Solheim Cup (+ new picture added to Scrapbook, page 3)
I enjoy golf more than anything else. I enjoy playing and I enjoy watching. I enjoy watching women golfers more than the men. I watch most of the Ladies Professional Golf Association events on television and I particularly enjoy the occasional "live" visit to a women's professional event. Last weekend I traveled to the Indianapolis suburb of Carmel, Indiana, to watch the Solheim Cup. The Solheim Cup matches are played every two years and pit the top European-born professional women golfers against the top U.S.-born professionals. The Solheim Cup was initiated by the founder of the company that manufactures Ping golf equipment and has grown to become the premier international women's golf event. It is patterned after the Ryder Cup matches for men professionals and provides a rare opportunity to see the best players in a team format. As in most of my travels, the airplane ride was uncomfortable and my night driving to my hotel left something to desire in efficiency. (I drove back and forth past the hotel several times before realizing I needed to enter from a different street.) Notwithstanding these petty problems, I enjoyed my visit. It was my first time in the Indianapolis area, Crooked Stick, the site of the event, was a beautiful course, everyone I encountered was nice to me, the food was plentiful and even the intense heat and humidity failed to dampen my spirits. (My body was dampened but that's another story.) The organizers of the event allowed everyone the chance to pose for a picture with the Solheim Cup; that's the new picture in my scrapbook.)
Unlike some recent Ryder Cup matches, the 2005 edition of the Solheim Cup provided me the opportunity to watch golf at its best, both from the standpoint of the quality of play and from the standpoint of sportsmanlike behavior on the part of players and fans. The players behaved wonderfully, appreciating the quality of play of their teammates and their opponents. The fans, while clearly partisan in favor of the American team, behaved splendidly. They wanted to see the United States team prevail but they understood the true spirit of golf, the spirit that allows appreciation of good shots, no matter who hits them.
As I've noted before, golf teaches us many lessons for life. One of the most important of these lessons is to play for the love of the game, not for the results. Most of us are not going to "win" the contests of life in the conventional way of looking at them but we can all enjoy playing. Playing our best is the only reward worth pursuing. If we do our best, we don't really lose. If we do our best, we can be proud, hold our heads high and move forward, looking back on lives well-lived. The Solheim Cup players and fans understood this lesson. Although the United States team "won" in terms of score, the European team also won by their efforts, by their skills and by their attitudes of good sportsmanship. The fans won by their good attitudes and appreciation of both teams. The atmosphere of good feeling at the course and at the restaurants and bars in the surrounding area made the event a pleasure for everyone.
Instead of thinking of others as opponents think of them in the way we usually think of other players in a golf tournament, as fellow competitors. Think of doing your best and hope your fellow competitors also do their best. At the end, we can add up the score and value those who had the best results on that day but we can all appreciate the efforts we all made. Value the conventional rewards you receive but play for the sake of playing. In that way, you will always feel good about yourself and make others, including your fellow competitors, feel good about themselves.
9-19-05
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