Finding your One Thing

For those individuals of a certain generation, City Slickers and its successors were fun movies to watch. Billy Crystal, Bruno Kirby and of course, Jack Palance aka Curly, were characters you connected with while laughing at the struggles of watching the city boys try and become pseudo-cowboys. A famous line in the movie discussing the secret of life, “The One Thing”, is something that resonates with me and it is applicable to life and the golf world.

Curly aptly describes to Crystal’s character, while riding horses and with a smoke dangling from his lips, that he needs to learn it himself.

What is the one thing that makes your golf trip so incredible? What is the one thing that makes your golf course outstanding? What is the one thing that makes your life meaningful?

In a world cluttered with so many options to spend time, an inundation of blog postings, social media distractions and other white noise, maybe it is time to cut through the junk to find the one thing. When I discuss golf trips with people I try to find that one thing that individuals want to experience on the trip. What makes it unique to them? Many say it is playing historical St Andrews or Ballybunion or plug in your great course here. But I beg to differ that this is the most important thing. When I further drill down with probing questions in my discussion, isn’t it simpler than that?

How about playing with your best friend you have not seen in five years on that hidden gem course so you can resurrect old war stories? How about driving a 1950 convertible car so you can feel young again following a round with the lads? What about sipping on that single malt whisky at a beach bar so far out on the Irish coastline that you can hear the waves and it reminds you how life can be so exhilarating?

Have you found your one thing?