Recently the University of Dallas golfers showed outstanding results at the Alamo City Championship in San Antonio, and the community is proud of them, but do we actually know what exactly they did there?
One of the students’ beloved sources, Wikipedia, states that golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various types of clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Is there anything more? Absolutely!
Claire Kirby, a senior business major and a member of the women’s golf team, explained, “You can’t just go up and hit the ball however you like.” According to Kirby, the most difficult mental challenge of the game is maintaining focus and playing one hole at a time. The most important part is to find the balance between concentrating on each shot without overthinking it.
Apart from the ability to maintain this intense mental balance, the players also emphasized that this sport is a lot about patience. It is quite hard to hit a ball into the hole from as few shots as possible on the field and through the various hazards in the way.
Kimberly Burch, a sophomore economics and finance major and a member of the women’s golf team, listed many other qualities.
Burch emphasized, “Lots of patience, a willingness to be able to deal with when things don’t go exactly your way or if you had a bad shot, being able to bounce back into someone who’s willing to work at it, and put in a lot of effort because it takes a lot of practice to play.”
It is also worth mentioning that there is a difference between individual and team-based competitive golf. As an individual, the athletes are playing just for themselves; as a team, the score is a combination of all the individuals’ scores.
Moreover, in team-based competition, there is definitely a lot more support because of the other people in the tournament participating.
Burch explained: “I personally find it a lot more fun for the whole team because you’re out there for more than just you, and you get to hang out with all your teammates and they get motivated to practice and it’s a lot. It’s a lot of fun to be out there. Especially with my team.”
And now an additional note which makes Crusader golfers our studious heroes: their ability to cope with their studies during golf season. During their season, they practice five days a week for at least two or three hours a day. By strategically arranging their morning classes altogether, the golfers do their best to balance assignments, practices and their personal lives.
However, despite their student athlete difficulties, golf is a game that will not leave anyone who tries to play it at least once indifferent to the sport. The stereotype that golf is a slow sport for older men is destroyed as soon as a person is imbued with its dynamics, the beauty of the techniques and the drive that is impossible not to experience when playing.
As Kirby noted: “It’s a really good sport to just do for fun, even if you’re not going to do it competitively, because it’s such a mental game to like, half physical, half mental and it really tests your patience. So that’s something that you need to work on. That’s perfect!”
