It's Hard to Let Go

Retiring from anything that you love to do and did successfully for a very long time is difficult. It makes you wonder what you're to do next, forces you to confront a brutal reality, and sets into motion a lot of doubt. This is especially true of professional athletes. But, in most sports, athletes have a very short career in relation to their entire lives.

The average NFL player has less than five years in the league before forced retirement. Other major sports, save for NASCAR, are approximately the same on the average. Even for those who are fortunate enough to have long careers, we are really talking two decades at the maximum.

Golf is unique though. A golfer could potentially have a playing career of close to forty years if they are fortunate enough to hold a card from the end of their college careers all the way through a good decade on the Champions Tour. Such has been the case for guys like Nicklaus, Palmer, and Trevino.

I mention Trevino specifically because he is the latest of the greats to announce his retirement from the game...and then express some doubts and put conditions on ther retirement. All of the aforementioned have announced that they would stop playing competitively, but only come to later enter professional majors or other events near and dear to their hearts. For some reason, they just cannot seem to stay away from the game. (Not that I want them to, that's not the idea here.)

If you love the game ("...then join the USGA"), then you know how hard it can be to walk away from it under any circumstance. In other sports, the threshold for achievement seems to be largely set by outside observers of the game. In golf, it is almost completely self-determined. Perfection in golf is unattainable, so it is up to the individual player to figure out what their level of achievement could and should be. Even guys that are as great as Nicklaus, Palmer, Trevino, and others have a hard time defining when they have achieved all that they can competitively and separating their competitive spirit from their competitive abilities.

I wish that the greats of lore could play forever in their primes. This same scenario will likely confront Tom Watson and Hale Irwin much sooner than we would like. But, it is a subject worth exploring: why is golf so hard to leave?