​Big-time sports should get a “delay of game” penalty. That includes football and basketball for the pros and Division I college games. Advertisements and video replay have destroyed the feel of these contests.

Even a mere 8-10 years ago, things were different. Ads weren’t as long. Video replay wasn’t ubiquitous. I don’t know the exact number of minutes and seconds allowed for timeouts back then vs. now, but the change feels titanic. And, it’s in a bad direction – slowing down play, changing momentum, destroying the texture of the game.
I clearly remember the first time I understood how slow game play was when you attend in person. Five of us who graduated from the University of Illinois returned for a reunion football game at Soldier Field in Chicago. We were pumped. Good to see each other. There was excitement about the team that year.
 
We get to the game, probably down a beer or two, do some early chants as the crowd shows its energy. Then, timeout a few minutes into the first quarter and it lasts over four minutes. Several minutes later, a player is injured and it takes seven minutes to get him off the field. Wait, now it’s a TV timeout, and again, that’s another four minutes, maybe more (who’s checking? Seems like forever.). The offense can’t get it together so they call a timeout. Then another injury and who knows how long that took.

All I remember is that we looked up at the scoreboard and there was still a minute or so left in THE FIRST QUARTER and 55 minutes had elapsed since the opening kick. Do the math. There are four quarters in a game. If you multiply an hour by four, that’s four hours, then add halftime and the time between quarters and we were likely facing a four-and-a-half hour+ ballgame.
 
Not acceptable. You can’t sit through crap like that. Boredom sets in. You drink too much. You don’t pay attention to play. Your mind wanders. You wonder what traffic is going to be like getting out of the parking lot. And, fans head for the exits (if they chose to show up in the first place).

The amazing thing to me is how many people still choose to go to live pro or DI sporting events. I include myself in this number, though my willingness to attend is tempered more intensely with each ensuing year.
 
Basketball, highly dependent on momentum, loses much of its mystery and chemistry as long timeouts stop a team in its tracks better than a tight defense. Just this past week, I watched a few minutes of an NBA game that turned an easy replay into a seven-minute extravaganza, as all three officials got called into view and comment on a fairly straight forward situation. Play on.
 
Time for limits. Allow officials three replay looks, then make a decision. Or set a time limit: 30 seconds to make your review, then decide. Ultimately, officiating reviews STILL REQUIRE A JUDGMENT. And, ultimately, there are still going to be coaches, players, fans and announcers who disagree with what the officials do.
 
Head back to high school, folks. The games are shorter, the kids play hard and there are no replays or television commercials. Collegiate Division III games are similar. There’s great intensity. The players and coaches get into it. And you can still get home in time for a good night’s sleep.  

Sometimes you’re not going to make some journey that you thought you would. That’s the reality.

It might be a big vacation you planned. Or, it might be something small, like going swimming in some lake that you’ve driven by for 23 years and it looks so placid and beautiful that you want to stop the car and jump in for a dip. But, because you don’t happen to drive by that lake at exactly the right time, your plans won’t come to fruition. It’s the way life is.
 
We miss out on some opportunities. Other times, the vagaries of where you are and when, combined with an odd impulse makes you stop and climb a forest trail where a rainbow reveals itself at the summit. You never expected it, you didn’t plan it, but there it was, and your life was enriched.
 
I keep a host of news clippings regarding places to see, trips to take. This past year, I narrowed down the pile. Sifting through each review or ad, I looked and considered how much I really wanted to visit the location, what the probability honestly was that I would ever go there, and how much I still cared after the information had been sitting in the folder for years.
 
My wife and I take regular dates to eat at local restaurants. I keep a list for this, too. It’s another reminder to make the effort to go to places that you have an interest in, while also forcing you to make choices on one restaurant or another. If you head to this one tonight, you won’t be going to that one.
 
You’re not going to make it to certain restaurants. You aren’t going to make it to certain vacation locations.
 
There’s a sadness – a “letting go” feeling – that occurs as you make considerations about the places you want to visit, but come to understand shouldn’t remain on your bucket list of things to do in the years ahead. Based on your stage of life, letting go could be a decision based on the reality of costs vs. how much money you earn. It could be you let go because you had an interest in some activity that no longer engages you.

