welcome to scotland
As I was leaving the car rental agency, the sales agent said to me, "oh, you know, as a golfer, I really wish that I was going along with you on your trip."
"Well, as a golfer, you must feel lucky that you get to live here. We're just visiting."
"Oh, I know, I should be grateful, I try to play the Old Course at St. Andrew's at least once a month. It's easy to forget what sort of privilege that is."
I was in the midst of signing rental paperwork and was only half listening. So I nodded for a second before realizing that he was basically saying that he tries to have dinner with the Queen once a month, and I looked back at him quickly enough to catch the hint of a smirk reminding me that, at their core, The Scots are all epic ball busters. They're perfectly nice and polite as they're getting to know you, but it seems that once a relationship has been established, every Scotsperson that I've met has felt it imperative to test my boundaries and have a go at me at least once or twice. I tend to blame the environment, particularly represented by the golf courses.
The first course that my father and I played was Turnberry, a seaside set of 18 holes that looks deceptively simple and straightforward. Then, I hit my first drive and watched as the wind off the coast took my ball and flung it into a stand of deep heather. One wouldn't think that a white ball could be so easily lost in a small clump of grass, but it had been well and truly devoured; Turnberry's way of saying, "welcome to Scotland, ye posh bastard. Leave yer family baggage and daddy issues at the tee. Ye nae got time to worry 'bout that nonsense while yer dealing with me."
One way of looking at the game of golf is that it is a game of decision making, where you are forced to solve a series of increasingly problematic situations that are mostly of your own making. You begin play on a patch of grass, with the objective of pitching ball to a target 400+ yards away. You start off in ideal conditions -- you can dictate the placement of the ball, the timing, the direction of aiming, etc. Then you hit that first drive and realize that a reflex in your arms caused you to pull the shot, so the ball is sailing to the left of where you were aiming ... and the wind is against you ... and where did that tree branch come from?
Reflecting the game, a golf course is basically a funnel of acceptable conditions. You start off with this wide fairway, a boulevard of grass carpet that is more manicured than most people's lawns. If you can keep your ball in this zone, you're in for a fine game, but there are hazards if you stray from the path. Sand traps. Patches of water. Trees. Voracious grass. The closer you get to the hole that is your target, the less forgiving the terrain gets. There are more traps, a narrower fairway, or a subtle slope to the ground that you don't quite see that can take a poorly hit ball and send it careening into a river. Nobody intends to stray from the path, but golf teaches you that the difference between intentions and execution is vast. Intentions alone can never triumph over the demands of reality.
But then, that's life. You confront a prospect, and in pursuing it, you do certain things right and certain things wrong. Then it's over and you move on to something else. You start over, remembering what you did wrong the last time and what you did right, and you hope that this time around will have more right than wrong in it again.