Some people live for the specific sounds or smells of their first love. That sport that drew you in before those evil hormones complicated your life. It could be the thing that you loved to do with a parent. Rooting for their favorite team, that is now your favorite team. Spending Sunday morning detailing the family car, and listening to all the little “facts” that made Ford better than Chevy, or Chevy better than Mopar.
Maybe for you, it’s the crack of a wooden bat as it launches a home run deep into the stands. It could be the smell of roasted peanuts or signing “Take me out to the ball game” that gets your blood pumping. It could be the sound of a naturally aspirated V8 revving on the line before it screams down that paved quarter-mile.
It doesn’t matter, and you may not realize that you have a thing, but trust me, you do! It could be an instrument, needlepoint, or reading, but something out there is your happy place, and I would wager that you most likely learned it from someone.
Ever since I came to Tulare Golf Course, my happy place is the first tee box as the sun comes up. The whoosh of a properly swung driver, the snap of the clubhead hitting the golf ball at full send pace, and the sun cresting the horizon is perfection. That is regardless of the course you are playing or in any country. A freshly mown green, free of ball marks, and rolling pure is just the cherry on the top of this perfect Sunday.
This past month without a golfing soul on the course, my perspective sharpened. Like a lot of us, I may have started to take the beauty of golf and golf courses for granted. Without the sights and sounds of golfers playing the game they love, what is the beauty of the course? It might as well be an oversized public park at that point.
Yes, the golfers make the golf course, and I promise, we won’t ever forget that.