By Alan M. Watson, President, GOLF+
Life is full of tough decisions. Choices either get made by you or for you. You come to a crossroads and you pick–or you get run over by the traffic around you because of your inaction.
Recently, I had to make a very tough decision. After nearly 37 years, I decided to close my Dothan brick-and-mortar golf shop. This choice was not made lightly, and I am heartbroken, of course. Business either makes sense or it doesn’t, and in this case, there didn’t seem to be much sense in continuing on. While I truly hate letting my staff go (we will close in late July) and letting the great customers of that market down, it was a decision that was made with a great deal of number crunching, not emotion. Sometimes businesses just don’t work from a math equation side of things, and this was one of those times. We will continue to provide excellent golf services in our Panama City Beach store, and we will be bulking up our online offerings to service those who wish to continue shopping with us that way.
So why am I telling you this? I think golf is a lot like business and a lot like those tough decisions that we are often forced to make in life. You want to get better at golf? You will have to sacrifice time, money, energy, and something else that you could have been doing. There is an opportunity cost to every decision in life.
One of my amazing clients in Panama City Beach is a young lady who works very hard on her golf game. She is a great student as well, and she has other passions and hobbies like music. Her golf, however, is where she makes that tough decision every day. Diet, exercise, practice…she does these things every day, not for today but for her tomorrow. A college scholarship and the chance to play at that level and possibly beyond is her ultimate goal. If she skips practice today and decides to lie around the pool instead, then maybe tomorrow doesn’t happen the way she wants. These are the tough decisions that even young people have to make.
As an adult who has been in business for many years, I see the parallels in sport and business and life–sacrifice, suffering, frustration, and sorrow. But also joy, happiness, and ultimate victory and success with the right amount of work.
I want my business to grow and succeed, so I have to sacrifice one storefront so that I can better focus on what’s in front of me.
You may need to sacrifice some time spent in front of the TV to work on your chipping and putting if you want to score better on the course. You might have to sacrifice some money to get a golf lesson so that you can finally fix that wicked slice. You might have to sacrifice sleeping in so that you can get to the course an hour early to warm up properly and practice whatever part of your game was suffering the last time you played.
Whatever it is, we all have choices to make. In golf, those choices aren’t life or death, but hey, we all want to get better and enjoy the game more. So, without going overboard, maybe we could all take it just a little bit more seriously.
Why do you think professional golf tournaments have practice rounds before the tournament starts? Because preparation is key when you are striving for success. Desired outcomes rarely come by accident or happenstance. And when we don’t make decisions ourselves, we allow the world to make decisions around us, and we have no control over that.
I hope that as you think about whether getting better at golf is a goal that you will consider what sacrifices you need to make. And if your only goal on the course is to just have fun, no matter the score, then I encourage you to enjoy that as well. Golf can be for fun or for more if we want. And we get to make the decisions about how seriously, or not, we want to take it.
Fairways and Greens, my friends.
