As has been our tradition for the last eleven years, I spent Friday morning tooling around the Wachovia , Quail Hollow, Wells Fargo PGA tournament with both my wife Julie and my father-in-law Ted. Walking around Quail Hollow is a yearly exercise in seeing how the other half lives.
By other half, of course, I mean golf fans as opposed to tennis fans.
Some idle thoughts:
- A few years ago, the tournament had a no cell phone rule. Then they got over-ruled by sheer numbers. I must say, patrons are extraordinarily cooperative and don’t abuse their cell phone rights. If only malls, elevators, YMCAs were the same.
- Some golfers have fitness levels that wouldn’t really cut it on the pro tennis tour. Then there are others who definitely could.
- Watching golf live is so different from watching it on TV. When you watch it live, you can only pay attention to either one golfer or one hole at a time. It’s hard to get a grasp of the big picture; difficult to know who has momentum and inspiration. But when you watch it on TV, you see the whole story at once: you watch multiple holes, you can follow the hot hand, you can see who is struggling and/or choking, and you have the commentary to help make sense of it all.
- Then I realized: that (the difference between live golf and TV golf) is like the difference between being human and being God. We go through life focused on our small picture; God is engaged in it from the perspective of the Big Story. Everything happens at once and God is able to keep track of it.