Golf is Hard

This game that we all love, it is hard.  I didn't realize that myself until I started playing.  My dad always tells me, "it just shouldn't be that hard, the ball doesn't move, swinging is pretty natural, and there is just no reason to miss the ball altogether," unless of course you are just so excited to see the ball fly beautifully high in the air and you look up just a second too early expecting to see this great shot, when in reality you just knocked the ball off the tee.  We have all been there, another thing my dad tells me, "no matter what you do in golf, its no record, someone has hit a worse shot."  In fact we often find ourselves feeling like this little boy who missed a put that should have just been a gimme.

Watch the full Video here.

Golf is hard and it happens to everyone, even the pros.  We learned this again last weekend at The Honda Classic at PGA National.  This is a tough course to play, but only 16 players ended under par for the week.  There were also a lot of great players who didn't even make the cut (the number was 4) into the weekend, most surprisingly, Rory Mcilroy, who hasn't missed a cut in the United States since the 2012 U.S. Open.  Amazingly, since starting his PGA Tour Career in 2009, he has only missed 11 cuts.  However, Padraig Harrington had a great week shooting a 67-66-71-70, and winning the Tournament in a playoff against Daniel Berger.  If you missed the tournament check out the leaderboard to see where your favorite players finished.  

One thing that golf doesn't need to make it any harder, is bad weather. Playing in high school we played through everything, wind, rain, snow, hail, even a little lightening. This past weekend at The Honda Classic we saw, as Golf Digest puts it, "Mother Nature hates golf." Saturdays round got delayed due to heavy rain and winds of 60 mph. The wind was so bad it knocked over the scoreboard into the lake at number 18.  

Before the weather went sour, we still saw some hard shots.  Thursday seemed to be particularly difficult.  During the first round, Tony Finau had a bad lie next to a bush.  He tried to chip it back onto the fairway but overshot and ended up wet.  That same day Sergio Garcia hit a shot into the water, but we all know Garcia can be creative, so he put on his rain suit, stood on the pine needle and hit his fully submerged ball right onto the fairway and saved par.

I can't say it enough, golf is hard, but pros like Garcia, these guys are good.  They make amazing shots the rest of us wouldn't even dare try, let alone make par off of.  They hit balls out of trees, out of water, out of deep bunkers without actually getting in, and then they go on to make par.

 However when us amateurs give these same shots a try, they usually end in an epic fail.  For example this guy who tried to remake a bunker shot that Tiger made in the 2012 British Open.  I do give him props for trying, that is a tough shot any way you take it. Watch the video on loop here.  

Remember: when you are out there on the links, everyone has bad days, and sometimes you just have to play for the love of the game, and if you are going to try a shot straight from The Tour, please film it so we can enjoy the results!