Within the Leather by David Kazmierczak, CGCS
Now think about your crew at Anybody the golf course. If you have one guy who knows me not showing up to work, not doing knows I am a what he needs to do in the field, not football fanatic. following instructions the entire Come operation overall will not be able to fall, for good or bad, I become achieve the ultimate goal of the best consumed by the game. Whether golf course it can be. Get a couple its high school, college or pro ball, bad apples on the crew and it can I simply cannot get enough of all turn into a real mess! that is football, and I know that I Football is played during every am not alone. But why? Why am I so season, and in every kind of weather. obsessed by football? It is played on grass, or a grass-like It has been said that football surface. There is a smell to a football mirrors life. The game is a parallel of field that if you have played the game many aspects of the ebbs and flows you know very, very well. The field, of everyday existence if broken down practice or game, is like a second and analyzed in that way. I’m not home. The guys you play with on sure about all that, but as I wrote your team become your brothers of this column with the game on, I sorts. Like family. started thinking about the parallels Now think about your golf to our lovely profession and here is course. I have been outside in every what I came up with. kind of weather there is working First off is the obvious fact that on a golf course. Wind, hail, snow, football is the ultimate team sleet, heat, humidity, it doesn’t sport. It takes 11 guys a side, matter. You still have a job to do and working together in every detail together with your crew, you get it of play to be successful. If there done. Just like football. The course is even one player acting alone and its surroundings are your home of not following the scheme, away from home. Your assistants and offense, defense or special your crew become your friends, your teams, the whole system brothers (and sisters) of a sort. breaks down and success is The hierarchy of a football team unachievable. is exactly that of a golf course. It is
Page 44