhibit. Exactly what ethics are we talking about? Perseverance, responsibility, courtesy, confidence, sportsmanship, integrity, respect, and judgement are all ethical practices that are expected in the game of golf. Universal rules and guidelines keep a game fair for all skill levels of play; however, exhibiting a code of ethics in golf is what determines those that are truly successful and those that are not. Belief and practice in this system of ethics guides a player equally on those “on top of the world” days as much as the “chump” days.
In the game of golf, individual scores are recorded for each day. The score total comes from performances made at eighteen different fairways. In a tournament, a player must keep their total score the first few days under a certain number in order to advance to the last few days. It’s called the cut. Life itself has days like this. We may feel like our score does not make the cut toward a standard we set out to achieve. As a result, we sometimes have no desire to try again. Similar to golf performance, our own path of success does not revolve around a certain physical skill or mental preparation alone. Life is much easier when we learn to govern our own conduct with consistent ethical practices. It helps to understand that the real opponent is not the co-worker or neighbor we don’t get along with nor the child who chooses not to cooperate. A more worthy opponent becomes ourselves. When we believe and practice ethics that are good for ourselves and are also fair to others, there is no better teammate.
Believe in the practice of ethics and commit to a bigger purpose behind your own steps you take to achieve. Start to understand the importance behind patience and perseverance during those “on top of the world” days and those “chump” days. Learn and teach with ethics in mind. Those who observe you will be glad you did. At the end of the day, a more worthy opponent will feel better about this decision to do so.
Relent, do not be unjust; reconsider, for my integrity is at stake. My righteousness still stands. Job 6:29
1 Psychology Today, Gary Player Swinging hard On Life’s Course, published March 1, 1999
© Andy L. Westbrook, Westbrook Publishing, Ink., June 2009
