Rub of the green

I caught a little bit of the Masters this weekend, and saw Gary Player, the Black Knight, on the course, resplendent in white. The South African legend gave the eventual champion, Trevor Immelman, whom Player carried on his shoulder when he was a toddler, a wonderful piece of advice:

"Be strong through adversity, because adversity will come."

Thomas Boswell wrote a great column in today's Washington Post on Immelman's win, and the road he traveled on. He may not have expected to win the Masters, but he didn't expect the stomach virus at last year's tournament (he played through it) or the golf-ball sized (benign) tumor doctors cut out of him.

This section of the column I liked:

More than any sport, golf tears at the nerves and tortures the emotions, rather than bruising the body. Nobody hits you, yet the greatest players in the world, on devilishly capricious days such as this, walk off the course looking as battered as any Super Bowl loser. Even Tiger can look like he has been kicked in the guts by a Georgia mule.

Fortitude, at the deepest levels, is the virtue that is rewarded the most in pro golf. At the center of every round, and every career, is the notion that man must accept without question what golfers call "the rub of the green" -- as elegant and important a phrase as sports gives us. Bad luck, injury, sinfully malicious misfortune and long, inexplicable spells of miserable play are to be expected, endured and, eventually, overcome. In fact, a golfer's response to that rub of the green is what defines him.

I have faced adversity, but I am not battered. As I said this morning, I love what all of this has done to me. Yes, you read it right. Done to me. It sounds strange, but it really isn't. What I have gone through in the past few months has not weakened my heart or my soul. Not at all. The past few months have strengthened my heart, my soul. So I can be stronger for someone. To strengthen someone.

Life is about experiences, and this experience has expanded my heart and my soul--which was large before.