Review 18: There’s No Sex in Golf by Stephen Outram

There’s No Sex in Golf
by Stephen Outram
Copyright: © 2008
144 Pages
$27.50 Paperback

My own golfing experience is lacking. Remember what I said in Review 14? I’m no sports fan! I had an uncle who let me drive the cart when I was ten, and run out and remove the flag for him. I remember games of putt-putt at the lake during holidays. I was damn good at that windmill! But with all the news of Tiger Woods winning the U.S. Open a few weeks ago, the game of golf is in our face and all over the television. Like anything in our face, new interest in the subject is born. And right about that same time, an author by the name of Stephen Outram published his book, There’s No Sex in Golf. What a prime time (and excellent marketing opportunity) for a book review!

One look at Stephen’s website, and you’d think he’s a business man or some marketing mogul offering speaking engagements on positive thinking, maximizing web presence, creative writing, and publishing. And maybe he is. But all the while, Stephen’s Lulu book is right there and in your face as a tool for all of these things. While researching it, I had a hard time figuring out if this was a “how-to” book actually about the game of golf, or was it using golf as a metaphor for improving your life. It’s actually both!

Stephen begins the book with a detail description of how his father built the first golf course in Port Hedland, Western Australia in 1966. Stephen gives an immense detailed account of the experience, and how it wasn’t the best top-notch course, but it made people happy because they could finally enjoy what the area had been lacking.  Each year, the heavy rains washed all of his father’s hard work away, but when the season allowed his father and a few others got back out there and started all over again.

In the introduction, Stephen mentions that a few years ago he wanted to walk away from golf.  His own words really stuck out at me as something that is very true for any game, or for any part of our life where we have exhausted on means of pleasure or triumph.

…we give up on something when it is no longer working for us and we have absolutely no idea what else to do. Having tried everything I could think of, I simply had no choice but to walk away. Did I really have no choice, or was I just unaware of any other possibility?

We all know the answer to his question, and just a few pages later Outram brings his concept home with the notion of replacing the word “golf” with the word “life” throughout his book.  His ideas for improvement work both ways.  He asks, what would you like your golfing realty to be like, and what else is truly possible for you with golf?

Outram then presents the game itself, divided into two sections: child’s games and adult games and their differences with a sincere focus on winning and losing.  He notes the majority of golf players lose at the game.  And as we all know, winning or losing is not an indication of how we played the game.  And so is life.  There are rules, standards, judgements, presentation, and even cheating both in the game and at life.  We all know the outcomes of the latter. Outram points out that the fun of it is breaking the rules and getting away with it.  There’s an even a whole chapter devoted to Winning & Losing, and the different types of golfers there are.

I found the chapter on Golf & Sex to be quite funny, and yet quite true.  Outram compares the excitement of the game for some golfers to be “better than sex” when they get that hole-in-one, and pokes fun at how sexy golf courses can be.  Now for me, watching golf or playing it would be time better spent napping, but the author makes a good point.  Things we take pleasure in doing can have an “orgasmic” quality to them, and there’s no reason why are life shouldn’t be the same each and every day.  He closes by encouraging us to ask questions and seek answers.

I particularly liked the part about creativity.  Outram asks the following:

What creative energies do you refuse or deny, that if you received them, would manifest as the creation of YOUR golf?

Taking his advice and replacing the word “golf” with the word “life” really hit home for me.  I commend Stephen Outram for his fun and enlightening book which, being a golf fan or not, anyone can apply to in their daily lives in some way.