In his book, Golf for Enlightenment, the philosopher and spiritual entrepreneur Deepak Chopra notes that unlike other sports, golf is played in a garden. Perhaps deliberately, perhaps not, Chopra takes no notice of The All-England Lawn Tennis Club's marketing of the Wimbledon Championships as "Tennis in an English Garden." Either way, if the All-England Club in Southwest London is an English Garden, the St. Andrews' Links on the east coast of Fife, where the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews will host next week's 150th Open Championship, is a Scottish garden far more vast and wild, untamed and exposed.
The land on which golf was born centuries ago – the very place where the best golfers in the world will compete for the Open Championship – has not changed all that much over the years. Back then, it was not considered particularly beautiful and certainly not of much value. It was unproductive, sandy and windswept. And with no particular avenue for profit, the land was left for the public, open to all.
Of course, the golfers of the early centuries saw something special in the links land, something others didn’t, and they embraced it. They found beauty in the expansive landscape and a joy in trying to swing a club in harmony with the centrifugal and gravitational forces that enveloped them and to propel a small ball around the land with a gracious precision and surprising power. This was the start of the game. From then to today, playing this simple yet confounding game, with a friend or two, at a gentle pace, and out in God’s wonder, can capture a spirit and generate a passion not fully explainable.
One of those who has recently found joy in golf is Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the Governor of the Public Investment Fund (PIF), the sovereign wealth fund of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The PIF controls hundreds of billions of dollars and is behind a new professional golf tour that has generated a lot of controversy of late. You may have seen seasoned professional golfers like Phil Mickelson and Graeme McDowell stumbling for words at press conferences as they try to explain their decision to join the new tour. They struggle to explain taking the easy Saudi money and providing cover for their benefactors and some of their more reprehensible actions and policies.
Of course, Al-Ramayyan is not the first wealthy man to discover the joys of golf and then try to manipulate the game for his personal benefit. The history of golf is littered with rich men who have not just taken to the game, but who have also twisted it in ugly ways. In the U.S., these men, often self-selected stewards of the game and their country as well, have grafted onto golf the values of social and economic status, racism and sexism, hierarchy and control. They created private clubs and excluded most people from the game, and even corruptly manipulated laws to avoid paying property taxes on their clubs that would be levied on other citizens. It’s not a pretty picture.
But if you’ve ever played the game, you know that golf has a way of generating hope, often irrational hope, and sometimes redemption too. You can play 17 holes of horrible golf, hit one soaring seven iron from the 18th fairway to ten feet, and walk off the course believing you are just a few buckets of balls away from greatness. Like life itself, golf is a journey never fully mastered, one that inevitably takes us off course, literally, but where redemption is just around the bend. That redemption comes from a commitment to integrity and honesty, to life-long learning, to forgiving oneself and others, to healing and sharing.
Through the lens of enlightenment and the game’s unadulterated form, the quest in golf is not a score or even a swing, and certainly not status or exclusivity or laundering a tarnished image. It is rather a struggle to be present in the now and for greater understanding of our physical and spiritual place in this world and alongside our brothers and sisters. This is the insight Chopra comes to recognize in his own golf odyssey and then share in his book. We learn and move ahead in the journey to enlightenment by expanding our perception – especially of what's beautiful – appreciating and accepting our bodies, their movements, our emotions, and our surroundings, and being open to new ideas, our own and others. This is what being free – and here – are all about.
We in the U.S. have been programmed to believe that success comes with a big check; that beauty is found only in the most meticulously well-groomed people, places and things. But recognizing the beauty of a golf course on just a slightly remade desert patch of an Indian Reservation, for example, one created by the community and its commitment to one another, is part of the game at its best, approached from the spirit of grace and love. When we do that, golf is no longer about winning but about growing and cherishing each and every breath of each and every being on the planet.
The controversy enveloping golf these days is being framed as a battle between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour, the Saudis and the temptations of their money on the one hand, and some loyalty to the PGA Tour on the other. Whether professional golf fractures is certainly worth considering. But maybe too, as we watch in the coming week a golf tournament played at a municipal park in a faraway land, we can see this moment as an opportunity to move closer to redemption, even if just a bit. For the game. For ourselves. And for our country. It may be irrational to hope, but I do; that we might approach golf and life with a new spirit that could just possibly lead to more grace and greater generosity to ourselves and to each other.
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