Then careers, businesses, teaching, music and life generally became rather effective at filling the calendar.
Golf waited.
When I returned to the game seriously, something unexpected happened. I didn’t just become interested in playing again. I became increasingly interested in teaching it.
And that’s where this particular rabbit hole begins.
I was much more interested in finding out what kind of golfer I could become now.
That distinction turned out to matter.
The swing was different. The body was certainly different. Equipment had changed dramatically. Technology could suddenly quantify things we once diagnosed with ball flight, divots and educated guesses. And I found myself fascinated by all of it.
I played. Practiced. Studied. Experimented. Asked questions. Made changes. Broke things. Fixed some of them. And somewhere along the way, my handicap started heading back toward territory I hadn’t seen in a very long time.
Then another idea started creeping in.
I’ve spent more than a decade teaching at the post-secondary level, across multiple colleges and disciplines. Before that came decades of managing people, mentoring young creatives, presenting ideas, building businesses and helping individuals solve problems that rarely arrived with identical solutions.
Teaching has taught me something rather fundamental:
People learn differently. They communicate differently. They respond to different cues, explanations and demonstrations. What unlocks something immediately for one person can make absolutely no sense to the person standing beside them.
A classroom makes that obvious very quickly.
So does a golf lesson.
My interest in becoming a PGA of Canada professional begins there. Not with aspirations of playing tournament golf for a living, but with the possibility of combining a lifetime around the game with something I already know how to do: teach people.
The objective is golf instruction.
Casual players who simply want to enjoy the game more. Developing golfers trying to build something repeatable. Competitive players looking for another set of eyes. Coaching, practice planning and course management. Mentoring. Perhaps eventually club fitting and building, where equipment, mechanics and the individual golfer intersect.
In other words, I’m considerably more interested in helping someone else shoot 72 than convincing myself I should be doing it for prize money.
Becoming a PGA of Canada professional provides a framework for pursuing that seriously.
That means meeting the playing standard, completing the professional education, gaining meaningful experience within the golf industry and continuing to learn the game from people who have made it their profession.
There are easier hobbies.
I’m increasingly convinced otherwise.
Good teaching requires observation. Communication. Pattern recognition. Patience. The ability to take something complicated and make it understandable without making it inaccurate.
Good coaching adds another layer: understanding the person standing in front of you rather than simply imposing a preferred solution upon them.
Those skills have been accumulating for most of my professional life.
Golf simply gives me somewhere new to apply them.
Maybe that leads to a practice tee. Maybe a teaching studio. Maybe competitive coaching, club building or some combination I haven’t considered yet.
That’s rather the point.
After thirty-plus years of making a career out of ideas, communication and teaching, I’m curious to see what happens when I point all of that at a little white ball.
The quest continues.
Have a project, an idea, a question, or an interesting problem that refuses to behave? Something that needs making, fixing, rethinking, photographing, designing, or otherwise coalescing into existence? Make contact. I can’t promise to say yes, but I can promise to have an opinion.
Photo Credits:
@ Russ + Daughters, NYC: Rachel Slaven
@ Delphi Beach, Collingwood: Julien O’Malley
@ Gibson + Company Laneway, Collingwood: Julien O’Malley
@ Industrial Park, Newmarket: Justin Lawrence