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A Healthy Dose of Competition

One of the greatest features of the game of golf is the everlasting sense of competition. Regardless of the style, game, playing partners, etc. there is an underlying competition. There are scrambles, matches, invitational events, wedding day episodes and weekly jaunts on Sunday morning. And then there’s the oft forgotten simple but ultimate competitor: par.

Admittedly, among the manicured nature and (hopefully) occasional mishits, the sense of competition in golf can be overlooked. Until just recently for me, it was very much underappreciated.

Sure, I am a fiend for competition and take great pride in owning bragging rights from a precious two-person scramble victory over my best friends at the beginning of the summer.

However, I’ve never entered a scramble competition with three buddies or competed in a match with a championship on the line. And even with Door County’s proximity to Whistling Straits in Sheboygan I have never attended a major golf championship.

I may be a golf enthusiast, but alas, I was much more of a baseball player growing up, so high school golf was also out of the question. (It’s an easy route to take here in Door County.)

But thankfully, this past week helped me realize golf’s greater sense of competition.

As an editorial intern for GOLF Magazine, I spent Monday and Tuesday in our nation’s capital conducting survey interviews with PGA Tour players at the AT&T National tournament at Congressional Country Club.

Aside from a few minutes spent star struck, I was able to appreciate a newer side of golf with the impending competition taking place that week. The attention to detail was fascinating.

Players would spend hours on the putting green hitting hundreds of putts from the same spot and others fractionally different. Justin Hicks, a no-name golfer by means of the Tour, hit his driver on the driving range for a solid 45 minutes. He was swinging his hardest with one club for nearly an hour. It was also 91 degrees outside.

I may have been there to do a job, but witnessing their greatness, friendships, work ethic and love for the game made me want to toss away the clipboard of survey questions and simply watch what competition can really mean in golf. And they weren’t even playing while I was there; they were simply practicing and prepping for the weekend.

While only a sliver of golfers could get a taste of competition at or near the Tour level, competition is available at all levels of golf. Bob Larsen — featured in last week’s Golf Page — takes his 6-stroke handicap to statewide handicapped events. He noted that he loves tournament golf. If you haven’t experienced it, you just might love it as much as he does. Better yet, a great example takes place just down the road.

The Resorter’s Match Play event takes place every summer at Peninsula State Park and pits similarly skilled shotmakers against one another. It might mean taking off a few days of work in August, but don’t tell me that doesn’t sound like a great idea. It’s golf and it’s fun and you should give it a try.