Golf as an inflator...

and indefensible 2004 predictions

Author

Sean Melia
January 05, 2024

Hey Everyone,

A quick note off the top:

I hopped on the Life on Course podcast to talk about my quest and golf in Massachusetts. Listen here.

One thing I am trying to add this year is a more regular podcast with an accompanying YouTube video. The first one was released on Friday morning. I go deep on my 2023 course rankings.

Would appreciate it if you subscribed to the pod wherever you like to consume them.

As usual, I’d love your help in spreading this newsletter. Forward it along to anyone you think might enjoy my inane musings, and tell them to click on the subscribe button!

Thanks!

Let’s get to it.

Golf as an Inflator

Tetragrammaton is Rick Rubin’s new(ish) podcast. He has all sorts of people on. This week, I listened to his conversation with John Mayer. It was superb, at the beginning of the interview Mayer talks about how music “inflated” him at the end of every day. School was the thing he had to do until 3:00 pm. He felt like his real classes started when he got home and could pick up his guitar.

“…and when it (playing guitar) works, your feet come off the ground, you’re elated.”

He went on…

“I remember having my feelings hurt, being bullied, and knowing I was on my way home to reset from that and reinflate from playing guitar. And it became a secret that no one else knew about in school. The greatest therapy in the world is playing music.”

Beyond the new understanding of why Mayer wrote, “I want to run through the halls of my high school/I want to scream at the top of my lungs,” this sentiment hit me on a few levels.

First, there’s the obvious one that a kid like Mayer in the early 90s could go home and escape quite easily with the knowledge that everyone else was doing the same thing. Mostly siloed at home and not buzzing about on social media.

Second, it made me glad that I grew up with something that helped me feel inflated.

Golf and music have a lot in common.

They can be played for a lifetime.

You don’t have to be great at them to enjoy them.

They can help people connect.

They can inflate those that need inflating.

They can be done individually or with a group.

I started taking golf lessons when I was around 8 years old. My brother started taking guitar lessons around the same age.

As I think about our adolescent years, we both retreated to these sports when we needed to be inflated. He would hang out in his room playing guitar, I would hitch a ride to the driving range or local nine-holer to play alone or meet some friends.

My brother is currently sitting in a theater watching rehearsals for a new Broadway show. He and six of his buddies wrote the music for Water for Elephants. Seven friends who met in college and started playing music and writing plays.

I’m not going to sit here and convince you that what I’m doing measures up to my brother. But I do know that our floatation devices have been immense in who we are and where we are. It’s helped us grieve and celebrate. It’s helped us learn about ourselves and our friends.

For Mayer, music has been mainly an individual act (aside from his Grateful Dead stint).

He’s been on stage with no one to blame but himself for a poor performance or a missed note or a forgotten lyric. That’s a lot like golf, too.

There are so many easy ways to deflate ourselves, and I actually see a lot of those people on golf courses trying too hard getting upset about a bad shot or whatever else can drive us crazy about golf.

For me, though, it’s always been something that fills my soul even on those crappy days when it’s hard or I feel like a bag of loose parts and can’t hit a shot straight to save my life.

In Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, one of the character says, “But after a certain age you have to start performing for yourself.”

That’s the crux of it. Performing or playing or writing for yourself. That’s when the floatation device fills and brings us back to who we are.

Golf does that for me.

What does it for you?

Picture of the week: Hornblower Trophy at Plymouth CC

Indefensible and Wild 2004 Predictions

I have no real defense for any of these predictions.

  • Scottie Scheffler will win two majors this year.

  • A player outside the top 50 in the World Golf Ranking will win a major this year.

  • Ludvig Aberg and Rose Zhang will combine to win four times and grab one major on their respective tours.

  • Tiger Woods will play 12 rounds in major championships this year (divide those up any way you’d like).

  • Tommy Fleetwood will win the Gold medal in the Olympics.

When I’m not golfing…

I’m gambling….(Every week, because it's now legal in Mass. I'm going to make five NFL picks and keep track of them here.)

  • Last Week: 3-1-1 (Season record: 44-39-2)

    • No bets this week… too much nonsense in the last week of the season with QBs sitting and other players resting. We’ll be back for the playoffs next week.

I’m reading…

  • With the PGA Tour season starting, Kyle Porter’s Normal Sport 3 is a great read. He goes through the entire 2023 season in bullet points. Buy it on PDF!

  • Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood is still what I’m picking up every day. I try to read ten pages a day as a habit, and it certainly helps work through books.

I’m listening to…

  • The Rick Rubin and John Mayer discussion is a delightful listen. Give any Tetragrammaton pod a listen, he has a wide variety of guests from Phil Jackson to Tom Hanks to Trent Reznor.

  • Rory McIlroy made some news this week talking about LIV and the PGA Tour. He joined the Stick to Football podcast. I’m finding it more interesting to listen to people outside of golf talk to people inside golf. In any setting where an expert is being interviewed by a non-expert, different questions pop up, and the interviewer isn’t embarrassed to not know the answer or sound stupid or uninformed.

I’m eating… 

  • I had a hankering to cook a pork chop this week. Maybe it was the post-holiday winter duldrums. This Paprika Pork Chop on NYTimes Cooking was very good.

  • Tiff got an ice cream maker for Christmas. She made peppermint ice cream, which was delicious.

  • On Saturday, we went to Pammy’s in Cambridge for one last 2023 hurrah. Aside from a final Negroni (or two), the Kale Salad was insane. They put a fried piece of potato underneath all the well-dressed kale. Sheesh. Of course, we had the lumache, and I also had the duck. Make it a point in 2024 to go to Pammy’s if you live close enough to Cambridge.

I’m drinking…  

  • I’m aiming for a Dry January, and I’ve been drinking shrub as a nice replacement. It’s basically a apple cider vinegar based drink that can be mixed into seltzers and cocktails or enjoyed “straight.”

I’m watching…

  • We finished Slow Horses season 1 this week. Go watch it on Apple TV. Outstanding show. Six episodes. There are three seasons.

  • 2004 Masters… I popped this on, watched for a bit and then went out and returned just as Mickelson came up the 18th fairway. The scene after this win is incredible; it’s more incredible considering where Phil is now. 15 years after this win, Tiger Woods enjoyed maybe the most iconic victory walk in 2019, but this Mickelson moment is excellent. This video is cued to start just before Mickelson sinks the winning putt.

I'm (shamelessly) plugging...

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