Disjointed series of thoughts coming up…

I’ve been lucky these past few months. I haven’t caught the virus, and I haven’t lost any friends or family to it. But I’ve still struggled to maintain my mental and physical fitness. I know I’m not alone in that.

Golf has helped. I’ve played only a few times recently, but getting outside, moving, feeling the air on my skin, being quiet for long stretches, and occupying my mind with a low-stakes game has been reliably refreshing.

Whenever I’ve been out on the course, I’ve thought about how frequently golfers used to make the case for the sport’s mental and physical benefits. In the first half of the 20th century, it was a dominant theme of golf literature.

So if one good thing for golf can come out of the current mess, maybe it’s the revival of that old conviction that the game is not just fun but also healthy.

(Footnote: @Sean_Zak’s piece on golf in the NBA bubble spoke to these ideas in a lovely way.) https://golf.com/lifestyle/celebrities/nba-bubble-golf-hobby-ritual/