Or, as you go through a new stage of life, you realize there’s something different that is more important to you. Years ago, for example, I enjoyed body surfing in the ocean. That urge has not gone away. But, 1) we don’t live near an ocean, and 2) not wanting to sit on a beach for extended periods absorbing solar radiation are both reasons that urge is not as strong as it used to be. The rush of riding a wave to shore is outweighed by logistics.
If the ocean came to me, I’d be there. If, remarkably, we drove near the Atlantic or Pacific during the right of time year, I’d pull the car over and take a dip, swim out, time the wave, paddle forcibly towards the shore to capture a burst of adrenaline. The rush and joy would be there.
 
It’s good to keep spontaneity open.  Don’t throw all those news clips away. Cull the list, add to it, keep it up to date, and leave room for the sudden urge. The impulse joy usually stays in your memory banks.

​Working my way through invasive buckthorn recently, I came across trash history. Our property heads down a hill to the Bark River, where the buckthorn multiplies. The low-lying earth where the river overflows is where I was cutting down the brush and came across living history.
 
The term “trash history” is literal, not figurative. As I slashed, yanked, pulled and piled the various bushes and small trees, history was unearthed as well.
 
An overturned stump held a broken glass bottle nestled in its root system. Underneath a pile of leaves, the front bumper of a car emerged. Stuck in the dirt was the top of an old, rusted paint can, which slowly emerged with digging, and partially crumbled in my hands during the process.
 
A small local dump on our property. Oh, joy. How long had these artifacts slept there? The answer to that question slowly emerged with each new discovery.
 
First to test my personal knowledge based on my lifespan was a pop-top beer can. The style told me everything. It was from the 1960s.
 
Next was a beer bottle. The style gave it away. Again, from the 1960s. Probably was a Schlitz, but the label had disappeared.
 
The level of decomposition was another telling factor. I’m no archeologist. At the same time, when you see the rusted remnants of a cooking pot and look at the other refuse, you put two and two together to come up with your prediction on how long ago someone decided to let their crap fly.
 
How long does it take glass to decompose? How about an aluminum can or a cooking skillet? Plastic jar? Barbed wire? A discarded tire? Clearly, none of them in 50+ years, which is pretty scary. All of these items were intact in the scattered rubbish.
 
Carbon dating is a scientific method that can accurately determine the age of organic materials as old as approximately 60,000 years. I didn’t need that to help recognize the leftovers from my own personal life.
 
Do people think about decomposition when they toss their refuse in the woods? Highly unlikely. In the 1960s, as is often still the case today in 2023, too many people don’t care what they throw in the woods or out the car window. Sadly, the world is their dump.
We grew up on a dead-end street in northern New Jersey. There was a dump at the end of our street. Random cars and trucks would stop and throw old television sets, toilets, tree limbs, leaves, lumber, shingles, and who the heck knows what else into the ever-burgeoning pile. I wonder now if those materials are buried, have been removed or still sit on the surface providing a certain historical perspective of those years.
 
We played in that dump, never thinking twice about smashing things, throwing something over the ledge. The trash depositors created a new world for us kids.
 
Future generations might unearth artifacts from that dump in the years ahead. What will they find? If it’s similar to the junk I’ve found during my buckthorn destruction, the throw-aways will tell a story, like most things left behind.

Making accommodations for cold weather (and increasingly colder weather in the months ahead) seems to engage more decision-making than years past. Hard to say if this is something you over-think or over-complicate. Whatever the reason, I find that clearing the summer clothes out of the closet and depositing the winter ones in their place causes me to pause more so the past couple of years than it did 5-10 years ago.
 
Last week, we got some temperatures into the 20’s at night. That’s a signal. Time to air out the winter jacket. Check and see where the stocking caps are. Find those lost winter gloves. See if anything needs to be washed because they remain stale or dirty from the previous winter.
 
The past two years, rather than making a massive transition in one day, emptying my closet of short-sleeve shirts and filling the area with long-sleeved ones, I’ve incrementally made these changes. One week, I shift over three shirts, particularly ones I know I’ll wear in the colder weather. A week later, I find a flannel shirt that looks good and I bring it over to the closet in our bedroom and remove a golf shirt. And so on.
 
This goes on for several weeks. Rather than one massive evacuation, I tier the decision-making. Partly, this is tied to weather. There is no clear break when you absolutely know for sure that the next two weeks are going to stay below freezing. Instead, we get some cold nights down in the high 20’s or low 30’s and day-time temps may still hit 42 or 46. You aren’t going to sprint outside in shorts, but you also don’t need long johns.
 
