Biggest golf regret?

I sat pondering over whether or not to post this and even as I write this I’m unsure of what I’m going to do. If you read this, I hope you get some sense of enjoyment from the journey. It is quite long, however.

My dad is a sports nut and because of that I started golf (as well as many other sports) at a very young age. Coming from a family where my great-uncle and grandfather were also extremely invested in sports, having “capped out” in Division I college football and being offered a spot on a team in the Canadian Football League respectively. Due to this limited run, I was considered, no - expected to be the redeeming party when it came to finally breaking through.

The family dream of a professional athlete was first left to my father (an only child). Now, my father did not possess the same sort of skills that my grandfather did and was instead a man of the mundane and hard work. As such he became a wonderful accountant. He understood that he wasn’t the smartest nor most physically talented individual, thus, he worked for it. He played baseball and football all through high school, having had to practice almost twice as much as others in order to achieve similar results, however he eventually gave up on sports in order to focus more on his college education.

The dream of a professional athlete in the family was on hold, for now.

Then, in 1998, I came along. I was quickly shoved into as many uniforms and teams as my father could find in order to tell if I had any “natural born talent” when it came to sports. By the time I was 7, I had been more than acquainted with hockey, baseball, basketball, soccer, football, and golf. Although, not much of a serious nature occurred until my relocation back to my place of birth, Florida, when I was 10.

I didn’t really enjoy any of the sports I played, but found that I had this strange competence in most of them, especially so in golf. I had displayed proficiency in the game early on and it was the only activity in which I didn’t have to wear a strict uniform every time I went to play. I was always a bit of a nerdy child, preferring to keep my head burrowed into my pile of video games and books instead of hanging around other. Sports were a way of keeping my father at bay so I could have time to myself and indulge in my hobbies. I would go to lessons for two hours each day with my coach and then my father would leave me alone for the rest of the night until I went to sleep.

However, my golf game and lessons were much more than just an activity to my father. He and my coach both viewed my proficiency with the sport as interest, instead of coincidence. It had been about 2 years since I started taking lessons and I had become a machine, both in game and in life. Through this push to achieve more, my days became a monotonous grind - wake up, school, swing, chip, putt, play, sleep. Every day was rolling into the next with no room for relaxation or my desperately needed alone time, and in that haze I lost track of who I was as an individual.

Up to this point, everyone in my family believed I would eventually be on the tour. This dream of becoming a professional athlete was idolized in a picture of myself from when I was 5, frozen in backswing, club perfectly parallel to the ground, framed and signed by some professional at the time with the comment “See you on the money list!” That picture was always a reminder of how much this game meant to my family and how much they believed I owed it to them to continue on with it.

I began to hate golf and school. I had started to purposefully hurt myself so I could stay home and skip practice. I still vividly remember sitting in my mother’s mini van on the way to school wishing that her alcoholism would finally catch up with her and send us careening off the side of the road leaving me paralyzed so I wouldn’t have to touch another golf club ever again. After months of self-harm and praying for disaster - my wish was granted.

My parents had noticed my change in behavior even before my spats with self-harm and had gotten me to see numerous sports therapists over the years. One of them eventually gave me some medication for depression or schizophrenia or bipolar, I’m still not sure. I was 15 at the time that I ended up overdosing on those pills one night with the hopes of finally getting away from golf and the family dream.

I woke up in the hospital the next day with no recollection of the past hours and proceeded to have what I would consider to be my first actual conversation with my father. I told him how much I despised golf and the family dream, and how I wished for my mother’s drunkard nature to finally cause enough injury to me so that I could quit golf.

After seeing my father begin to cry while hugging me in the hospital bed, I began to feel this regret that I should have tried harder to make this golf thing work. I regretted that I thought the only way out was through suicide, and I regretted the pain that I put my family, but especially my father, through.

I was homeschooled for the rest of my time in high school and didn’t touch a club at all for those remaining years. I did well on my standardized tests and graduated early in order to begin working on my golf game once again so I could join my university’s team as a walk on when I arrived in the fall.

This time it was different. My swing was the same, but the purpose behind it had changed. I wasn’t playing because of my family’s dream, I played because I wanted to. I won’t lie and say I don’t still feel regret at what I could have done, even my choice in schools was purposeful in order to get away from highly competitive golf. There’s no perfect ending either, it still hurts like hell to swing sometimes, not physically but emotionally. It’s the kind of pain that you feel in the pits of your stomach and it makes you want to just keel over once and for all.

I won’t let it break me like it did before. I’ve come to somewhat enjoy my time in Division III golf. It’s relaxing and reminds me that our pains don’t control us, we are free to do as we wish - maybe even begin to enjoy them a little bit at a time.

If you read this I just wanted to say I’m doing ok now. I’m not perfect, but I’m getting back to where I was. I’m finding enjoyment in my hobbies again and I have a medium sized group of friends who I love being around, as well as losing all the weight I gained from the medication I was previously on.

On a related note, I speak from experience when I say - there’s always another option apart from suicide and if you need help, please contact a professional at a suicide hotline or seek out a trained therapist. These people are very good at what they do - they can help.

Thanks for reading.

/r/golf Thread