Today delivered an unexpected bonus wrapped in black. Stepped onto the back tee to play the first nine holes of the summer. I'd often gazed at the first hole, a 402 yard par 4 next to the range, imagining the flight of the tee shot. So much for idealized expectations. Skulled it a perfect 100 yards.
What would normally be considered failure was a testament for my golfing prerequisite to get zen about sucking, so just wrote the mulligan off as a head issue, teed up another and swiped again. After all, it's just a game.
Wind blowing left to right as it usually does, so aimed down the left for the drift and practice paid off pure. Then came the unexpected. It disappeared mid-flight. At altitude, now with real balls instead of limited flight on the range, I'd out-driven my ability to see the ball.
Since the eye surgery, vision is better than it was before, but I've trouble with blotchy spots of what's in focus or not. Reading this text, as I write in the aged font size, is a hit and miss exercise finding those spots of focus. On the range, I really have to pay attention and follow the ball from impact else it disappears into the blue, and that works only if the sun is behind me.
In the battle of skill against with par, further modulated by the limits of physical potential which only goes downhill, I'd hit my first wall due to an unexpected limit: eye sight.
If the wall is skill, I can improve it. If the wall is physical, I can work on refining the design of a swing that works for my age. This wall, however, was unexpected. Further, improvements in skill and strength can't improve my ability to see the ball, which can only further degrade with time.
Vision mechanics aside, there's a deeper brain component. I'd noticed when playing around with putting that binocular vision was lost when the dominant eye failed and circuits tried to rewire, only to have that process interrupted somehow by the PVD. Standing over the ball, there's no longer a sense of gradient. I can't see breaks other than by stepping away from the green and looking at the macro contour of the surface in 2D from the side. I'd been compensating by just walking up to the ball and rolling it while looking at the hole. At least I can see the ball miss the cup.
As I'd become attached to the expectation of the practice grind being the source of skill and physical capacity to perhaps play the game as it was intended, this setback has taken the wind out of my sails. The practice had become the journey. Enthusiasm was fueled by the potential of how much more skill and physical ability I could attain through practice, understanding and intention. Until today. Now, the driving holes on the course had all become blind tee shots, and the reality that I can work to hit it longer, but can no longer see the ball. Not much enthusiasm in that.
I've a crisis of purpose of a parameter that can't be fixed through practice. Time to do another Dalai Lama. This time a big one.