This time of year, you can’t count on consistency. After hitting the types of days noted above, you may get three days in the high 50’s. Golf beckons. You go to the supermarket in pants and a t-shirt. You whistle while you work in the yard, the blindingly blue sky filling your heart with thanks and joy. But not a winter jacket.
 
As you shift your personal mindset from summer to fall to possibly winter, you undergo this ever-so-slight transition, like other mammals. You may find yourself starting to consume more foods, appreciating starches, preparing yourself to hibernate for three months. Sleep becomes a closer friend, one more Making accommodations for cold weather (and increasingly colder weather in the months ahead) seems to engage more decision-making than years past. Hard to say if this is something you over-think or over-complicate. Whatever the reason, I find that clearing the summer clothes out of the closet and depositing the winter ones in their place causes me to pause more so the past couple of years than it did 5-10 years ago.
 
Last week, we got some temperatures into the 20’s at night. That’s a signal. Time to air out the winter jacket. Check and see where the stocking caps are. Find those lost winter gloves. See if anything needs to be washed because they remain stale or dirty from the previous winter.

You can’t give in completely though, so rather than wearing winter gloves, I pull out the fingertip-less hand gloves to demonstrate how tough I am in the face of 37-degree temperatures while raking leaves. When my fingertips go numb in 23 minutes, I realize I’m not so tough anymore.
 
Another gradual change involves the head gear. Warmer months, you decide which ballcap is best suited for the day. When your ears start to get cold, you know it’s time to decide on a stocking cap or one with ear flaps.
 
Sadly, declining hair population accelerates this decision with each year. The cool breeze becomes colder on a scalp increasingly bare. As your natural protection decelerates, the artificial one must increase.

And, I guess that’s what it’s all about. You figure this out and adjust in stages, bit by bit, learning, going outside and realizing, “hmmmm, better get a jacket.” There’s no nirvana moment of change; instead, you keep living and learning day-to-day. 

 

​Halleluiah!!!!!!!!!!  There’s a new national holiday!
 
We are going to term it, “The Day the Weather Forecasters were Right.” That’s the headline in the newspaper, so it only makes sense to set aside this national day of recognition for the one day of the year that the prognosticators accurately foresaw snow, wind and clouds.
 
This event occurred two weeks ago. It didn’t immediately become apparent that we should turn it into a national holiday, but upon consideration of the epic success made by the television weather guessers, a groundswell occurred from the masses. Letters were written to their Congress members urging recognition and a day to be set aside for their one-in-a-hundred accurate assessment of what the weather was going to do 12 hours in advance.
 
You ask, “What happened?” This:
 
Sunday night, if you checked the hourly forecast online or listened to the local newscaster, snow was expected to start at 7 a.m. the following morning. If this had been typical, the forecast would change and the snow would be changed to rain, and moved to later in the morning, then into early afternoon, then finally evaporate from the forecast altogether, as if it had never been predicted.
 
On this day though, they were not about to be wrong. Instead, they forecast snow through the early morning hours, followed by a brief respite before noon, then some light snow sprinkles in the 1 p.m. range, then steadier snow from 4-6 p.m. YAWN.
 
You know they’ll be wrong, so why pay attention.
 
Instead, no, that was not to be the case. Instead, the forecasters were 100 PERCENT ACCURATE! They didn’t just generically come close with their predictions – they got it exactly right.

Neighbors called out in the streets, “OMG, they predicted the snow. THEY WERE RIGHT. PRAISE THE LORD! They said we’d get one to three inches, and we did! Go buy a lottery ticket!”
 
There’s a lot to be said for accuracy and getting it right in your daily job. You get respected. People believe you. Trust is established. Good things.  All good reasons to make this a national holiday as it works to improve the national psyche.
 
Their timing was exemplary. They got the snow accumulation totals perfect. Amazing, incredible, astounding, unbelievable (really). How’d they do it?
 
You really have to wonder. What was so different on this day? Was there something fundamentally easy to predict that day? Did the forecasters have a good breakfast and that made them more content and on top of the upcoming weather patterns? Was the direction of the wind, the moisture in the air, the size of the cloud cover all so simply connected that there was no way they could miss? Like a fat pitch coming your way in baseball that you couldn’t help but slam out of the park?
 
Who the heck knows? Let’s just forget about the cause and marvel at the prediction coming true. Time to celebrate. Set off the fireworks. Shoot some streamers into the air.
 
