What do you say to your golf course after your last round of the season?

You could try farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu ... and thank you

Photo by Junseong Lee on Unsplash..

As the end of the golf season approaches in these northern parts, I’m inviting you to do something weird:

When you play your last round, say goodbye to the course and thank it for a great season.

Yes, you’re free to exercise your rights to say O’Connor, you’re f***ing strange, but stay with me. Don’t you want to see why I might ask you to do such a thing?

I began this practice of saying goodbye and thanking my course about 15 years ago. It’s become a ritual. This is the first time I’ve told anyone about it. I’ve never thought about why I do it until it occurred to me to write about it, which is always like going on a little expedition.

What I found is pretty cool.

My ritual is to play my last round at Blue Springs GC by myself, which means it’s a usually cold and windy and no one else is on the course. I enjoy going solo because it allows me to have an uninterrupted experience in silence except for the wind, the birds, and the sound of my feet on the turf; the stillness feels kind of sacred, like my last round is an important thing to do. I guess for a deep golf nerd, it is.

As I walk, my intention is to keenly observe; to drink it all in—notice the nuances, beauty and distinctiveness of the trees, the bunkers, the hills, and valleys. Everything around me. “Senses working overtime,” as the XTC song goes.

I almost always notice things that I never saw before such as an interesting tree or roll in a fairway, and I’ve been playing my course for about 22 years.

It’s like a walking meditation. When I find myself getting lost in thought and becoming concerned about my score or swing, I’ll remind myself of my intention to be present to the course. I also think my ritual is like saying goodbye to a child or parent you’re not going to see for a while. You want to savour that last look.

As I walk off the green of every hole, I try to remember to say thank you for the season. I’m often reminded of a funny line a buddy said, of good shots and atrocious ones, of good decisions and bad ones.

I believe that saying thank you leads us to greater appreciation. We take so many things in this world for granted. It’s rare that we think about how blessed we are to play golf—whether it’s on a nine-hole cottage course with mats for tee decks or a posh country club—and by extension that we have the financial means, health, freedom, and the ability to enjoy all that a golf course has to offer.

We spend most of our time in our heads, narrating our game, searching for swing fixes, making judgments about ourselves and others, caught in our stories, thinking, thinking.

When you’re in your head, you’re not out there. You don’t see what the course is challenging you to consider. Every course, whether it was designed by a farmer on a bulldozer or Stanley Thompson, has its own personality. Appreciating the quirks and mysteries of a course and adapting to them is one of the subtle charms of golf.

During most rounds, we might remark about a nice view, but it’s rare that we soak in the course as something to behold. Mostly, we see places we want and don’t want to hit the ball. It’s kind of transactional.

We tend to project our likes and dislikes on to certain holes. ‘This green is unfair.’ ‘This hole is dumb.’ We get pissed off when a hole reveals a weakness in our game, or in our character.

Our perception of a golf course tends to be filtered through our performance. I have been fortunate to play the Old Course at Ballybunion in Ireland about half a dozen times. It is a magnificent links with gigantic dunes framing winding ribbons of fairway beside the Irish Sea.

On one of my last trips, I walked the back-nine of the course backwards with a photographer. We spent most of our time high up on the dunes overlooking the course. I recall having a sense of awe and reverence that I had not sensed before. I was struck by the grandeur of the course in a way that I had never experienced while playing it.

It dawned on me that my perceptions of the course were skewered by my playing experience. I wasn’t aware that I was projecting myself on the golf course, rather than seeing it as it really is, in the same way that I project myself on my kids, my wife, everything.

I saw this very clearly when I organized a course ranking of public and resort courses in Canada for The Globe and Mail about 20 years ago. I assembled a team of course raters across the country. After they played a course, they sent me a form with their numerical rankings on several factors and some commentary.

I’d often talk with the raters after their rounds. It became apparent that for many there was a correlation between how well they played and the rating they gave the course.

I believe that we identify ourselves so tightly to our golf that it colours our perception of golf. We operate within a narcissistic culture that promises you’ll reach the mountaintop of human experience and bliss when you achieve the results you want, and you’re applauded, liked, forwarded, and reeled.

It’s a promise that underdelivers.

Yes, it’s weird to say goodbye and thank you to a golf course, but it usually takes something radical to make a difference in our auto-pilot lives.

When we’re grateful, we experience and appreciate what’s real and important.

That doesn’t seem so weird, eh?

There’s something else important to do before you leave the course for the last time before the snow flies: say goodbye and say thanks to the golf shop staff, F&B folks, and turf crew for a great season.