Learning from Legos

It’s Christmastime and I have two young children on the “nice list”, which means Santa should be bringing lots of toys this year!  My son is 6 years old and his world revolves around Superheros, ipad games and Legos amongst other things.  He was so excited when an early present arrived in the mail yesterday from his Uncle and I allowed him to open it.   So at 8pm last night he and I built the 300+ piece Lego set together.  This is not my first rodeo- it is probably the 20^th set I’ve helped him build, so by now I’m pretty proficient and efficient and it goes much faster than it used to, still tedious, but faster.  It is fun to see it all come together and to see him playing with it is the best reward.  As I reflected on the experience and Legos in general, I came up with a few valuable lessons for building Legos and of course a better golf game too! : 

1.  Follow professional directions. They don’t include an instruction manual for nothing!  Following the specified order of construction will ensure a strong foundation for your toy.  If you try to wing it and get creative, your final result might be fun to play with at first but it will probably fall apart over time.  Sound like golf? Learn the basics first and correctly, not just from what a buddy tells you.  Also, learn to master short game and short swing skills before expecting to master a perfect full swing.  
2. Every piece counts. To complete a Lego set, every piece is used and builds on each other. So don’t forget any piece!  Similarly in golf, all the pieces to a well rounded game have to be in place for a golfer to reach their potential and shoot a very good score. 
3. One piece at a time.  You can’t rush the build and half the fun of getting a Lego set is building it! Large sets can be very overwhelming too and require patience.  So for all of those reasons in golf, take your game and each round you play one shot at a time, be patient when expecting results and enjoy the process of building and improving your game.  Then, when the work is done, you can enjoy the play time even more! 
4. Pay attention to detail.   A building block laid down in the right place but with the wrong orientation can mess up the whole architectural plan.  In golf for example we can set our grip or our stance in the right place but if we are aimed sideways or our grip is a bit strong, we might not get the best results. 
5. You’ve got to work with what you have.   Each Lego set comes with a set number and styles of pieces, so you can’t try and build a space ship when the set only has pieces to build a motorcycle.  In golf we need to realize that we have to build our swing around our strengths and weaknesses and what we are physically capable of.   Most of us are not built to make a Rory McIlroy swing. 
6. Don’t forget the maintenance & don’t throw out the instruction manual.  Even well built Lego sets can fall apart after a lot of wear and tear and hard play time.  Make sure you take the time to secure the connections and make sure you have all the pieces.  If it does fall apart unexpectedly or after an accident, no problem, get out the instruction manual and revisit the basic directions.  In golf, we can’t ignore the need for regular practice and make it a point to schedule a checkup with your local professional when things are going good as well as bad; this should be normal maintenance for the avid golfer (that most of us don’t do).  If your body changes over time or with injury, we can revisit our fundamentals and rebuild our swing as needed (with workable modifications). 

 I hope this article helps you to better build Lego sets with your kids and a better golf gameJ  Merry Christmas and have fun with you and yours this week! I hope the New Year brings you good health, happiness and lots of birdies!!   

Heavenly Golf

"Is there golf in Heaven?"

 

My beloved grandmother passed on this week and if anyone made it through the pearly gates, she did.  Even though she was not a golfer, I got to thinking… will she play golf up there?  What would her game be like? Are we all relegated to the level of play we had on Earth or can we enjoy a magically perfect game on perfect courses at all times?  God wouldn’t allow shanks and duck hooks, would He?  Or would He?

It’s funny, every golfer and student I know dreams of shooting par and hitting the ball straight and far consistently. If you could actually do that all the time, and have tap-in pars would that even be fun?  I’ve played golf with people who after hitting several errant drives sarcastically say “I guess if I hit it in the fairway every time golf would be boring!”  However, I think there is something very true to that.

In golf, hitting bad shots makes us appreciate our good shots, and the ability to overcome adversity (like making an amazing par from the woods) makes the game exciting and memorable.  Life is similar in that we appreciate the good times in relation to “bad times”, and are thankful for our good health, for example, after overcoming illness or pain. As for my grandmother, even though she was not a golfer during her life, she would have been great at it, with all that she endured in her 93 years!

Learning from our mistakes and constantly trying to improve our minds, bodies and skills is inherently human, however is there such a thing as mastery?…even at Tiger Woods’ level of play he is striving to improve.  So if there is no true mastery on Earth, should we expect that in heaven?

Sports and competition are such an earthly endeavor that brings out the best and sometimes worst in people.  We measure success in sports by how well we played, how hard we played, and if we won or lost.  I might be wrong but don’t see “heaven” as a place where competition and winning matter. But none the less, those are reasons a lot of people play- for the thrill of the game!

After all this discussion and speculation about what golf in heaven would be like, what can we take away to help us play better golf here and now? I say, enjoy this game for the ups and downs, the near misses and unthinkable makes.  Carry hope that the next shot will be magical but find inner peace with the reality that every shot cannot be, because we are not YET in heaven.   While you’re still playing golf on Earth you might as well try and win a few harmless bets because I’m not sure the “big man” allows gambling up there!