Crying for a Lost Lover

Guys really do think in very simple terms.  As an example we were discussing what men remember most about playing a golf course or going on a golf outing.  The conclusions was; cheeseburger, cold beer, beverage cart girl, signature hole, beverage cart girl, and beer in that order.  So here I am twenty three years into a real marriage with a real women and in my mind the health of my marriage in inexorably** intertwined with me being a professional golfer and where I stand on the money list.  If that is not the stupidest measure of familial health ever invented I do not know what is, but that is how guys think.

Friday as I drove away from Woodforest Golf Club knowing I had missed a Champions Tour qualifying by three shots I started to ponder how I really felt about golf. I have been helplessly, hopelessly in love with Sharon for twenty four years, but I have in love with golf since age three or so.  What I am trying to say is that for virtually all my life I have had this mistress, golf, that has overshadowed, infringed upon, and been used as a gold standard for everything I have done.  My scores, 72-74-72-73 left me outside looking in by three shots.  I absolutely, positively, could not have played worse golf and I only, reset ONLY, missed by three.  I spent four hours traveling back to New Braunfels and in that drive through the great towns such as Bastrop, Giddings, and Brenham, I actually shed a tear.  I cried at my failure.

Sharon is my wife, but for a lot longer golf has been my lover.  Friday completed a decade, which is ten years to my fellow Aggies out there, of frustration with competitive golf.  Since failing to keep my card in 1998, and not regaining it in 1999 all through a series of unfortunate events, I have strived to regain form and make it back to the Tour.  Four years ago I began a plan to make it on the Champions Tour.  Despite all my planning, practicing, working out, traveling, and pressing on toward a greater goal, I have not made it back.  It has not happened.  As I drove home I concluded that a decade is a large enough sample to determine if I am still good enough to play the Tour.  Alas the conclusion is a bad one and I cried the tear as if for a lost lover.  My conclusion is it is time to move on and live differently.

I have no idea today what that differently is.  I have ideas.  I also have thoughts one of which this is not a great time to send out resumes. I am sure I’ll keep playing golf.  I like playing with my friends.  It’s just I have for ten years not had a lot of fun playing tournament golf.  Why keep doing what hurts?  I consider myself forcibly retired, dishonorably discharged, and jilted by my lover.  I have shed my tears for my lost lover.  Now it’s time to make a habit out of helping Sharon do the dishes.

*Jamie Gomez is our niece and Sharon carried her as a surrogate mother for her sister Dee.  The New York Times Magazine did a piece on this which ran December 25, 1997.  It is a good story.

**Crusty old Dan Jenkins wrote a book titled The Dogged Victims of an Inexorable Fate.  You might have to dig into the far corner of a used book store to find it, but it still holds nuggets of truth about life on Tour.