PUSHING THROUGH: LIFE LESSONS FROM GOLF

By Kathy Banaszak

I love to write. I especially like tackling big hairy issues fraught with controversy. (Maybe that’s the Irish fight in me.) I also enjoy persuading people and tend to champion the underdog. I recently grappled with what to write about next: rising unemployment, skyrocketing foreclosures, the state budget fiasco or maybe fraudulent childcare scams. In the midst of pretty depressing news, I happened on a piece of genuine inspiration closer to home.

It seems the brand new Wisconsin Golf Association State Match Play champion is a local financial adviser who turns 50 this year. He started golfing competitively just six years ago. On his way to the state amateur title last week, Kevin Cahill of Waukesha was foil to a string of twenty-something “college hotshots” and “young guns” as the Journal Sentinel put it. In the service of disclosure, the new champ also happens to be my little brother.

As any golfer will attest, the sport is a treasure trove of life lessons. Lessons we need in times like these. Sportswriter Herbert Warren Wind got it right: “Man’s battle against himself is undoubtedly at the heart of golf’s abiding appeal.”

Golf is not simply about hitting a ball with a stick. It is primer on making decisions, adjusting to unforeseen circumstances, severe weather, shifting winds and the collective nuances of the course itself while maintaining one’s emotional and mental composure. In golf as in life, courage is required in the face of potentially paralyzing obstacles and crushing setbacks.

It’s been said that all great golfers are great putters. Putting is an art all its own requiring both superb “feel” and an uncanny intuition for “reading the lines” while seeing the big picture. Arnold Palmer once said: “Putting is like wisdom – partly a natural gift and partly the accumulation of experience.” In golf as in life, it’s generally not the long spectacular drive that matters most. Rather, it’s typically an artful put that saves the day.

Golf requires extraordinary focus and judgment. To succeed, it is paramount that you play your own game, not your opponent’s. When you try playing like somebody else, you end up never getting your own game. It’s all about knowing what you’re really good at and what you’re not so hot at; what author Max Lucado calls our “sweet spot”. Building on strengths and compensating for weakness is also how you build - or rebuild - a life.

Sooner or later, all golfers experience the nightmare of watching their game fall apart before their eyes. When this happens, great golfers focus on “getting back to basics”, while amateurs rush out to buy the latest video/gadget. (You know who you are!)

Most important, golf is a game of great moments that make for lifelong memories. Chi Chi Rodriguez once joked, “I remember big”. Recalling sweet successes and “remembering big” are keys to coping with truly difficult and challenging life circumstances. Like the kind we face right now. Just as golf is played one stroke at a time, life is best lived one day at a time while drawing on those great moments to keep pushing through.

So on behalf of aging Boomers everywhere – and anyone else who could use a little inspiration right now, here’s to you Kevin Cahill! Thanks for the lesson.