When the weather forecasters so frequently miss, when they do get it right it’s time for a national holiday.

Over the years, this column has waxed multiple times about how bad weather prognosticators are, wondering how those people keep their jobs (or why we listen to them) when they are wrong repeatedly. It must be something in our human condition to continue to believe predictions that consistently turn out incorrect.

Enter the dog. One of our dogs, Pepper, is a great weather predictor. Maybe we could have her apply for a job at one of the local TV stations and see if she could adequately and successfully communicate with viewers regarding thunderstorms.

Sadly, that’s the only thing Pepper can predict. She’s not going to let you know about snowstorms or temperatures. But dang, well in advance, she knows when a thunderstorm approaches.
 
The only question that arises is when the storm will hit, how long it will last, and its intensity. But, you can be sure the t-storm is going to be a doozy when she gets into Weather Predicting Mode (WPM).
 
Her technique is simple (and I’m assuming this is how it works based on reading her body language, since, of course, she doesn’t speak to me directly). Far in the distance, thunderbolts erupt and slam into the earth, creating gigantic rumbles.  The ground trembles. Those tremors spread over great distances.
 
Pepper senses the rumbling of the turf in her sensitive paws, registers the incoming storm, and meanders over to let us know by trembling in terror, panting and putting her ears back (and, of course, looking very, very scared in her eyes).
 
Why she fears the thunderstorm, who knows? It must be primal. She’s a mammal that recognizes blasts of lightning could prove dangerous and life-threatening solely by the fact that there is power being exchanged, ignited, transferred from one location to another – from a cumulonimbus cloud to the ground.
 
If Pepper predicted on the TV screen, the show would have to take place in the basement or our bedroom. That’s where she goes to hide. Somehow she senses these locations are safer.
 
Pepper has never been wrong. Her timing has been off from time to time, but she’s always right eventually.
 
Years ago, I lived with a family who had a dog named Chicago. She, too, was a spectacularly accurate weather predictor.

Unlike Pepper, I doubt we could put her on TV, because her technique for communicating was more maniacal. Rather than coming to the human to demonstrate fear and concern, Chicago would go into closets and attempt to climb up the wall. Her terror was expressed through her claws as she repeatedly jumped and raked the closet wall.
 
Though she was equally effective as Pepper in predicting, this technique would not be good television. Then again, I’m no expert, and maybe it would be a wonderfully successful and unique option for weather forecasting on TV. “Amazing Dog Predicts Weather. Stay tuned for News Action 5 at 10 p.m. as we show you clips of a leaping dog letting his family know of an impending thunderstorm.”
 
Listen to the vibrations of the earth. Pay attention to your dog. They know.

​For the past five years or so, I’ve had the honor to serve on the Board of Directors of the Wisconsin Masters Games (formerly the Wisconsin Senior Olympics). In short, our mission is to put together games for aging athletes (ages 40+) to continue to challenge themselves physically and mentally while enjoying the camaraderie of competition.
 
Serving on the Board motivated me to take up several track and field events. Moving deeper into my 60s has forced me to recognize more limitations while at the same time opening my mind to the purer joys of sport. Yes, you want to do your best. Yes, you realize if you even attempt to sprint, you could easily tear a hamstring.
 
Participating in the games brings those challenges. You train, you push yourself. If you want to improve your time in the 800, 400 or 200 (the three events I’ve chosen to compete in the past two years), you must put in the training time. You can’t go out and decide to run without preparing. You want to finish the event without injury and do your best. In your earlier years, the goal would more likely have been to win the gold, silver or bronze medal.
 
There is a very specific joy in the aging athlete community. We support each other. There are sheer congratulations when someone finishes last, chugging along, doing their best.
 
The supportive nature of the community extends in many ways. The first year I participated, I chose to do the shot put. Two men in their early 60s were the top competitors in my age category.

Watching them warm up, I saw them go over to an older man, bent over, much smaller (both of my competitors where over 6’2” and 250 pounds). They chatted with him, encouraged him, gave him a hug.

As we stood and waited to make our throws, I asked about their relationship. “Oh, he’s our high school coach from downstate Illinois. We picked him up on our drive up here, and he’s going to throw the shot put, too,” was their abbreviated response.
 
I was stunned. Here’s this frail-looking man, in his late-80s and his two former athletes/students were still in touch with him and went out of their way to pick him up and drive him to Wisconsin so they could hang out together, reminisce and compete. I choked up.
 
