by Jim Corbett

If you are a true lover of the game of golf, you have probably pondered deeply at some point about how your golf game relates to the meaning of your life. Deep pondering often takes place right after you have thrown some of your equipment into a deep pond — where did you think that expression came from? But one of the points worthy of the deepest pondering is the relationship between the golf ball and hope.

There are lots of different choices available to you in selecting golf balls; there are lots of different brands, different colors, and lots of dimple designs, all intended to yield different results. And which ball you play for your round is a very individual decision. (I personally use the “Title-less” brand, which is appropriate for my level of golf.)

Golf balls are terrific though, aren’t they? Boy, when you take one of those little guys out of the sleeve, they look so clean and bright, so crisp and full of promise, so pure. Don’t you feel like they symbolize all of your hopes and aspirations for this round of golf? That’s what they are to me; they’re like life’s best hopes. When you stand there on the first tee and hold that thing in your hand, you can just feel the positive energy pulsing out of that ball and you somehow know that this will be a truly special day.

But sometimes our hopes get scuffed up, and sometimes we get distracted and despite our best efforts, our hopes go off in a direction that we never anticipated and, indeed, sometimes our hopes even get lost.

(Very often you can buy your golf ball back for a half a buck about a week later from kids staked out all along the course, but it doesnít always work that way with your hopes, does it? Sometimes they’re gone forever.)

But, no! Hope springs eternal! And every time you step up to hit that ball it’s a new opportunity for greatness; the possibilities are limitless. Why, it’s entirely possible that from where you are standing right now, with the right hit, and a little help from the wind, you could put that baby right into the cup. Now, that’s golf!

Well, isn’t that just the way life is? We start out with great hopes and expectations for ourselves, and every time we try something new, it’s an opportunity that is full of promise and excitement. But sometimes, along the way, these hopes can get whacked into trees and scuffed up on cart paths, and plunged down to the bottoms of lakes. Very often they don’t look quite the same by the time you’ve reached the 4th or 5th hole. Maybe the ones you started out with are completely gone already and you’re already working on a whole new set of hopes and expectations.

That’s okay. It would be a sad thing to quit the round, just because you didn’t want to risk having another hope dashed. You have to reach into your bag and grab another one. Even if that one may not be as bright and shiny as the one you started out with. Maybe this one has been used before, maybe it’s one you found along the way, but don’t worry. It keeps you moving forward and it keeps you in the game. There is no way to play the game of golf without that ball, and there is really no way to play the game of life without hope.

If your hopes don’t work out the way you had planned, it’s a good idea to have plenty of others in reserve. You know, back-up plans or “fall-back” positions.

I had the opportunity to go to law school a number of years ago, and when I first started I had a great vision for the future. It was my fervent hope that I would be the first person of limited intelligence to be appointed to the United States Supreme Court. That honor has since been bestowed upon another, but lofty dreams move us to achieve great things — sometimes. Soon into my law school career it became apparent to me that I would never realize my dream, so I had to step back and re-evaluate the situation and develop a new hope to guide me.

It wasn’t long before I knew what that new hope would be: I then really hoped that I would get a “C” in at least one of my courses. Eventually I changed my goal again; this time I hoped to be the only student in the history of my law school, never to use yellow highlighter in any of my text books.

See, as we go through life we have to constantly adjust our goals depending on the circumstances. Flexibility is the key. If you lose a ball out there on the course, you can’t let it put you out of the game. I eventually decided that law school was not for me, in fact I realized the right profession for me was philosopher. There are actually a lot of similarities between being a philosopher and a Supreme Court Justice. The main one, of course, is that you get to work while hanging around in your robe; my robe is just a lot more colorful than theirs.

Anyway, whether you play with 90-compression “Mondo-Distance Tour Trajectories” or 100-compression “Title-less” balls, remember that these are your hopes and it is your hopes that give shape to your life. And when you’re out there banging that little thing over hill and dale, and through wooded glen, think of these words from Shakespeare:

True hope is swift, and flies on swallow’s wings;
Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.
Arnold Palmer couldn’t have said it any better (but don’t worry Arnie, Shakespeare was lousy with his long irons).