Who Needs Pars?

WHO NEEDS PAR?

 
            While Liz Taylor was cavorting with Richard Burton between takes of the Cleopatra, hubby Eddie Fisher was crooning his medley of hit Oh, My Pa Pa.  But these ears, congenitally tuned to golf, heard, Oh, My Par, Par.

           So rack that up as another obtuse and ancient way to lead into a golf subject. 

           This one is par.

            Par is a golf concept that harms.  It intimidates, inhibits, and indelibly inflicts images of failure and below average performance.

           There it is, staring you in the face.  On the scorecard.  On the tee signage.  On the placemats in the grill room.   There’s par, measuring you ubiquitously.

            “Hey jerk, you were supposed to make four there.  How could you make seven?”

            Ever judgmental, par needs to be relegated to the confinement closet for ideas that flop. 

            Golf is a game of fewer.  The golfer who takes fewer strokes to play the course is the winner.  In the case of match play, the golfer who has the fewer strokes on each hole wins that hole or mini-game.  Eighteen mini-games comprise a match.

           Fresh off the website of The United States Golf Association is this definition of par: 

 “Par is the score that an expert golfer would be expected to make for a given hole. Par means errorless play without flukes under ordinary weather conditions, allowing two strokes on the putting green.”

          The operative word is expert.  Who’s that?   It’s not me.  I can’t relate.  In fact, my favorite part about playing is trying to better my personal bests, not somebody else’s.

          So here my favorite par truism from a former student: 

         When, after a time,  I asked the lady how she was progressing, she replied rather proudly that she was now shooting for par eights.    “Eight?” 

      “Yes, eight,” she said  “if I spend more than eight minutes playing a hole, I just pick up my ball and go to the next one.”