Sunday Musings: Sidetracked and Derailed — By the Past

Some days just don't go as planned.

I had all manners of things laid out for myself to do today, including gardening, creating eBay listings, writing, organizing my closet and a few other things, but that just wasn't meant to be.

For no particular reason I can think of, I instead ended up watching the final round of the US Masters Professional Golf Tournament on TV... or streaming on the computer as the case actually turned out to be.

I tried to remember the last time I watched golf on TV and determined that it has to be back when my parents were still alive. In fact, it had to be back when my parents were not only alive but were still living in Mesa, AZ where they would tune in to PGA or LPGA pro golf events pretty much every weekend. Even on the somewhat rare occasions when I was visiting them, we would always watch golf and Saturday and Sunday afternoons as a sort of "family activity."

Given the fact that I was Once Upon A Time™ a pretty decent golfer and actually into the game in a big way, it's perhaps not that unusual for people to presume that I'd want to watch golf tournaments occasionally. But I just haven't and in fact I haven't even swung a Golf Club in close to 20 years.

I won't go so far as to say that I formally gave up the game; it's more like I just ran out of time at some point. That, and I also ran out of money. Golf is not a cheap pastime. Mostly though, I found myself in a place where I just couldn't set aside five or six hours to go play a round of golf anymore. Golf is also quite time consuming.

I think the primary thing I did like about the game was the fact that it gave me an excuse to walk around in nature while mostly being away from people so I didn't have to interact with them. Golf courses tend to be quite pretty places, and I just enjoyed being outside and walking around.

My old golf clubs are still in our garage, and every now and then and I bump into them when I'm moving something around out there; most recently when I was digging out tools and supplies to start working on our vegetable garden.

Every now and then I even think to myself "you know one of these days I'd like to take up golf again." So far I haven't made good on that threat but I have a feeling that one of these days I might. I do live a pretty short distance from a decent golf course, and it's even of the "municipal" kinds so it doesn't require a huge amount of funds to become a member of some uppity and exclusive private social club.

Which reminded me that there was actually more to my having given up playing golf than simply not having time or money enough to do so. In a sense my stopping play was also a statement about rejecting or not wanting to be part of my parents Upper Class Country Clubby scene... even though they were more pretenders than actual members of that particular social circle.

I always struggled to find anything much in common with these people who were so terribly pretentious and important to themselves.

But enough about that...

Life often offers up interesting symmetries. The last time I went to a pro golf tournament in the "live" sense of the word, was in March 2001 while I was visiting aforesaid parental units and they insisted that we go and watch an LPGA tournament that was playing locally that weekend. What was significant about that day was that I spent a good part of the day watching Swedish golfer Annika Sorenstam become the first professional pro woman golfer in the history of the game to shoot a 59. If you're not familiar with golf, that's akin to setting a new world record that'll likelt not be beaten for a generation or more.

Meanwhile, today I watched golf for the first time since then, and got to see Hideki Matsuyama become the first Japanese national to ever win the Masters Tournament thereby — for all intents and purposes — elevating himself to the status of "national hero" in golf obsessed Japan.

I guess I just choose historic occasions to tune into this stuff!

Whether I'll ever resume playing golf again remains to be seen... and will likely not happen anytime soon. But you just never know.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you all had a great weekend!

How about YOU? Did you have some activity or hobby you really enjoyed in the past, and then stopped? Do you ever wish you hadn't stopped? Could you see yourself taking it up again? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

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Created at 20210411 22:32 PDT
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