'There's always room to learn more' - #lakewoodnews

Wouldn't it be great if we could all have a narrator for our lives? A sort of off-camera, play-by-play narration of life.

And, no--;no color commentary is necessary.

When I'm out on the golf course, I sometimes imagine the voice of Ken Venturi or Jim Nance describing what's going on in my game. I guess, in some way, it helps me think about the shots I'm hitting to talk through them. And it helps me imagine good results if the voice talking about them isn't my own. When you're working through visualizations, it's helpful to have a credible voice telling you what to do. It's like, you don't really want Hannibal Lecter walking you through your dinner preparations.

Anyway...

What's interesting, and part of why I love this game my father introduced to me 40 years ago, is that the shot I described above has an infinite number of different ways to execute it. Me, personally, I would probably take a high-lofted club, like a sand wedge, take a pretty good swing at it, maybe 60 percent, and fly the ball most of the way up to the hole. It's not likely to go in, but in the mental calculus of golf, it's the type of shot that would give me the best chance to make the next shot.

I could also take the same club, place the ball a little further back in my stance, close the face of the sand wedge so it's flatter, and chop down on the ball so it shoots forward low to the ground, checks up and rolls the rest of the way to the hole. If I hit it right, that kind of shot has a better chance to go in the hole than the first one, but the odds of mishitting it and leaving myself a tough next shot are greater.

There are also myriad shots in-between. Bad golfers--;like myself--;tend to rely on one or two kinds of shots that they trust and feel good about. Good golfers have a greater repertoire to choose from. There's the high flop, the 9-iron putt, the actual putt from this location, the 59-degree wedge shot...And the list goes on. It turns out, there are a lot of different ways to get roughly the same result. The people who really know what they're doing don't just have one answer to the same problem.

That's why good golfers practice a lot--;to build up their repertoire. When they're young, maybe they do rely on one or two different approaches. But as they gain more experience, they find little nuances and tricks of the trade that make minute differences in the outcome of their game. And the really good ones keep adding shots to their repertoire their whole careers, even after they're old and the game has passed them by.

I love playing with good golfers--;it's humbling, but so educational. I love watching their thought process as they develop their shots, watching their routines as they prepare to face new challenges, pick up little tricks that I hadn't thought of. In fact, I kinda don't even trust golfers who only have one solution--;it's like they lack the experience or the humility to try to develop different approaches. And it's a huge part of why I love the game--;there's always room to learn more.

And, by the way, this entire column has been a metaphor. Now, ask yourself this: who would you rather play "golf" with--;James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, or Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton?

from Lakewood Sentinel - Latest Stories http://lakewoodsentinel.comhttp://arvadapress.com/stories/Theres-always-room-to-learn-more,225098?branding=15