LETTERS: LIFE IS LIKE GAME OF GOLF

To the editor:

In life as well as in golf, one wants to be near par or better. One of the first rules one learns in trying to play golf is to keep one's eye on the ball. It isn't always easy, but it certainly is basic to the game of golf as it is in life.

One learns in trying to play golf to choose and use the right club just as a carpenter learns to use the right tools or a surgeon to use the right instruments. It would be hard to play golf with a tennis racket or to build a highway with promises. At times, one learns that he has used the wrong club, just as in life one may use the wrong tactic or technique and then searches for another approach to solve a problem.

The next step is to hit where you look, or hit where you aim, assuming that you have good aim. As in life, one must keep his sight focused on the goal one has in mind.

Another fundamental rule of golf as in life itself: One must learn to follow through. One cannot have a choppy swing or quit halfway through. The world is full of quitters, those who started and then gave up when the going became tough. They are like the small child who did not want to play any more because he wasn't winning. I remember once I took a big swing and, missing the ball, fell flat on my face. My friends laughed, but I got up and hit a hard drive.

Many errant shots will get one into the rough, and in life sometimes it is quite difficult to go on. The rough can be physical with the accompanying health problems, or it can be material or financial. Once in a while on may find that he is in a sand trap and that it requires another stroke or two to move forward.

But there are occasional moments when one seems to have very good fortune and birdies or eagles a hole or has a ricochet bounce off a tree or some other object with the ball landing on the green. Some friend or passerby had unknowingly given us a boost or a lift to our spirit. A rare shot is the hole-in-one and is a cause for rejoicing. Those shots make one become eager for more. In life we press onward, thankful for those mountaintop experiences.

My eyesight is failing. My game will not improve. But I am still looking forward to giving it my best shot the next time I am on the tee. And I look with eagerness to the ongoing game of life.

IVAN NOTHDURFT

Cape Girardeau