And If You Play Golf, You're My Friend

Harvey Penick wrote the above titled book and it began where his 'Little Red Book: Lessons and Teachings from a Lifetime in Golf' left off. Both books are bestsellers, with the Little Red Book as the highest selling golf book ever.

He relates to golf and life as they're synonymous with each other. His teachings go way beyond the actual game of golf. It was how to be not just a better golfer, but how to be a better person. There are bad breaks in golf, just as in life, and it's not about what you score, but how you respond to the situation. Harvey Penick knew the game so well that over the course of a round, there's a bunch of scenario's that don't go your way on the golf course. He could measure a person's character by how he or she dealt with the situation. He also learned that how you react to situations on the golf course is directly proportional to how that same person would react in life.

There are a ton of bad breaks in life, a lot of bumps in the road that we deal with each and every day. Golf puts you in those same scenario's only they're not as important. Again, he never emphasized the score when faced with adversity, but how you dealt with it and learned from it. Not every shot is makable in golf, nor is everything in life makeable. The most important thing is to rise above the adversity, and do it without cheating.

There's never going to be a time where I don't follow Sam Snead's quote, "If you cheat at golf, you cheat at life." There's a reason golf is so hard and it's to test your integrity. It's very easy to fluff the ball when you got a bad break, but is the score that important to you? Is that the answer to golf or life? To cheat? You will never learn anything about yourself if you're a cheater, nor will you ever build any character or integrity. The scorecard doesn't reflect your character by any means. It will show you the rewards of your character if you play by the rules. Sometimes you should just go out and play a round of golf without even keeping score.

Golf is way bigger than the scorecard ever will be. That's why life has no scorecard. In life, you keep your own score by being the person golf will test you to be. The person who plays for the honor, tradition, and integrity which started this great game over 100 years ago. That's why golf has the richest camaradie and that's also why, if you play golf, you're my friend.