Soon after that, I chatted with a woman waiting to throw the shot put for the FIRST TIME IN HER LIFE. She was in her early 80s, and couldn’t have weighed more than 110 pounds. Yet, there she was, excited, pumped up, ready to take on a new challenge. Ripples of electric current went through my body as I spoke with her and heard her story on why she chose to take on this new life challenge.
 
There’s something extremely special watching an old codger sprinting his butt off in the 100-yard dash, extending his dream from earlier years into the twilight days of his life. Before and after athletes finish, they cheer, clap and urge on their fellow competitors. It’s heartwarming and life-changing.
 
Competition, community, camaraderie, challenge -- the four C’s. The Wisconsin Masters Games has all four, and I hope we continue the tradition for many more years.

​Smelling fresh fruit is one of the great joys of life. I didn’t realize though until this past week how much most of us are deceived by what we don’t sniff.
 
My realization came about after some thievery. Returning from working out in the morning, I pass by multiple apple trees on the drive home. A couple of weeks back, I noticed several trees by the side of the road where thick strands of apples ripened bright red on the branches. Took note in my head to come back and pick them.
 
As is likely true for most humans, I forgot about this until one morning I was capable of retaining that thought and stopped the car next to one of the trees down the street a quarter-of-a-mile from our house. I clambered over a fence, pulled branches down and deposited 20-25 pieces of the perfectly-ripened pieces of fruit into my canvas bag.
 
Checking the landscape to ensure no one saw me steal, I Ieapt back over the fence, scooted to my car and blasted off. Whew. Back at the house, I plopped the apples into our fruit basket.
 
On a typical day, I don’t think much about my sense of smell. I go about my daily routines, doing chores, running errands, finishing up projects without thinking to myself (at least not with any degree of regularity), “Oh, wow, that smells marvelous!”
 
A day or two after depositing the apples, I did exactly that. Walking past our fruit basket and picking up one of the bright red honey crisp, I stopped, sniffed and said to my wife, “Do you smell these apples?”
 
She did not. I commented on how the sweet bouquet of fresh apple permeated our kitchen. It awakened the senses.

And then, of course, it set me to wondering. Why don’t we smell store-bought apples like this? Do they have some injection inside that limits their odor (and then, by extension, their taste)? I don’t know. Perhaps.
 
Or is just that fresh-picked apples have a much more expansive scent. Because they recently came off the tree, their aroma is stronger, sweeter, more pervasive. It’s probably a combination of those two factors.
 
Think about how we go through our daily lives not receiving this (and other) scent. We stroll through supermarkets and toss bananas, grapefruits, cantaloupes, potatoes, asparagus into our shopping carts. Do you sniff the produce? Of course not. You might be termed a weirdo, or someone would make a smart remark that your nose has germs on it or a booger is hanging out. “What the heck were you thinking?”
 
Instead, we zombie-walk our visits to the food store. We pick, we toss. We examine prices, consider options. But we don’t really inhale through our noses, letting wonderful fragrances inside our hearts.
 
Maybe fruit fresh from the vine or tree will help us do that with a greater degree of regularity. I certainly am much more aware now of the perfume emitted by fresh apples.
 
Because of that, it also feels like my life has been oh-so-subtly enhanced. I savor the apples more when I eat them. The crisp, tart taste goes up my nostrils. I chew slowly. Next time I whiff a McIntosh, Rome, Gala, Cortland, Envy, Gala or Empire wafting from a tree I’m grabbing my tote bag and head to the source.

​There are many ways to become an expert. One that makes the most sense is through the repetition of activities grooming your talents. You do something often enough and you get better.
 
This thought occurred to me recently as I pulled burrs off my pants. Sounds weird, right? Yet, as I sat on a chair in front of our house cursing and plucking after plodding through our woods eliminating invasive species, I contemplated how good I’d gotten at yanking the dastardly distance-traveling burrs that seek to send their seed across the planet, catching a ride on animals’ fur and human clothing.
 
Pull, flick. Pull, flick. Grab your pants tautly, pinch the tiny bastards tightly between thumb and your lead finger. Do this repeatedly 343 times until the cramps crush your fingers and wrists. You are closing in on becoming an expert burr remover.
 
Becoming an expert burr remover requires ongoing learning. You determine the importance of shifting hands. As your left fingers and wrist tire, you come to recognize the importance of rotating to your right hand. Keep the pace. Rotate back when the right hand tires. And, so on.
 
