Why Links Golf Is Like Life

My dear friend Mark Parsinen, who died suddenly and tragically a few years ago, was a student of the game who loved life and loved golf. We would often have conversations about how golf was like life, full of highs and lows, rewards and penalties. I cherish those conversations as a watch the 150th edition of the Open Championship in St. Andrews, a town that Mark made his home for a number of years while he built the modern classic course Kingsbairns. The Open is now the final major of the year a fitting place in the rota because it brings the game back to its origins, its essence. It brings the game to links golf.  I love links golf because it really is like life. American style parkland courses are what we’d like life to be, all manicured and perfect. American golf says that if you do good things, good things will happen. Hit it far, hit it close and you will succeed. But links golf is different. You can hit a “perfect shot” and get a disappointing or even a disastrous result. All you can do is find your ball and try again. In links golf, there are a variety of ways to reach the goal and a 25-year old and an 85-year old can make par in wildly different ways. The weather can change an easy task into an impossible one, and that is totally our of your control. Just like life, you do your best and carry on.  St. Andrews is the ultimate golf course because it is the original laboratory for the game. It has charmed and challenged players for over 400 years. But even more than that, it is a representation of the human experience and how year after year, generation after generation, the challenges and pleasures of life remain the same and they can be found in the sandy, undulation soil of a links golf course.