The lonely Hunter in all of us

     The game was “designed to break your heart.”  Former baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti wrote that about baseball but it could apply to golf equally well, especially today.

        On the world’s biggest golfing stage, an accomplished professional golfer like Hunter Mahan made a couple of swings that broke a lot of hearts, not the least his own and yet reminded millions of golfers why we love the game.  After staging a stirring comeback against Graham McDowell in the Ryder Cup’s final and deciding match, Mahan left a

mid-iron well short of the green on the par 3 17^th hole at Celtic Manor.  Then, needing to leave a simple chip shot within five feet or so of the hole for any chance to continue the match, he plain chunked it.  Nine times out of 10, a pro of his caliber would leave such a shot within five feet.  But in the harsh light of the Ryder Cup, he dropped his right shoulder slightly to lift the club head and generate loft on the ball, hitting the turf behind it, a strictly amateur move many of us know well.  He left the ball embarrassingly short, missed his long par putt and conceded McDowell’s putt for par, giving the match and Cup to the Europeans.

        Mahan’s muff provided a few stark reminders to all of us who play this maddeningly frustrating and wonderful game.  The effect of stress on the golf swing is incalculable.  It is tough for muscles to have memory when all their nerve endings are under assault.  Golf is the most “mental” of games, and an assault on the brain is an assault on the body.  Now add the pressure of the Ryder Cup, which is unlike the pressure of having to make a decent chip shot at a typical PGA Tour event.  Walking toward such a chip shot at, say, the Traveler’s Championship, Mahan would feel much less pressure than he did today, able to rationalize that he was playing for himself not his teammates and country.

        Golf is also the loneliest of sports; when it is your turn to play, no teammate can throw a block to spring you for a long run or pass to you for an easy lay-up.  You rise or fall on your own lonely efforts.

        Announcing the Ryder Cup, former U.S. Open winner Johnny Miller said something so simple and so true just after Mahan’s poor shot -– “We have all been there.”  Because we have all been there, we feel Mahan’s pain but we also know that, at some time or another, we have hit a better shot than he did from precisely the same position.  Okay, so it may not have been under any more pressure than that of a $2 Nassau.  But golf is the greatest game of all because, on any given shot, we amateurs can play just like the pros, for better and worse.