“A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.” – Bruce Lee
By Ian Hardie
For some time now I have been formulating a goal – well ok, it’s sort of two goals
Today being my forty fifth birthday, I thought it was an opportune time to release them out to the world, see how they develop and see what you guys think
You see the problem is that these two goals seem to be separate paths – that may end up the same I suppose – but maybe they won’t
As Bruce Lee‘s quote above says, they may well just be something to aim at
With the real path still to be revealed
Path one is the reason that I returned to playing golf a few years back
What is it?
To focus on restoring my own golf game and head towards turning professional again, playing on the Senior PGA Tour and ultimately to win a decent sized event on it
Sounds unusual doesn’t it – a former professional coming back to golf and wanting to compete on the Senior Tour
That’s never happened before, maybe there’s a movie in that?
When I look at that it seems a pretty good thing to aim at – eventually spend most days playing golf at great courses and resorts around the world
It certainly beats the thought of playing stableford competitions at the golf club forever!
So what has that got to do with the title of the post?
Initially I figured I would give myself until age fifty five to get there – hence the cool codename – project fifty five
It was in fact the reason I started blogging about golf – check it out here if you haven’t already
When struggling to start playing again, I realized that the periods of time when I had played well over the years – were when I was heavily immersed in golf and with lots of others things in my life these days – I’m not able to be that immersed, so blogging has allowed me to do that a little more than just playing
But you know what keeps sneaking into my brain as I think of playing on the Senior Tour?
I’m not entirely sure how much use that is to other people
As when you consider golf tournaments and tour pro’s in general – it’s actually pure entertainment – and ultimately it’s all about ego and personal achievement
Apart from some charity work and funds being raised for good causes – tournament golf doesn’t really contribute to the people on the planet that much at all
Sure it’s great entertainment for the other 99,995,000 of us and a great vehicle for corporations around the world to make a lot of money – but who does it help really?
So this is where path two started to sneak into my brain
Also able to be neatly filed under the codename – project fifty five – I remember reading that Ben Hogan believed that it should be possible to birdie every hole in a round
He never managed to do that and after considering this for some time, I think as humans it’s possibly an unattainable goal as somewhere in the round the odds are a single shot may just miss for no apparent reason
Considering that most courses are par 72 and I think that at best a human could birdie 17 of them – that gives us – yes you guessed it, a score of fifty five!
My original intention with that path was to head back towards teaching elite players again, with the goal being to work with them to get someone to shoot that score but then as I was finding the Bruce Lee quote that started this post, I came across this………
“Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.” – Buddha
Instantly I realized that helping a few elite players is basically the same as playing on the tour
Then it came to me, instead of helping a few players……..
How about using my knowledge and experience to help fifty five million golfers to play and enjoy their golf better?
That would be a worthy goal
Why fifty five million – you’ll find out later but meantime let me know what you think by commenting below – play the game on the senior tour or work towards helping a lot of others?
Play well.
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