Old and New (Golf, Part 3)
One of the things I love about golf is the way an old club can sometimes reenter your life like an old friend. For my most recent outing, I brought along an old wedge I hadn't picked up in years and was hitting better shots than with my brand new, high tech wedge. It's the same with putters: Sometimes going to an old putter is the only way to break a putting slump. It genuinely is like meeting an old friend you haven't seen for awhile.
Why do we sometimes value our old friends, even old friends we haven't seen for a long time, more than the people we see every day? Is it that we grow bored with the familiar and that old friends are like new after a long absence? Is that why absence makes the heart grow fonder? Or is it that our old friends are not really absent, that they are always in our hearts and minds, the friendship growing despite itself, during the absences? Or is it that the friends we make when we are young remind us of when we were young, make us feel young again when we see them again?
I think that there's something of all those possible explanations and something more: The friends we make when we are young are made without artifice, without fear, without hidden motives, with genuine unselfishness rather than the desire to meet our needs. Old friends are also the most comfortable because the long acquaintance means they know and have accepted our foibles, our weaknesses, our bad traits along with the good: We don't have to construct a facade to hide the features we don't like in ourselves.
Old golf clubs are like old friends because they remind of us of our youth, bring back memories of different and better swings. It's almost like the clubs remember how they are supposed to work without our forcing them. The old clubs fit comfortably in our hands, they know us, with all of our weaknesses.
Maybe an important reason for my love of golf is that it makes me think about things like this. Play golf and you too will have old friends to come back into your life when you need them. Or, better still, look up your old friends; you'll be surprised how nice it is.
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