The Fire Inside
Timothy Sullivan
in Golf, Memoir, Alcoholism, Recovery
2 Comments
There was a time when I was a kid that the anger got so bad I had to quit playing golf. In my early teens I was not a good player but my father had signed me up for a series of lessons with the club pro to set me off in the right direction, so I knew the fundamentals of the golf swing. What I lacked most was patience.
I was one of those brats who threw clubs and cursed loudly, trying to convince my friends and and anybody else watching that I expected more of myself because I was capable of more. I blamed the universe for my poor play and I blamed luck but most of all, even at that young age, I blamed myself.
Sometimes I would throw a club and stomp off after it, shouting something like, "Jesus, I suck!" My friends thought this behavior very funny, especially the self-directed profanity, but I didn't.
Not infrequently when the game was going badly, I'd slam my bag to the ground and walk into the woods, find a sizable downed branch or limb, and beat it against a tree trunk until it broke into small pieces. I wasn't showing off; I would do this while playing alone.
In junior high I played alone a lot during the early evening, after a day spent caddying. I was capable of shooting in the mid-90s but I was trying so hard to score well that any setback, even a single blowup hole, was crushing to my confidence. On those solitary rounds I often found myself crying as I searched for a lost ball, berating myself for causing the penalty stroke I was about to add to my card. It eventually became too painful to play and I quit, deciding the game was just too hard.
Now jump ahead on the calendar 30 years. Here I am, middle aged, having recently quit drinking after abusing alcohol for about 25 years. I've taken up golf again, invested in lessons and membership in a small semiprivate club. Knowing how difficult golf is, I don't expect much in the beginning and am pleased, after two seasons, to carry an 18 handicap.
As I improve, however, I start to expect more of myself and soon the old anger returns. Too old now to stalk into the woods and assault trees, too mature to throw clubs, I am left with self-effacing obscenity and the depression that springs from failure.
Like the children I used to play with, my friends are sometimes amused, although instead of laughing at me mercilessly, they say things like, "You shouldn't be so hard on yourself. It's only a game." Or they make politically incorrect jokes, like the guy in my regular foursome who announced one day, "It's a good thing Sullivan isn't Japanese. If he was, he'd have to kill himself!"
I've been sober for nine years now and I'm beginning to understand that the anger I feel on the golf course is not about the game at all. I realized this the day I heard myself growl, while fighting back tears of rage, "If you're going to play like this, you don't deserve to live."
Later that afternoon, reviewing the round in my head, I had to admit those stark words and the pain they reflected were too desperate to be associated with something as simple as bad golf. I knew they were about something much bigger and much deeper.
Like a lot of people in recovery, I'm trying to figure out why I spent so many years abusing myself with alcohol. It took me a long time, even after I'd quit drinking, to realize I was angry and to understand one reason for the drinking had been to numb myself to that anger. I still don't know all of the sources of the anger, or why so much of it is directed inward, but I'm working on it.
This is where one of golf's beneficial ironies comes into play. Sometimes the game makes me angry, yes, and the anger can be painful. But the game also threw up a mirror and forced me to look at myself, to see that the anger comes from within and not from a golf ball, a golf club, or anything related to the game.
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