Can You Lose the Will to Golf?

It sounds like such a stupid question; “Can you lose the will to golf?” You want to blurt out, “What kind of question is that???” But in reality, I think the answer to the question is yes.

Yeah, you can lose the will to golf. And it does’t matter if you’ve been playing for one season or twenty seasons – it can happen. It happened to me this past year. For a fleeting moment early last fall, I thought of golf and felt no emotion whatsoever. Not excitement over my next round; not disgust over my previous one; nothing. It was as if the sport was irrelevant to me. The flubs didn’t matter; the birdies didn’t matter; the drives that careened off into the abyss didn’t matter – the good, the bad and the ugly of golf were, in a word: Gone.

That fleeting moment pretty much shook me to my core. Could it be that easy to withdraw from something I held so dear for a good portion of my life? It seemed logically impossible, but emotionally, the empty feeling was there. And if I could lose the will to golf, then surely it could happen to other golfers.

Obviously, I’ve played my fair-share of golf over the years and I’ve written my fair share of golf-related articles. It would stand to reason that someone who hasn’t let golf become such a part of their life would have a greater chance of losing interest in the game.

I immediately considered that the cause of the problem – that I overdosed on golf. Like an addict that finally succumbed to his devices, I was a golf junkie who had become anemic to the game due to over-consumption – too many rounds; too many equipment purchases; too many musings translated into posts for this blog.

To compound my issue, this notion of overdosing worried me further. Was I “over” golf like a teenager is “over” their former BFF? It seems ridiculous to trivialize it like that, but when you feel nothing towards something you once enjoyed, you tend to be “over” it.

But somehow I knew I wasn’t “over” it. I can’t explain how I knew it – I just knew. And if I wasn’t over golf, then what? I didn’t play all that much last year – perhaps the lack of playing time contributed to my apathy? At the time, I also had an 11-month-old (now 15 months) pulling my attention away from golf – maybe the game wasn’t as important to me as it used to be? Or perhaps it was a combination of all these things?

Whatever the reason was, for that brief moment in time, I could care less about golf. But that moment passed as fast as it came and I was back out on the course in November thoroughly enjoying myself. Today, I can confidently report that I’m truly excited about playing again this spring – in fact, I’m even excited about going to the indoor golf range next weekend!

So, can you lose the will to golf (or to do anything else for that matter)? Absolutely. And even more unnerving; there may be no rhyme or reason as to why. In my case, it was a brief adulterous act in a long love affair with this game. But, I’m “over” it.

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