At long last Opening Day of the 2012 Long Island Insurance Golf League is upon us. It is the first day of a long and arduous 17 week regular season and 18-hole end of the year tournament. Beyond the pageantry of Opening Day, which is something akin to New Years Day, the meaning of Opening Day is that golf is back and winter is over, even if it tries to hang on a few more weeks.
Can Team #1 repeat their championship from last year? Who will challenge for the Championship among all our newcomers? Which returning team is most improved from last year? Teams which are expected to do great things sometimes collapse due to injuries, unexpectedly poor play by players that are supposed to have a good season or a failure of teams to consistently show up every week to play. And sometimes - teams with low expectations rise to the top.
For those reasons I take all predictions made on opening day with a grain of salt. This is reality and what makes golf so much fun!! You never know how this long campaign will play out.
I love golf because it really is an allegorical play about America and life. There are the highs and lows, the disappointment of unfulfilled expectations and the excitement of the underdog team that pulls it all together to win. The meaning of Opening Day is that it is a beginning and not an end. The end will only be seen when the last out ball goes in the cup at the 18th hole of the tournament!!!
...The Best of Luck to All Our Teams
Here are some great golf quotes to commemorate
Opening Day of the 2012 Long Island Insurance Golf League:
"Eighteen holes of match or medal play will teach you more about your foe than will 18 years of dealing with him across a desk." ~Grantland Rice
"Golf appeals to the idiot in us and the child. Just how childlike golf players become is proven by their frequent inability to count past five." ~John Updike
"It is almost impossible to remember how tragic a place this world is when one is playing golf." ~Robert Lynd
"Golf is so popular simply because it is the best game in the world at which to be bad." ~A.A. Milne
"I have a tip that can take five strokes off anyone's golf game: it's called an eraser." ~Arnold Palmer
"Golf is a game that is played on a five-inch course - the distance between your ears." ~Bobby Jones
"I'm about five inches from being an outstanding golfer. That's the distance my left ear is from my right." ~Ben Crenshaw
"Golf is like a love affair. If you don't take it seriously, it's no fun; if you do take it seriously, it breaks your heart." ~Arthur Daley
"Golf is a fascinating game. It has taken me nearly forty years to discover that I can't play it." ~Ted Ray, Golf - My Slice of Life, 1972
"The number of shots taken by an opponent who is out of sight is equal to the square root of the sum of the number of curses heard plus the number of swishes." ~Michael Green, The Art of Coarse Golf, 1975
"If there is any larceny in a man, golf will bring it out." ~Paul Gallico
"Golf is like an 18-year-old girl with big boobs. You know it's wrong but you can't keep away from her." ~Val Doonican
"Golf is a lot of walking, broken up by disappointment and bad arithmetic." ~Author Unknown
"It's easy to see golf not as a game at all but as some whey-faced, nineteenth-century Presbyterian minister's fever dream of exorcism achieved through ritual and self-mortification." ~Bruce McCall
"Forget your opponents; always play against par." ~Sam Snead
"If profanity had an influence on the flight of the ball, the game of golf would be played far better than it is." ~Horace G. Hutchinson
