If a game of golf constitutes a good walk spoiled, as has often been alleged, what are we to make of golfing in one’s senior years? The ruination of a good retirement?
I think not, though I must concede, as a golfing retiree of long standing, occasional moments arise in these leisurely years when such a dim assessment seems warranted.
But first let me enumerate some of the happier aspects of spending lots of senior time on the links.
Especially with this awful pandemic likely to persist for a considerable while, swinging the clubs in the great outdoors, no matter how inexpertly, provides a healthful alternative to gluing oneself, for instance, to the TV. Also, it offers a far safer way, with social distancing in mind, to move old joints to and fro than, say, groaning within the confines of the local gym.
If golf was one’s favorite sport long before retirement, there remain, I submit, additional benefits to be found long afterward. Perhaps most striking for me involves the matter of my handicap. Before I retired from this newspaper in my middle 60s, at 10 strokes, my handicap had been edging slowly higher with the advancing years. But in the early years of retirement, with far more time to play, it soon dipped back to single digits, as low as seven after several years of much more golf.