Without expecting to, I took up the game of golf last summer. I was motivated by a desire to help out a friend whose regular partners weren’t available; I didn’t want him to be lonely. So one day I heard myself say, I can play 9 holes with you tomorrow morning before I meet my client. I’d only ever played twice in my life, but I love mini-golf, so what the heck. I had no idea the gift I’d discover.
The first blessing was traveling light, taking nothing onto the course but a bottle of water and a snack. No cell phone and not missing it. The second was how absorbed I became in the moment, paying attention to subtleties of the body that affected the trajectory and velocity of the ball. The third was a feeling of expansive freedom—walking the beautiful landscape in heavenly weather; the feeling of the pendulum swing and the whack! sound that sends a ball aloft; the bliss of releasing muscular tension for alignment, competition for simple enjoyment. When my ball went into the drink or I missed it entirely, my generous golf partner gave me unlimited “mulligans.”
Later that month, I shot a full round of 18 holes. On the 11th hole, I experienced a shift that changed my game. I realized I was holding tightly to the club handle, and I decided to loosen my grip. Whoosh! My ball traveled twice as far as my normal bounce along the fairway.
At Christmastime, a friend of mine gave me Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons, a thin primer on the essentials of grip, stance and swing. I read a little. Surprisingly, I didn’t activate my old pattern of overachievement, but perused the book lightly over the winter to see if I could learn a little about where to place my attention.
Now it’s summer and, with a few tips, I’m reaching scores that have actual names—like triple bogie, double bogie, or bogie. I even got my first par! More importantly, I’m practicing new habits of letting go of self-judgment, criticism, frustration or the pressure to succeed.
Truth be told, letting go is not my forté. I hang on to friendships, relationships, habits, thoughts and feelings way past their sell-by-date. But I’m slowly learning to release my grip. I wonder what life would look like if I let go in every way as much as I let go with golf? If I imagine new landscapes bringing as much joy and freedom as I experience on the golf course, might I even run towards my future?