Double Eagle

In the United Kingdom they call it an albatross. It’s a golf term for finishing a hole 3 under par. Yesterday I went golfing with some co-workers, and it all happened on hole number seven.

“The only British idiom I know is that ‘fag’ means ‘cigarette.’”

Those jerk golf coarse grounds keepers were running the sprinklers one hole ahead of us all afternoon, so by the time we got there, if we were lucky enough that the sprinklers turned off before we teed off, we still had to put up with the grass being soaked. When we got to the tee on hole seven, the sprinklers were still going. Looking down the fairway, I couldn’t see anything but rainbow spectrums from the afternoon sun refracting off the sprinkler spray. I couldn’t even see the fairway, I could only see rooster tails of water from the tee to the horizon, and there was a little green flag that was “so gallantly streaming” just above the mist.

One of the guys I work with has the uncanny ability to gripe about anything and everything, so you can imagine what a bad day of golf coupled with the inconvenience of the sprinklers would do for his temper. He was whining and cussing from the first minute he noticed the sprinklers, and when we got to the tee he refused to tee off. Instead he wanted to walk into the club house and demand a refund.

“No—thank you, Lisa. For teaching kids everywhere a valuable lesson: If things don't go your way, just keep complaining until your dreams come true.”

I hate whiners and I hate complaining to the establishment, so out of spite for his anger, I just teed up and swung away.

The swing didn’t feel very true, and with the low afternoon sun in my eyes and the illuminated sprinkler spurts obstructing my view, I had no idea where my tee shot landed.

A few seconds after I stepped off the tee, the sprinklers stopped and the other guys shot, then we all went out in search of our balls.

The ground was wet and glistening so it was hard to see where a shiny wet golf ball would be. I wandered all over the fairway looking for my ball and I never saw anything—I even meandered into the neighboring fairways, because you never know where my slices could end up.

All the other guys found their balls and took their second shots. It wasn’t until Walt’s second shot landed him on the green that we all noticed the second shiny ball sitting there next to his. My tee shot had gone straight and far and sat itself down 15 feet from the hole!

This hole was a par five, which meant, if I sunk this putt I’d be enjoying my first ever double eagle (or albatross, for our British audience). I rarely hit for par, so anything under par is the sort of thing I don’t even allow myself to dream of, and this was a potential two under par—it was too good to be true.

“Golf requires concentration and focus.”

“Golf requires goofy pants and a fat @ss. You should talk to my neighbor the accountant. Probably a great golfer. Huge @ss.”

Now, a 15 foot putt is by no means a gimmie. It’s doable, but not at all easy. I really wanted that double eagle—especially because all day at work, Andrew had been trash talking about how badly he was going to beat me (he even tried to talk me into betting $20 a hole, but I turned him down because I couldn’t afford to lose that much if he beat me, and I knew he wouldn’t have the integrity to pay me if I beat him), and at this point, I was already beating him very badly, but a double eagle would just be another nail in the coffin.

All day long I had been coming up short on my putts, so I factored that in to how much umph would be needed for a 15 footer to drop. Only, I in all my factoring and figuring, I failed to notice that there was a slight down-hill slope between me and the cup, so when I shot, all that extra umph took the ball past the hole and off the green.

“YOU BLEW IT!”

I’d blown it! No double eagle. Probably not even an eagle. At best I’d need one shot to get back on the green and another to get in the hole, and that would put me right at par. But no, it took me one shot to get back on and two shots to get in the hole, leaving me with a mediocre bogey and a damaged ego.

I shot an eagle on the next hole and Andrew shot a triple bogey (if you can even still call it that—I don’t think they give names to scores that far from par), so I did get my chance to prove that he sucks and I don’t, but the blown double eagle got me thinking: how many times do I look a great opportunity in the face, and miss the opportunity because I do too much thinking?

Is a decision I make today going to alter my life so drastically that I miss an opportunity tomorrow? Am I not married because I’ve thought too much during the situations that may have led me to marriage? Do I not have a better job because I’ve been too careful about what a different job might impose on me? I guess those scenarios are a possibility, but I doubt I’ve blown anything that could possibly be a better situation than the one I’m currently in.

Some decisions don’t matter much—like whether I have egg or PB and J in my sandwich for lunch—and the ones that do mater a lot—who I marry, where I work, where I live—those are the ones I make based either on fundamentals in which I firmly believe, or on a deeper prompting, spiritual or otherwise.

I've been buying Brawny paper towels since I moved into this appartment, and just yesterday I noticed that they have written on them the words, “always follow your heart.” Now, I’m not sure if it’s due to my religious upbringing or to all the Disney fairytales I was exposed to as a kid, but confidently believe in following your heart. And I believe the way to do so is to follow your feelings, and for those times when your feelings don’t make sense to you, you do your best to make up your mind about what you want to do, then (and most importantly) you ask God if it’s the right thing to do.

It’s been my experience that when you invite God to participate in your important decisions, he always directs you in the path that your heart wanted you to follow, but that your head sometimes tries to think itself away from.

Looking back on the big decisions that I’ve made, I don’t regret any of them. I’m confident and comfortable with not being married to her, or not working for him because when it came down to making those important decisions, I let my heart and my God help me make the decision, and some how or another, those two always come up with exactly what I need.

“What's all this boo-hooin' going on here?”

“Nothing, Bernard. I'm just saying good-bye.”

“What good-bye? Charlie, you've still got the glass ball I gave you, right?"

“Yeah.”

“Well, all you've got to do is shake it up whenever you want to see your dad. He can come visit you anytime, day or night.”

“Really?”

“Hey, have I ever steered you wrong?”