The Sunday Pin Golf

18 holes is often a journey. Whether you’re playing your local muni or your private country club, there’s always a first tee shot and four hours of unknown that follow it.

Everyone’s expedition will always look a little different, in fact, every time I play my hometown course (of which I have been a member for over ten years), I seem to take a different path. Never once have I made a score and thought to myself, ‘Wow, that was very like that one time a few months ago’. It just doesn’t happen; it’s not in golf’s nature to be predictable.

That unpredictability can be scary.

From the feeling of stepping on the first tee for the first time in months, and not quite knowing what will results will come from your cobwebbed swing, to an unexpected, sculled wedge approach. And that’s only the mental side of golf, the side where I have seen friends consumed by their own unpredictable thoughts after just a few holes. A shadow that follows every one of us.

Other, more brave souls, brave the unpredictability of the mother nature herself. As a man in my twenties who has grown up playing Irish parkland golf, I am always humbled by the big bad links courses of Ireland. I quite literally get blown away by them. There’s something about the unknown outcome of a 5 iron to a pin that’s only 130 yards away with 30 kph winds in my face that just doesn’t sit right with me. It often feels like my ‘journey’ is turned into a full-on ‘odyssey’.

It seems to me that in the game of golf, there are only two things that I can predict. My playing partners on the day, and for better or worse, my outfit (of which is for another day to discuss).

Playing partners. The very people who are going to cross the treacherous no man’s land that is the golf course. The team of endeavourers who blindly guide each other into the unknown.

An utter chameleon to the mind, forever changing colours, forever presenting new figures for you to encounter. They can be close friends, fierce enemies and even complete nobody’s (it’s up to the four hours which category they end up in).

Regardless of who they are, there is no doubt that they play a huge role in your round. Your playing partners can be the curators of a thriving vibe, or the killers of such. Some people just have good golf emitting from their personality, from their reactions to their own poor shots, to their reactions to your more mediocre shots. A fist bump goes a long way when you need it.

It’s clear the first step to being a good playing partner is a bit of etiquette. Giving your journeymen the space to do their thing is important. However, behind the basics of etiquette and manners lies something much more profound; put simply, some people just give off good golf energy, others don’t.

An example of good golf energy emitting individuals are the type of golfers who give you a fist bump for rolling in a clutch bogey putt after putting your first ball in the water. They’re the guys telling you to keep your head up after a tough break, even if their round is totally in the muck. In fact, the best playing partners I’ve had, keep their hyped energy especially when they’re in the mud. They know their round is over, so they turn to others to support them, a true pillar of modern society. To sacrifice themselves, so that others may arrive at the destination, a little more unscathed than normal.

We golfers are a funny bunch. In a sport that requires so much mental focus, where being off by simply a millimetre can result in an earth-shattering poor shot. We are the most easily rattled group of individuals. Millions or bust.

This is where a playing partner can destroy you. I am by no means suggesting they mean to destroy you mentally, but in a game where mental fortitude is fleeting, it doesn’t take a lot for a bad thought to lead to a series of bad shots.

Shank. The word so evil it goes by the same rules as Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter, or should I say, ‘he who shall not be named’. A whisper of the word in a playing group is enough to topple even the best of scores, instantly putting memories of those bad swing feels in the forefront of the mind.

In fact, we are so poor mentally, that for a lot of us, a playing partner telling us how good we are playing, how good we are scoring, is enough for us to consume ourselves. Often following it up with a double bogey ‘just to settle the nerves’.

The bottom line is that golf is ultimately four hours of a gruesome, fearsome, yet beautifully fulfilling journey. But it’s not a venture you take alone.

I urge you to experience it with others, to really engage in it, engage with your partners and their game. And I promise you; your game will see the benefits in the heat of battle.

So go play that round with your dad, enjoy his company, grab a beer afterwards.

Call up that one friend you haven’t played with in a while, get to know about their life again.

Golf is not a path we are meant to take alone, so don’t.

And please please please, whatever you do, don’t mention the howling wind blowing left to right to a playing partner that slices the ball…

Written by

E.J. Ganaza

4/7/25

The Sunday Pin