|
September 10, 2007
In the 60s,
without instant reply, TiVo and DVDs, my Dad had to closely follow the
newspaper schedule and spend his day in front of our 12-inch
black-and-white television through 18 holes in order to witness the
dramatic finish of the 1962 U. S. Open when Jack Nicklaus won his
first professional title in a playoff with Arnold Palmer. What a
waste of a good day, I thought.
I never
understood the lure of golf. People walking over short grass,
swinging sticks at little balls…walking and swinging, over and over,
for years. Even Tiger Woods could not rally my interest in the game.
This was before
I learned that grass is never just grass. Like snow for Eskimos, it
comes in thousands of degrees of variation, its length, humidity, and
density confounding the roll of well-hit balls. After one day of
instruction about the complexities of golf, enthusiastically taught by
our son-in-law as we watched the Wachovia Championship, I’m hooked.
With my new
understanding, a lifetime seems too short to learn how to perfect
every aspect of what can go wrong with one’s golf game…the stance, the
swing, the grip of the club, the follow-through of the swing…not to
mention the mental strength needed to handle the pressure when your
shot hits the trees, the sand, the water, the rough…and the periodic
spectator.
As we watched
Woods struggle through the U.S. Open, I saw the endless challenges
posed by the lie of the green…the impact of grass mown tight to the
ground and covered with morning dew on a downhill slope just beyond
the aimed for hole.
Tiger
struggled. I wanted him to win. But he failed to catch Angel Cabrera
and came in a frustrating second. Better, though, than his subsequent
games at Bethesda and the British open where he finished 6th
and 12th.
Woods is good
enough to win any golf game he plays. But not every golf game. He is
good. But he’s not perfect.
Golf…and
marriage. In the first instance, a golf game gone sour provides
motivation for the player to isolate his problem and work to remedy
it. There are golf clinics, DVDs, books, pros, and practice ranges
all dedicated to making your game the best it can be.
In the second
instance, a marriage gone sour can be turned around by a couple
motivated to isolate their problems and work toward a solution. Yet,
how often, in our modern world, is a no-fault divorce offered as a
solution to couples who struggle? Instead of fixing a marriage, we
dissolve the marriage…we quit the game.
Thankfully, an
emerging movement is coming forward to turn the divorce trend in favor
of repairing relationships and restoring healthy marriages. In 1999,
Oklahoma launched the Marriage Initiative to reduce the divorce rate
in their state. This Oklahoma initiative is joined by the federal
Healthy Marriage Initiative which funds programs around the country to
strengthen and save marriages.
Critics of
marriage education would have us believe that bad marriages are a lost
cause. They raise the specter of abuse, suggesting that fixing a
troubled marriage results in more battered wives. They ignore
important realities.
Relationships
have much in common with golf games. No two are the same…and in one
marriage, no two days are the same. No marriage is perfect. But on a
good day, in a good game, there is nothing that can beat winning at
golf and succeeding in marriage.
Marriages, like
golf games, can improve. Researcher Linda J. Waite interviewed
couples and asked them to rate their marriages from one to seven, on a
scale from “just awful” to “fabulous.” Five years after her first
survey, she returned to the same couples with the same question. Of
the couples who first rated their marriage as “awful,” eighty-seven
percent of the same couples said their marriages were either “pretty
good” or “very good,” sixes and sevens on her scale.
Waite summarized
her findings, “Most of the marriages that were bad became much better.
I think in a lot of cases when marriages are unhappy it's sort of a
bad patch, and it doesn't last. One reason divorce is relatively high
in our society is because now either person can leave, and we are more
willing to leave than we used to be if we hit a bad patch. We're less
likely to work it through. But there's evidence that dramatic
turnarounds are commonplace. They're the typical experience.”
In the words of
marriage Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott, "Love, by itself, is not enough
to sustain even the most loving couple -- at least the kind of love
Hollywood pumps into our culture is not enough. Marriage requires new
skills in communication, conflict resolution and so on. Love cannot
protect a marriage from harm. But love combined with effective skills
can overcome all."
There is a lot
to commend people who dedicate their lives to being the best they can
be. Winners may have talent. They may have benefited from great
coaches and good weather. But in the end, they win because they put
their whole attention to the details of the game that make winning
even possible.
Golf…and
marriage. Winning at the game is only possible if we have the proper
goal…more than winning…persisting in the challenge…making our game the
best that it can be.
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/healthymarriage/
http://www.okmarriage.org/oklahomamarriageinitiative.asp
See Archives
for past editorials.
_____________________ |
