“I said, “O LORD, have mercy on me; heal me, for I have sinned against you” (Psalm 41:4).
Anyone who understands golf knows that the caddie does much more than just carry the clubs of the player. Actually, he’s a kind of a silent partner. He reads the greens. He knows the strengths and weaknesses of the player. He gives advice. He’s a kind of golf mechanic-psychologist-adviser-and-friend. He’s what a trainer is to a jockey, or a pit crew is to a racecar driver. True, he doesn’t stand alongside the winner who holds the silver chalice in his hands, but his advice often has a lot to do with the success or failure of the golfer whose clubs he totes.
Frankly, it’s a tough way to earn a living. He gets no credit for anything when a golfer succeeds. Nobody ever says, “Hey, I’m here today as a winner because my caddie gave me some good advice on getting out of that sand trap on the thirteenth hole,” but when he blows it, that’s totally another matter.
I’m thinking of the caddie who picked up a ball and cleaned it, then tossed it to the pro for whom he was caddying. The pro golfer wouldn’t have made it in baseball. He didn’t catch the golf ball that dribbled into a water hazard, thus costing strokes on a lost ball.
I also thought of that in the British Open. It was the final round, and Miles Byrne, the caddie, stood on the second hole with Ian Woosnam, who was co-leader in the tournament. On that dark second hole, an official discovered there were fifteen clubs in Woosnam’s golf bag—a “no-no!” Regulations were fourteen clubs, no more. Earlier that morning they had been on the driving range and Woosnam had tried out another driver. So, without thinking, Byrne took the club and dropped it in the bag.
When the violation was discovered, Woosnam pulled out the extra driver, and angrily threw it to the ground. The TV cameras picked up the whole action. Fortunately, they didn’t transmit what Woosnam said to his caddie, who would like to have crawled into a hole. One news reporter called him “an idiot.” Another said that he had a bunker (that’s a sand trap) for a brain. A third said he couldn’t count to 15. Woosnam, a 5-foot-four Welshman, later said, “I suppose I should have checked the clubs, but that’s what you pay the caddie for.” (Bill Plaschke, “Caddie Shuck? Count on It,” Los Angeles Times, July 25, 2001, D-1).
He was so upset by the two-stroke penalty that he didn’t play well, no longer a serious contender in the tournament.
Now, giving today’s commentary a personal spin, may I ask, “How do you handle situations such as I’ve just described?” Do you blame your wife when she drives the car, depleting the gasoline so you run out of gas, not bothering to check the gauge when you get in to drive to work the next morning? Does your secretary get the blame when you don’t turn a report in on time?
Or do you say, “I accept full responsibility for what happened”? Or do you shrug your shoulders and say, “Okay, this happened, so what? Life is going to go on.” Playing the blame game may make you feel better at the cost of someone else’s feeling very bad, but it really doesn’t change anything.
The bottom line is that nobody’s perfect, so when something happens, which you didn’t plan for, focus your energy on, “How do we overcome this problem? How do we get to where we want to go from here?”
A two-stroke lead can be overcome in golf, but not when you’re so angry that you see red where a tiny, small white ball used to be in your focus.
Think about it, friend, the next time you’re tempted to call your wife or secretary “an idiot” when, as old Harry Truman used to say, the buck really stops with you. Long ago, the psalmist said, “LORD, have mercy on me; heal me, for I have sinned against you.” He would have a lot of company today on both sides of the issue. Think about it.
Resource reading: Ezekiel 18.
