Mulligans Happen: Smoothing out the bumps
The other day, my son finally got me out golfing. And for the first eleven or twelve holes, I was hacking away from the rough yelling “FORE!”, swearing under my breath, and watching balls disappear into the trees. Never in the water, and not a single sand bunker... just sayin’. On the 13th or 81st hole for all I know, something miraculous happened: I hit a beautiful drive that landed right in the middle of the fairway. Was it skill? LOL, no. A gust of wind blew my slice back toward the middle, and I got a lucky bounce off a bump in the grass, maybe even a gopher.
This is going to sound a bit dramatic but when I got to my ball, I had no idea what to do. I had literally been hitting from the rough the entire time. I’m dead serious. Between teeing off and putting on the green, I was always in the deep stuff. And now, standing on this perfect, short grass? It felt weird. Too clean. Too open. I could see my ball clearly. I knew I shouldn’t use my usual “rough swing” because that would tear up the fairway, and I didn’t want to ruin it for the next person. But now I have no excuses. I couldn’t say, “Well, I could barely see my ball,” or “Those trees were in the way.” It was just me, the ball, and wide-open space.
I lined up, took a nice slow backswing, tried to let the club do the work… and I dug an eight-inch trench in the middle of the fairway. The ball went three feet. The clump of grass went fifteen. I tried again. Another swing, nearly a whiff, the ball went a little farther but still embarrassing. Finally, in a moment of frustration, I kicked the ball back into the rough and crushed a 50-yard shot like nothing ever happened. Classic.
But hang on. This isn’t a story about finding your own way or rejecting convention. The truth is, it would’ve been easier if I had known how to play from the fairway. Being in the rough is actually a pretty big disadvantage. It took me five shots to get on the green when it should’ve taken two. I can hit from the rough. I’ve figured out how to get by in the rough. But I can’t reach my full potential if I stay stuck in it.
And that’s when it hit me.
Some of us in our very own community have never been out of the rough. That’s where we’ve always lived. It’s familiar. It’s where our friends and family are. Even my golfing friends spend a lot of time in the rough. It’s where some of us learned to survive. And when... against all odds, we land in the fairway, when something good finally happens, it feels foreign. Too smooth. Too exposed. There are no obstacles to blame. Just you, the ball, and a wide-open space.
And maybe now our friends start giving us grief for “being Tiger Woods.” and a “fancy pants” golfer because things went right once. It feels like maybe we don’t belong in the short grass, probably even say something like the fairway is kinda dumb. The rough is way better. Just to get them to back off. Because some of our own people, the ones we always leaned on, suddenly seem kind of against us. Eventually mom hears we got on the fairway, she calls to remind us it was just luck and not to get used to it because “your dad, your grandpa, your great grandpa lived and died in the rough, and now you’re just gonna forget where you came from?”
And for some weird reason it starts to feel like our own family is mad at us for just for getting a lucky bounce and getting out of the rough for once for like 5 minutes...
So, what do we do? The one thing we know how to do and we take a big, rough-swing hack at life and send a giant divot flying. Not because we’re trying to mess anything up, but because that’s all some of us know. Not all of us grew up with dads that golfed. I certainly didn’t. We don’t know what the hell were doing on the fairway.
Here’s the thing: the people we serve in peer support and recovery have every reason not to trust us. Many have spent their entire lives navigating systems and relationships that felt like the rough: dense, tangled, and unforgiving. So, when some folks finally find themselves on stable ground, and out of the chaos, it can feel disorienting. Even scary. And sometimes humans mess up. They’ll dig a deep divot in a space that looks smooth and manageable to the rest of world. Especially when coming out of the rough for the first couple of times.
But we’ve got to give grace.
Divots on the fairway are part of learning. Look around any course and you’ll see new divots and old. No matter how perfectly manicured the grass is. Honestly, they’re part of the game. If you’ve spent your whole life hacking through the rough, it takes time, patience, and support to learn a new swing. That’s why sometimes people need someone who knows the rough and has learned how to navigate the short grass without tearing it up.
So, let’s not judge people for struggling in the fairway. Let’s celebrate the miracle of all of us getting there in the first place. And when the grass gets torn up a little? No big deal. Just stamp it down. Take another shot.
There’s no rule that says you only get one swing. This isn’t the PGA.
