Editor’s Perspective
Where Will You Choose
Excellence Mark Vaughn, CGCS Virginia Turfgrass Journal Editor
This Year?
“The
thrill of victory… and the agony of defeat.” For those of my vintage, these words spoken by the legendary Jim McKay signaled another Saturday afternoon edition of ABC’s “Wide World of Sports.” I thought of this the other night as I watched the obscure winter sport of curling during the Olympics. Before the days of ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3, ESPNU, ESPN Classic, etc., if you ever saw other sports besides baseball, football, basketball and the golf and tennis majors, it would be on WWOS. I confess: I love the Winter Olympics. Considering that I grew up south of the Mason-Dixon line, that probably seems strange, since I’ve never participated (save sliding down a ski mountain) in virtually any winter sports. And yeah, I know the Olympics have been hijacked by the politicians and anyone else with a cause. But, if you can get beyond the BS, it is athletic excellence at its pinnacle. Whether riding on the razor’s edge at 80 mph, twisting and flipping 40 feet in the air above rockhard ice, pinballing down a mountainside, fighting back the excruciating pain of a cross-country marathon or gracefully gliding around a speedskating rink, it is competition at the highest level. Confession #2: I’ve never been a fan of everybody gets a trophy and a happy meal (sorry, soccer moms). Competition pushes us all to achieve what we never thought possible, but just as importantly, it teaches us how to deal with the other 90% of the times when we don’t hit the bull’s-eye. I think what really blows me away is the high levels of training and sacrifice for years or even lifetimes to get that ONE shot to experience that thrill of victory or agony of defeat. Oh, sure, we say, these “golden children” were hand selected from their crib, fed a special diet from day one and
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sheltered from all the ugliness of life to make their ascent easy. But then the curtain is pulled back, and we see stories of miscarriages, mentally impaired siblings, mothers in jail for dealing drugs, families living out of cars and crippling injuries. Then, we’re not quite so smug. In a society where the choices seem to be gotta have it RIGHT now, or don’t worry about it, just kick the can down the road, are the rest of us conditioning ourselves if we can’t to simply give up? Are we willing to do the hard work now to reap the reward down the road? I asked a veteran superintendent in a particularly hot stretch of weather a couple of summers ago how he was holding up. Fine, he said, and then he recounted a rather panicked phone call he received from a fellow supt. a few miles away. His summer was not so fine, and he wondered if the vet would visit and give him a quick fix to his struggles. I thought his response was not cocky, but classic. “I told him, ‘Hell, don’t call me in August. I can’t help you in August. Call me in April. That’s when I start preparing for August.’” So, where will you choose excellence this year? And I’m not by any means limiting that to our chosen profession. Where will you seek it out? What will you pour your competitive juices into? If Bob Farren and staff will have me, I plan on being a small part of the excellence surrounding my third U.S. Open at Pinehurst at the ripe young age of 57. I’m going to get the dust off that guitar and finally learn to play the darn thing, at least enough to satisfy me. And I’m going to find some young kid and start telling him/her the same thing that “too small to play in the NFL” Super Bowl Champ Russell Wilson’s dad told him from a young age: “Why not you, Russell? Why not you?” Why not, indeed. c