I’ve been thinking a lot about football and golf of late. Not just because the World Cup is somehow upon us, but also I’ve been watching some grassroots games from the touchline; the cycle of life now casting me as the parent where my late father once stood, as the rain batters down. And in what was my place in that other world, tearing up and down the pitch with a fever that will not recognise fatigue, is my son.
Football and golf; those two passions of my childhood that I let fade for too long, but now look to rekindle, for they make my life richer. And not only do they share a degree of awfulness in their uniforms, but they are similar in the way they dish out punishment to the follower. The odds are stacked when you watch football or play golf; if you expect it to turn out well in either endeavour you will come to know disappointment, and betrayal. On a regular basis.
In football no team can dominate for ever, and form comes and goes as predictably as the seasons. But almost every team has an occasional moment of their dreams coming true, and these will probably be just frequent enough that you don’t switch colours or pledge your allegiance to a more reliable shirt. There’s a sunk cost bias at play, I suspect.
And golf will kick you in the teeth the very instant you think you’ve found something - a swing thought, your rhythm, a purple patch. But once a round, sometimes twice, you’ll do something that would please even Tiger or Ernie; something that seems to manifest from another realm, and you will cling on to that sweet feeling for dear life, and try to bury the trauma of the other eighty-three shots.
In “Good to Great”, Jim Collins brought the “Stockdale Paradox” to the attention of his readers. Admiral Jim Stockdale survived eight years in a brutal prisoner of war camp, but somehow never lost his faith that he would emerge, and that the trials of that cruel phase would not define him as a victim, but make him stronger. Stockdale also maintained that the ones who didn’t make it were the victims of their own optimism; that the ones who clung to being out by Christmas or Easter “died of a broken heart”. In other words, it is “the hope that kills you”.
So we know it is daft to hope; to dare to dream. But when we do, in those breathless split seconds when the chance is still present - as the free-kick swerves towards the top corner, or the soft draw floats above the deep bunker - we feel alive, in the centre of the world as it unfolds. We gasp, transfixed on the shots as they seem to glide in slow motion through the air, full of drama, and our hearts soar with them.
And then the keeper gets a finger-tip on it, or the breeze pulls it back into the face of the hazard, and though we howl with anguish and ask ourselves for the thousandth time “why do I do this?”, we already know the answer. For these games are like the proverbial monkeys and the typewriters…sooner or later, something truly fantastic will happen; something sublime. The exception that proves the rule. Like that photo above.
And that’s all we need to be back on the tee or in the stand in just a few days’ time, rain or shine, win or (more commonly) lose. For those instants when the look in our wide eyes says “could it be? could it really be?” And those moments, and these games, to paraphrase Robert Smith of The Cure (and for those of you familiar with their heartbreaking album “Wish”, knowing that he is a committed QPR supporter will explain a lot) “fill me with the hope to wish impossible things, to wish impossible things”.
I’m at the watching grandson stage having done the same with his father.Great times
My own special scoreboard photo was taken in the drizzle at the MCG, close of play, Boxing Day 2010.