In my section of the country the courses have been closed for just over two months and there will be another three months before we can hope for them to open. Nevertheless, the news is not all bad, the days are getting longer, we have gained a full fifteen minutes of daylight, and the pro tour has started in Hawaii all leading to an anticipation for the coming golf season. 

 I believe that anticipation is an emotion. It is an emotion just like love, sadness, happiness, and fear. For golfers, anticipation is the fuel to our fire. Think about it. Anticipation is not only felt by everyone who plays golf, but also the major reason we play golf, and it is the only reason we continue to play golf. We anticipate getting better. This is important because golf is a very hard sport requiring the mastery of many skills; there is the long game, the short game, and putting (yuck). To compound things your skill level in golf is continually quantified, starting with your handicap, and overflowing into subsets like greens in regulation, driving distance part of a myriad of statistics that exist to chronicle your shortcomings. The result of these available analyses is that progress or lack of progress is easy to measure. In golf you know where you stand at all times. Just like stepping on the scale every morning that handicap is always there updated and ready to inform. So, thank God for anticipation. If we did not anticipate, where would we be? We would not be playing golf. No golf would have beaten us a long time ago.  

 The winter workout program designed to make you more flexible and stronger that you religiously do every other day well that is fueled by anticipation. This year you are going to be stronger and longer. The new wedge you just ordered is going to eliminate those chunk shots that hit the ground first and go about three feet, instead you will be getting up and down from everywhere. You see the golf industry also thrives on our anticipation. How else could they try and sell you a new driver every year? That golf video that you found on YouTube the one that has finally fixed your swing [it was all in the takeaway], is going to lower your handicap to a number not previously seen. Yes, we can all chalk it up to anticipation. The belief that things are going to get better.  

 The golfer drives to the course full of anticipation. Today is going to be the day when it all turns around when everything comes together. He visualizes drives bounding down fairways, irons hit right at the flag, puts rolling in from across the green. A number comes to mind, a goal is formed. The culmination of a winter’s worth of anticipation courses through his veins. This is going to be the day; this is going to be the year I can feel it. 

 My advice is let it happen. Let it happen as you sit in front of the wood stove and clean your grooves. Let that little spark of anticipation start to glow, let it become the fire that fuels us all.