There are multiple ways to pull burrs. Some are successful, some not.
 
When I first took on this mission (not willingly), I went in blind. Didn’t know a thing. Would just look at the tracks of stickers across the clothes on my butt, arms, ankles, calves, sigh and think, “I’ll NEVER get all these off.” And, it seemed to take forever.
 
It seemed like every time you pull a string of 7-8 together and you feel good about yourself for making progress that another set would appear on your thigh or some weird place on your body that you couldn’t imagine would become a resting place for traveling burrs.
 
This became dispiriting. When you’re overwhelmed to start with, then find even more challenges, it gets depressing. Slowly you determine your tactics and strategy.
 
Jump right in. Don’t wait when you return from the woods and see oddly-patterned burr patches all over your clothes. Just get to work. Start fast. Make a dent in the project.
 
Then, give yourself some time to sit back after 10 minutes or so. Assess your progress. “OMG, 232 of the burrs are gone!”
 
There’s only about a third of the initial mess still left to clean up. You feel better about yourself. You get a sense that you can make the finish line.
 
Here’s the thing though: as you learn to clip the burrs, why do I keep getting more burrs on my pants and sweatshirts? Why aren’t I learning on that front and not walking repeatedly and inadvertently into those bushes?
 
I don’t know the answer to that one since I continue to come out of the woods covered and cursing. I wear crappy pants so I don’t destroy them when the crumbly remains of the burrs grind into the fabric. Tight pants somewhat prevent the burrs from adhering. I’m learning.
 
When you learn, you become an expert. Repeat the actions, figure out what works and what doesn’t. Keep after it. Someday, you too can become an expert in burr removal. I don’t recommend it, but it can be done.

​Scrambling applies to life and golf. It’s a different way to approach problem-solving when you think about it.
 
Quarterbacks scramble in football when a play breaks down and they improvise. When you scramble to meet a deadline, you’re looking for resources, people and ideas to get a project done under a deadline. When you find you’re missing ingredients for a recipe you’re cooking, you scramble to come up with some other spice or substitute that will enhance the dish. In golf, you scramble with partners to improve the final outcome.
 
Golf scrambling is more than that though. And, it speaks to ways you can improve an outcome through strategy, sharing, applying specific talents of each individual.
 
Typically in golf, it’s you against the course. It’s individualism at its finest. You screw up or play great. It’s on your shoulders. You can make excuses due to bad luck, a terrible lie or ending up behind a tree, but how you hit the ball and whether you put it in the hole depends entirely on you. No excuses.
 
I’ve moved away from playing individual golf, and embraced scrambling over the past 6-8 years. One reason is the reduction of frustration. You play golf to enjoy the outdoors, hang out with friends, breathing fresh air, appreciating the weather and scenery. When you play your individual ball, and every shot depends on your talent, you shoulder all the pressure. There’s no letting up.
 
That can certainly drive you and increase concentration. And, at times it gets you to play at the top of your game, which you can relish when your shots come together. More frequently, that doesn’t happen, and you beat yourself up for not hitting the ball the way you thought you were capable of.
 
When you choose to scramble on the golf course instead, you share the game. You have others to rely on. Your talent and shots matter. But, one of your partners may hit a better shot, allowing you to use that instead, which improves your score (and your attitude because you’re better off as a team when you take the individual’s best shot).
 
It’s team vs. the individual, and life really is more a team sport. We have situations every day that require interaction, engagement, listening, coming together to make decisions that are in the best interests of a business, family or relationships. You can’t make those in a vacuum. Any final decision must balance perspectives, hopefully leading to the best possible outcome. Applying additional minds to problem-solve will typically yield an improved result (one hopes).
 
You really can’t take on the world yourself. We all need help at times, whether that’s emotional, physical or psychological. Golf scrambling embraces that concept from a talent perspective and in terms of decision-making as you consider how to approach each shot on the hole.
 
As I’ve introduced scrambling to the people I play golf with, there was often trepidation on their part the first few times we adopted it. Used to playing their individual ball, they typically saw that as the “only” way to play the game.
 
That’s not the case though. Actually, scrambling brings people back into the game of golf. People turned off by the intensity and pressure of playing your own ball find they enjoy the sport much more as a team game as you share the burdens, relax when you hit a bad one, and cheer for your teammates. There’s a lot to be said for that. There’s a lesson in there somewhere for our work, personal and professional lives.