The CSGA Links Volume 3 Issue 5 August 2015 | Page 4
FIRST SHOT
Message from the CSGA Executive Director - Mike Moraghan
Truths and Myths
A
college buddy of mine, Mike Norcio
recently told me his shoulders got so
bad he had to stop playing basketball. “I
played really hard for more than 40 years. Leagues,
pick up games, you name it,” said Mike. “It got to
the point where I could barely lift my arms.”
Norcio played like Steve Nash before
anyone had heard of Steve Nash. A little guy who
had a shot and wasn’t afraid to drive the lane. For
that he won a lot of games, and also took a serious
pounding.
I told Mike he should have been a golfer.
He’d still be playing.
That’s one of the great things about golf.
If you can swing a club and make contact with the
ball you can play the game at any age. I played 9
holes at Pequabuck last week with an 83 year-old
named Bill. The man was trim, fit and looked like
he had plenty left in the tank.
I had the privilege of sitting with former
CSGA Executive Director, Del Kinney, Jr. and
current CSGA President Stan McFarland at the
New England Amateur this week. Del and Stan
were trading stories about times when they’ve
“shot their age,” something I believe is one of
the greatest accomplishments any golfer can ever
achieve. It was fun to hear these two seventysomething gentlemen talk about being nervous
coming down the stretch knowing what they
“needed” for that rare feat.
Even non-golfers who see and hear about
old folks and children playing the game grasp the
universal truth that “golf is a game you can play
your whole life.”
Sadly, that may be the only thing non-golfers
fully understand about the game.
4 | CSGA Links // August, 2015
Ask people that don’t play golf to name the
most popular international sports and you’ll hear
about soccer, maybe basketball. Golf is off their
radar. You’ll have to inform them that golf is played
by millions of people on every continent in the
world (with the obvious exception of Antarctica).
They probably won’t know that one of the world’s
oldest and most important championships, recently
played in Scotland, came down to a playoff between
an American, an Australian and a South African.
No doubt millions of people around the world
were less than productive at work last Monday
while they followed the action at St. Andrews.
I’ll admit to getting pretty annoyed when
I hear someone say golf courses are bad for the
environment, or golfers aren’t really athletes,
or worst of all, golf is a rich, white man’s game.
Ignorance rears its ugly head and short of dragging
the nincompoop out to the nearest golf course to
show him the error in his thinking, what can you
do but cite facts and statistics?
FACT: Research from multiple university studies
has shown that water leaving a golf course is
cleaner than water entering a golf course; primarily
because the root systems of healthy turf grass
prevent erosion and runoff, and act as a highly
efficient filter when water moves through soil.
FACT: Many of the world’s best athletes are
mediocre or poor golfers. Many of the world’s best
golfers excelled in other sports before turning their
full attention to golf. Right here in Connecticut we
have hundreds of examples of outstanding golferathletes such as Evan Grenus (soccer), K.J. Camera
(ice hockey) and Ivan Lendl (tennis).
www.csgalinks.org