Sweet revenge is a cool golf thing

I have repressed most of my worst day on a golf course, but one memory remains: a vow that I would never again Woodlands Course at Chateau Elan Resort never again.

It was mid-May 2008. I was 18 years old and had just completed one of the worst rounds of an overall mediocre golf career: a 91 to open the Division III national championship.

That miserable, dejected feeling has stayed with me ever since. The course’s tight confines, its fast greens and the tournament pressure were just too much for me. I played a little better the next three days on the resort’s Chateau Course – rounds of 81, 73 and 78 – but overall it was a lackluster performance that didn’t do much to help my team’s (the Washington & Lee University Generals) performance.

Emotional 18-year-olds say a lot of things they don’t mean. Fast forward almost 16 1/2 years and when the opportunity presents itself to return to Elan Castle and to prove this good-for-nothing 18-year-old wrong, I grabbed it.

The circumstances of my second round at The Woodlands couldn’t have been more different. I was playing alone, riding on a golf cart in a tournament setting, weighing 30 pounds more, being nearly twice my age and at least a little wiser. And yet my pulse was racing to grim, familiar levels as I arrived at the first tee to greet the uphill winding par 5 first. It wasn’t just the Georgia August heat. It was panic, the kind that unsettled me as a rookie all those years ago.

But this time I was better prepared. I could recall the competitive rounds I had played since that failure, taking as much comfort in the bad ones (of which there were many and there will be many more) as in the good ones. I noticed the tendencies that only show up in my swing under pressure and my tactics for dealing with them.

Calmed for a moment, I hit a good first tee shot, opened with a par (I think I managed a double that time) and from then on everything felt normal. The Woodlands was not an invincible boss, but simply another golf course that I was determined to understand and enjoy.

Mission accomplished. In fact, I played one of my best rounds of the year up to that point. I avoided all the traps I fell into in 2008 in 2024.

Ultimately, my revenge was not directed against the golf course, but against my young, punk self.

Golf teaches us many things. One of the most important is that there is no substitute for experience and no teacher like time. My 18-year-old self did not know and could not know what my 34-year-old self would eventually understand, who he would be and where he would be ready to play again, demons of the past or not.