How to Quit Golf (and Get Your Life Back)

Book excerpt: Do you need to quit golf? Take a short quiz! 1. Do you show your golf scorecards to, well, uh . . . anyone? 2. At dinner, do you find yourself practicing your grip on your utensils? (The Vs of the fork’s first tine, for the righthander, should point to the right shoulder.) 3. Look above you. Are there marks on the ceilings of your house because you can’t help but try to “bust one” even when you’re indoors and there is no ball? 4. Have you taken to reflexively calling your children “pards?” 5. Do other golf aphorisms make their way into your personal life? (Examples include finding your lost car keys and with a shrug saying, “Even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and again,” or feeding your actual dog and exhorting, “Time to let the big dog eat!”) 6. Does your dry cleaner, never having seen your swing but processing your bill, assume you are a golf pro? 7. Do you think of all spatial relationships in the real world in terms of golfing distance? (When parking at the mall and your wife suggests you are too far away, do you say, “What? It’s like a stock gap wedge to Panera from here.” When she disagrees, do you break out the Bushnell and shoot the store’s signage?) If you answered “Yes” to any of the above, you really, really need to quit golf. Danny Cahill will make you laugh and nod with recognition in his latest book (part social satire/ commentary; part clever psychological study) about the game of golf and its intoxicating hold on those who love it. A likeable middle-aged golfer (coping with the thought that everything is in decline at this time of life) has crossed over from healthy hobby to unmanageable obsession. He knows he should quit spending so much time working on his golf game. He knows his life at home is unraveling. But fully aware of just how much the game is laying waste to his powers, he nevertheless continues to count the hours to his next tee time. Cahill’s comic treatment of middle-age reckoning told through the lens of an obsessed golfer also takes a deep dive into the sport's ecosystem and its inherent appeal (and silliness?). Cahill’s acute powers of observation will impress as he unravels golf’s ability to entice like no other endeavor—and how to ultimately let go and preserve what matters. Any serious golfer will see themselves in Cahill’s hero—they've thought his thoughts, shared his fears, and dealt with the effects on their family. The book will make golfers laugh, but also feel completely understood. The book explores the human need to find something that can still be improved, and through the prism of golf, examines the innate futility in trying to find meaning in a game that is, like the protagonist's life, both impossible to master and intermittently filled with joy and sorrow.