Golf, or "How I stopped worrying and started having fun"

Thanks to a tutor, I am now quite good at golf. I am very thankful for this, because tuition saves one from developing many bad habits and helps me hold on to the good ones.

I learnt a few things, and as they pass through my mind, I will attempt to scribble down...

• Have your own kind of fun. Golf is no longer this exclusive sport only the wealthy play. There is no longer any compulsory style for many venues, which means I can vocalize my pleasure at making the little golf-ball smack into the 100m sign or exclaim "FUCK!!!" if my poor golf-swing drives the club head into the ground and hurts my arms. By the fourth time, they've gotten used to my noise and like good, normal HK people, pretend they haven't heard me. Here, I relearned how to be myself...

• Don't strive for perfection... or, it isn't about being the best. OK, fine. Everybody wants the best. We watch the Olympics to see the best specimens of the human species compete with each other. When you choose a university or a job, you want to go to the one best for you. Few would do otherwise. Fine. But when it comes down to actually doing it (eg. playing golf, vs watching Tiger Woods), it's just about learning. You can aspire, but at the end of the Tiger Woods video, you're back to reality. I'm not Tiger Woods, and frankly it would be irrational to expect myself to play at that level now. So if even that is not a goal, what is?

• Understand what drives you. In the first few driving range sessions, I just liked it. My rational mind had no idea why. It was just fun to send balls flying. I have never ceased to become amazed at how far a ball will fly, because of one elegant stroke. So I just kept trying to make them fly higher and further. And the further they went, the more fun I had and the further the next balls flew,... and so on.

• Beauty in small things. To me, golf balls are cute. They have little dimples, are round and look harmless. You can also take a permanent marker and draw smileys on them. Before I hit them off into the night, I would smile and exhale, as if to breath life into it. Like an ideal parent, I give them a blessing and then send them on their way. Some screw up and roll around, never going very high. Sometimes, as if by synchronicity, many balls would fly off, fading into the inky night sky. Other times, they would collide and fly even higher. And if your shot is brilliant, the ball would reach the top of its natural curve and then suddenly fly much higher, as if it had fired rocket boosters.  But eventually, they will all land and come to rest on the muddy grassy field. I choose to believe that from the moment my club connects the ball to the time it hits the ground, it has a life of its own.

• I don't actually give two sh**s about winning. I don't care how many strokes I take to make the ball go in the hole. The only time I considered caring was when I momentarily became jealous at someone blowing me away on the strokes and I couldn't understand how they could be so good. Then I looked at the ball and remembered why I was even playing. I felt a sense of mission to send the ball to its hole, as if it were a child wanting to go home. And then I realized that golf wasn't about the other players, it was about the ball, the club, my body, my mind and me.

Like in horse-riding, or swimming, or running, I have once again found myself in a sport.

I may never become brilliant at it. But I get by safely, I give the horses I ride a good time, the balls I hit a great flight, my body a nice workout and in the end, after the sweat, scores, prizes and medals, is that not what sport is really about?