Hate Golf? Try Playing it Just Once Annually

As Jason Gay discovered, the method can make you love it again
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 11, 2011 1:57 PM CDT
Hate Golf? Try Playing it Just Once Annually
If this doesn't seem fun to you, perhaps you should consider playing it only sparingly.   (Getty Images)

Jason Gay once had the "golf plague." "I met enthusiastic friends at 6:30am and schlepped out to New Jersey to play at drab suburban clubs happy to charge us $150 to hack their crowded turf. We would dodder around for hours, drink stale $9 beer, lose $50 worth of balls, and then sit in tunnel traffic for another 60 minutes. It was just as magical as it sounds," he fondly recalls in the Wall Street Journal. But he recently hit on a way to actually enjoy golf: Play it only once per year.

He—and his friends—are "horrendous at golf," but by playing it just once annually, he is no longer "at golf's mercy. Golf does not come to me in my nightmares, like it once did, in fuzzy visions of lost tee shots and sand traps 40 feet tall." Rather, he actually looks forward to it, and no longer is he preoccupied with the ambition to someday be an "acceptable" player. The game, rather, has become "about modest goals. Driving one ball straight. Avoiding windows, trucks, and trucks carrying windows. Not getting laughed at by birds." Click for the full piece. (More golf stories.)

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