1. For over forty years, I've experienced watching golf tournaments, especially majors, as similar to diving into the plays of Shakespeare.
In Shakespeare's plays, crises expose characters for what they are really made of -- crises might expose their strengths, their weaknesses, their deepest loyalties, what they most value in life, and other dimensions of who they are.
So does golf.
It can be thrilling to see a golfer rise to the occasion presented by a crisis and hit just the right shot or sink a pressure packed putt.
It can also be agonizing to see a player fail in a moment of crisis.
I witnessed both the former and the latter in the final holes of yesterday's men's U. S. Open.
It was agonizing to watch Rory McIlroy fail. He bogeyed three of the last four holes. From the comfort and pressure free comfort of my home in Kellogg, Idaho, I thought he chose the wrong club for his tee shots on both 15 and 18 -- why didn't he hit a more lofted club into 15 and why did he hit his driver on the 18th tee, especially when he'd had success the day before keeping his ball in the fairway with a three wood off the tee?
Then, on 16 and 18 his missed short par putts.
It was painful to see him shrink, to witness his being exposed, for whatever reason, as not equal to these moments of pressure and crisis.
On the other hand, the last stretch of holes exposed Bryson DeChambeau as a player who has matured, who overcame his wildness off the tee with courageous and creative scrambling and who seized the moments of challenge, pressure, and crisis not only with skill and self-control, but with buoyant joy, fully availing himself to the gallery, seeming to thrive on needing and then executing great golf shots to win this tournament.
With the way spectators encircle the greens and line the fairways, golf tournaments play out similarly to live theater. Golf courses become stages. The golfers are players on this stage. Unlike plays, though, what will transpire on the stage of a golf tournament is not scripted and, as spectators, it's this not knowing what will transpire that makes golf such a superb source of drama and it's the not knowing that ends up revealing the mettle of the players as they face the demands and pressures of the terrain they play on and the competition they engage in with the other players.
2. It's not a HUGE deal, but the fact that the transplant team determined that when I have my weekly blood draw tomorrow (Monday), they don't need to see the results immediately. Coupled with the other fact that I am now able to drive a car, it means I can transport myself and have my labs performed at the uptown LabCorp.
Now, I'll admit, the several trips I've made to Spokane with Debbie, Christy, and Carol driving me have gone smoothly. All the same, I look forward to simply buzzing uptown, having my blood drawn, and being back home shortly thereafter.
So, tonight, I got everything ready: I set out my printed copy of the lab order, a mask, a urine specimen cup, my Monday morning pills (which I take right after by blood's been drawn), my water bottle, wallet, and car keys.
I'm set and I'm hopeful that having this blood work done in Kellogg is going to work out fine.
3. Back to Shakespeare and golf for a second. Again and again Shakespeare explores how time can be a source of healing and a source of weight, a means of wearing down humans.
It's been ten years since Rory McElroy, one of the world's premiere golfers over the last thirteen years or so, has won a major golf tournament and those ten years have become a source of weight for him. He's thirty-five. Unlike ten years ago, when it seemed he had all the time in the world to win more majors, the number of years he has left to play golf at an elite level seems much more finite.
I thought he suffered under this weight as he finished yesterday's round by bogeying three of the last four years. He's had numerous top ten finishes and a few runner up finishes in major tournaments since his last win, and I wonder if falling short has imposed the weight of doubt upon his psyche. Is that what we saw yesterday? Did we see the weight of doubt cloud McIlroy's judgment and stymie his ability to execute down the stretch? I can't say for sure, but this possibility certainly crossed my mind.
Time for DeChambeau, on the other hand, has been on his side. Time has matured him. He's taken time to transform himself into a more open, less arrogant, more engaging person on the golf course. It is as if over time he has learned the virtues of humbling himself, evidenced, I thought, by his gracious comments after he won the tournament about his admiration for Rory McIlroy and the empathy he felt for him in the aftermath of his collapse.
If McIlroy seemed weighed down on Sunday afternoon, DeChambeau seemed weightless, light, fun-loving, generous with his time. He let spectator after spectator touch his U. S. Open trophy. He joined Johnson Wagner as Wagner had himself filmed while he recreated DeChambeau's superb shot out of the sand on 18 -- and when Wagner popped his shot two within two feet of the pin, the light spirited DeChambeau playfully handed Wagner his trophy, as if to say, "OMG! Two feet! Here! The trophy is yours!"
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