Evian (Golf Fest 2005)
Since I began to take vacations three years ago, I've been fortunate to find beautiful spots around the world to pursue my interest in golf. Last week I visited Evian les bains, in France. Evian is a beautiful town, on the shores of Lake Leman (Lake Geneva), and is widely known for its beautiful lawns and gardens. Our hotel included extensive grounds for walking and afforded great views of the lake. Evian first became widely known for its mineral water in the fifteenth century with its fame reaching a peak in the 1930s, when it became recognized as an international spa. In addition to its fame as the source of bottled Evian water, Evian is now the site of numerous business conferences and meetings; in fact, one of the hotel staff told me that our hotel hosts 5 to 6 conferences per month from September through June every year.
The Evian Masters Golf Club is a wonderful course. It is the home of the Evian Masters tournament, a premier event for women professional golfers. Watching the tournament on television made me want to see the course. Now that I've seem the course, watching future tournaments on television will be more meaningful. I continue to be amazed by technology and the ease of virtual visits to distant places and for the most part I enjoy the virtual visits as much as actual visits. Still, I enjoy seeing the real thing once in a while. Partly because of recent neck and shoulder pain, I didn't play very well but my score has become unimportant to my enjoyment of golf. There's something about the settings, the people, the focus on a golf course that I love, notwithstanding the score.
I suppose the annual women's tournament is the reason so many young women were drawn to play at the Evian Masters golf course. I was impressed by these women and their dedication to golf. I wished my French was better so I could ask them questions about how they got started in golf, where they played when at home, what instruction was available to them and so forth. But I didn't need to talk to them to recognize their enjoyment of the game and the kinship that everyone who plays golf feels. A twosome of young women ahead of us enjoyed a good shot by one of our group as much as if they had hit it themselves.
That's the beauty of golf. We play against the course and against ourselves. The other people on the course are not opponents. They're members of the golf family and, as such, are treated with respect and affection, whatever their skills. That's the theme of my Evian trip. It's not a new theme (since I also discussed it in my last column), but it's one that bears repeating. If we do our best, if we enjoy the beauty of golf and its myriad of settings, if we look to our fellow competitors as friends and family, then our score becomes irrelevant. In fact, we don't even need to keep score to win. We only need to be there.
Once again, golf is life. In life as in golf, as long as we do our best and treat our fellow human beings with respect, we win whatever the rest of the world thinks of us. Let those who view us as their opponents keep score. We know better.
(I've added a few pictures to my scrapbook, page 3.)
10-10-05
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