On the tough days, I reached slowly for my back pocket, hoping it might not be there, feigning surprise when it was. I’d remove my scorecard with the chagrin of a busted smuggler and wait before opening it; maybe the numbers would shrink if aged long enough. But when I played well, I walked in the door waving it like a winning lottery ticket. Surely I was the first 14-year-old ever to shoot 77, and I’d shout my number until the neighbors and their kin all knew.
I’d find my dad seated on the end of the couch, turning down the volume on the tournament he was watching, awaiting my report. He didn’t need to ask because, in the moments that followed a return from golf, there was only one question. Without looking away from the television or saying hello or asking how I played, he spoke plainly: “What did you shoot?” I’d utter a number, and he’d raise an eyebrow. Then he’d turn the volume back up, and we’d watch the people on TV who made it look easy.
Some 30 years later, I cannot recall the last time someone asked me what I shot. I’ve fielded “How’d you hit ’em?” or “How’d it go?” a thousand times. I’ve been queried as to whether I had fun or enjoyed the course. I’ve been asked my opinion on this hole or that green, or whether I got the peanut-butter-and-bacon at the turn. In our clubhouses and parking lots, we seem more interested in how the weather treated our friends than in what they shot, and I can’t help but wonder when asking about someone’s score joined weight and age as conversational taboos.
Gone are the days of asking your rival what he had in on No. 12, then calling bullshit when he shrugged and said, “Buck-fifty.” Today, if I asked a friend whether he carried the creek on seven, I fear I’d be eyed like some sort of perverted golf voyeur. Our misses once carried a whole other set of consequences, and our triumphs used to come with buzz and nods and murmurs. Now we play golf and throw a few dollars across the table and talk about where we have to drive our kids tomorrow. We plug some numbers into an app and toss the card in the bin. I’m no proponent of post-round eulogies, and I don’t really care what you had in on No. 12, but I would like to know the two (or three) digits that defined your day. I might forget if your name is Paul or Elizabeth or Stew, but the next time we cross paths, I’ll see an 84 floating above your head and feel like I’ve known you most of my life.
Our post-round vernacular has softened with time, and maybe a little privacy is better for golf. We shouldn’t feel like we’re walking off 18 and into a confessional, but let’s stop pretending that we were out there solely for exercise and conversation. It’s all about the vibe now: Was it chill? Epic? Bananas? At the risk of coming off as a curmudgeon, the only worthwhile vibe is the grind—against a partner, against oneself or against a mathematical meridian that pegs your day as a success or a failure. We should enjoy our golf, obviously, but we should never forget that once our tee pierces the earth, the test is on, and in four hours’ time, all that matters is: Did you get the wolf today? Or did the wolf get you?
If you think the death of “What did you shoot?” stems from our softening as a culture, spend some time on golf social media, where you’ll find the game’s dark and ruthless heart still beating with vigor. Rather, I’m inclined to attribute its demise to the fact that we can hardly trust an 18-hole score anymore. The World Handicap System caps our struggle at net double bogey. Ask someone what they shot today and you’ll get a sentence that begins with, “Oh, I think…” If I’d given Dad an “Oh, I think…”, I’d better have been ready to dodge the remote control. Watching a scratch player rinse three drives and tell you they shot 73 is enough to make one stop asking, and we’ve all felt the relief in knowing that a slice followed by a skull succeeded by a three-putt will be gently backstopped by double. But those of us who played in an era when snowmen were allowed on your scorecard—sometimes whole families of them—recall a harder arithmetic. If you haven’t stood beside a green doing math on your fingers and transcribing that sum with a short pencil, then I can’t blame you for not asking for someone’s tally, knowing you’re getting a tidied-up total not worth the cardstock on which it’s scribbled.
I support picking up to move things along, and I’ll lead any march against sandbagging, but we are all worse off for being coddled by capped scoring. Wonder why you can shoot 74 with your buddies but can’t break 80 in a qualifier? I do, all the time, and I’ve found that the gulf between social golf and tournament golf is only widened by the approximations we make when we are just out there for fun. You know what’s really fun? Adding up a genuine score. Knowing where you stand. Knowing who you are. I’m as guilty as the next golfer when it comes to raking putts for triple, but it always feels cheap. The emptiness we feel at the close of a poor round, I’d contend, isn’t in the number we shot; it’s in the fact that, somewhere down in our gut, we don’t really believe in it.
Let’s resolve to get to know our true golfer. There’s a freedom in telling the world you made 92 swings today when you indubitably didn’t take a single stroke more. And it’s our only path toward improvement. You don’t step on the scale each morning and subtract a few pounds because last night’s dinner was capped at two desserts. If we don’t know where we stand, it’s impossible to take a step forward.
Stop asking your pals how they hit ’em, and when asked how you played, resist the platitude of “We had fun.” “We had fun” translates to “We sucked,” and we know you sucked because, aside from whoever won on Tour that week, we all sucked. Golf is hard, and only the slimmest fraction of our shots will flourish. But if we hold ourselves accountable to all those shots and don’t hide from sharing them, we have a baseline from which we can measure success with integrity. An unedited 84 feels better than a revised 68. I’ve posted both, and there’s nothing worse than shooting your life’s best with a double bogey Band-Aid attached.
So do your friend a favor and ask what he or she shot. If they pause or think too long, ask it again. If they start talking about the fun or the vibe, grab them by the shoulders, look into their soul and demand a hard number. You’ll be putting them on the path to earning it. And, better than any peanut-butter-and-bacon at the turn, earning it is the best reward this life has to offer, in golf or otherwise. Nothing in all my golf has eclipsed the day I walked into the living room and Dad turned down the volume and I told him I shot par for the first time. And because he believed it, he didn’t have to say a word.
