No guts, no glory

The Open Championship at St. Andrews in Scotland, the birthplace of golf. There are howling 17-mile an hour winds, enormous greens with putt-putt type breaks and bunkers so deep, the vertical wall you are trying to hit out of is taller than you.

There are few tests of a person’s mental stamina like a round of golf at your local public course, let alone a Major Championship at St. Andrews.

Going to play 18 holes always sounds like a great idea—a nice long walk through a gigantic, pristine lawn. But for those who do not possess the strength of a silverback gorilla within the recesses of their minds, things unravel quickly.

As the sanity begins to fall to pieces and a calm outdoor outing turns into pure red in the face, vein-throbbing anger, it becomes clear why grandma wasn’t invited. The steady stream of language used would probably cause her to drop dead.

Glancing at the TV during the first round of The Open, the Catch It staff began to laugh at a golfer stuck in a bunker. His first shot hit the massive wall and fell right back to his feet. So did his second, and third shots. Realizing the straight toward the pin method wasn’t going to happen, he played his fourth shot safely out of the side of the bunker.

This, “Tin Cup,” display sparked a discussion about how stupid this golfer was for not just playing backward from the beginning.

But whatever happened to no guts, no glory?

One sterling piece of golf advice is to love the challenge of the day. This is of course much easier said than done. When you have just sent your tee shot into the woods for the ninth time, it requires less restraint to helicopter a club into the tree than to sit back and say, “Oh boy, another challenge!”

But these are your opportunities for greatness.

Don’t just play a 90 degree shot to get back into the fairway. This is the expected play out of every dreary robot on the course. The 90-degree rule is for golf carts, not humans who have the courage to dance with the gods.

You know what you have to do.

Find that small window through the trees that you can use to shoot at the pin. Go ahead and line it up. Can’t see the pin at all? Then there is nothing left to do but attempt a massive hook or draw around the trees. Think big here.

Are you good enough to hit that window? Are you good enough to purposely shape a shot around trouble?

No you are not.

But go for it, and one of two things will happen:

1. The stars will align and you will make the shot. It isn’t slop either. You simply strutted up to the situation, assessed it, and went for it all with unflinching, perfect execution. Although the shot was a miracle, remember that it was a miracle you planned. Do not run around flailing and squealing like a pig rolling in the mud. Do not do a back flip. This will ruin your shot by staining the story that will be told forever. Your playing partners will be stunned when you come out of the woods as though you had planned it all along. After all, you did plan it all along. Congratulations, and welcome to the land of the immortal.

2. You will fail miserably. This is the inevitable outcome. If you are lucky, the cartoonish hook you attempted will not come back around and sail out of bounds. If you are unlucky, your shot will hit a tree flush and ricochet straight back, smacking you square in the most sensitive of areas. The pain will drop you to your knees, your voice will go up five octaves, and those jerk playing partners will laugh hysterically at your agony.

But hey, when you fail, and the pain goes away after a couple of weeks, at least you will know you went for it. You did not get the glory, but you have got more guts in your pinky than the cowards laughing at you have in their entire bodies.

At least you did not play it safe.