I will abandon my friends during a round of golf. Does that make me a bad person?

Golfpocalypse is a collection of words about golf (professional and otherwise) with very little in the way of a point, and the Surgeon General says it will make you a worse person. Reach out to The Golfpocalypse with your questions or comments on absolutely anything at shane.spr8@gmail.com.

There are two sayings I hear on the golf course that I hate with all my heart:

1. "You're not good enough to get mad."

Yes, I am. I was good enough to get mad when I couldn't break 100, and I'm good enough now that I sometimes break 80. As my colleague Luke Kerr-Dineen put it, you don't have to be a master chef to get pissed about screwing up dinner. You don't have to be great at something to care about it; I love golf, I take it seriously despite being average, and when I suck egregiously—I'm talking the kind of total collapse where you close your eyes and see the flames of hell—I get mad. Now, I grant you that there are levels of mad, and I strive not to embarrass myself, but the notion that I should walk around with some dopey grin all the time actually makes me more angry.

2. "A bad day on the golf course is better than a good day in the office."

Nope. Maybe this is skewed by the fact I like my job, but if I go out and shoot a smooth 83, and two days later I feel like a stranger in my own body and lose six balls in the first five holes? Send me to my desk with chains on my legs, please. Hell, I'd rather be kneeling on rice and getting pelted with deli meats than losing my mind on the course.

Which leads me to my main point: Sometimes I'll just abandon a round. I'll sense that the game is not there, I'm no longer enjoying myself, and it's going to end with some stupid act of frustration like chucking an iron in the woods or writing my name in gasoline on the fairway. (Related note: I have not broken a club in almost a year!)

Worse, it will cement a mental association of bad vibes with golf, and that's a dangerous game. Once, while working a horrifically boring summer job during college, I listened to Bob Dylan while I sat in front of the computer, and without knowing it my brain was connecting Dylan to the mundane act of filling out spreadsheets. It was years before I could listen to him again—I'd be right back in that stupid office. I also couldn't drink tequila for a decade after college, for similar reasons. Bottom line, I love golf, and because I love it, I eject before it gets truly miserable.

Now, there are some obvious instances when abandoning a round is totally fine. Playing alone? Sure, walk off at your leisure. Nobody gets hurt. With strangers? They don't care about me, I don't care about them. Good day, sirs.

On the flip side, there are obvious moments when you just can't walk off, like if you've taken a golf trip with some friends, or you're playing in a team event. Once, I got my stepdad and two friends onto Pinehurst No. 2, and even though I'm a ride-or-die Pinehurst guy, when we got there it was insanely hot, the group in front of us was blasting country music from their carts, and my game totally abandoned me. Pinehurst no. 2 is the absolute worst place to play poorly—I saw the ghost of Donald Ross laughing at me—and when it became clear that the round would exceed five hours, I wanted with all my heart to escape. But I couldn't. I had to grin and bear it, so I did.

It's the gray areas where things get tough. My general rule is that if you're at your home course during a normal round and things get very bad, it's okay to jump ship if you're playing with multiple friends, since they'll still have some company when you leave. (I don't think I've violated this too often, but I'm also glad there is no historical record.) The other day, I was set to play with my friend and his girlfriend, but I had played like hell two days earlier and my range session was a disaster. There is no sport like golf where you can feel totally competent at one moment and then lose everything, and the fact that I was very tired left me in a raw emotional state. I walked to the tee, hit a weak fadey drive toward the cart path, said, "I'm done," and left.

Now, that time I felt a little bad. I apologized, and they were nice about it, but I'm starting to worry about a couple things. First, nobody I play with ever seems to abandon a round, no matter what. It's no shock that I'm more temperamental than my golf friends—I've known this for a long time—but nobody else is walking off the course four to five times per year, and that is a little unsettling. Second, I pride myself in having a certain amount of life resilience, but isn't this the opposite? Isn't this just shying away from the slightest pain?

Here's how I rationalize it: In life, you have to summon the energy to be strong through the really hard stuff, and maybe part of fortifying yourself is giving the Dikembe Mutombo finger wag to the smaller bouts of suffering. When things fall apart on the golf course, when it gets beyond recovery, why subject yourself to misery and make everything worse? I sort of hate the term "self-care," but I will use it opportunistically here—I'm doing self-care.

There's a third saying you hear all the time about this sport: "Golf doesn't build character, it reveals it." That one's probably true. And what it reveals about me, at the times of abandonment, is that I can be self-centered and moody and impulsive. I'll take it. I want to love this game a long time, and if that means walking away to avoid a fight, so be it.

FIVE TOUR THOUGHTS: PGA Championship/Charles Schwab Edition

1. First, I want to hammer an old hobbyhorse: Why aren't they trying match play at the Tour Championship???? I've got a GREAT IDEA that will make it OK for TV! Read it! I know this is never happening, but the recent shift to the old format of having no starting stroke advantage just seems insane to me. It has to be player-driven, because nobody with a focus on creating an actual entertaining product would do this. If all 30 guys in the tournament have an equal shot to win, you've sacrificed both the drama of match play and the relative fairness of starting strokes. On a simpler level, why go back to something that you felt the need to change from years ago? It boggles the mind.

2. It's been a while, and I know this is old news, but can we take a moment to marvel at Scheffler's resilience after the start to his back nine at Quail in the PGA? It feels like there is exactly one guy who wouldn't soil his pants in that moment after blowing a big lead with a disastrous front, and Scheffler is him. The way he responded under pressure when everyone else folded was a marvel.

3. Why did Rory seem so miserable at the PGA? Shouldn't he walking on cloud nine? The driver thing alone feels like such a relatively small thing that I can't believe it's the sum of his strange attitude. I will be thinking about this for a long time.

4. On the flip side of my Tour Championship complaints, the Tour itself has found such a nice rhythm with how it alternates signature events and "normal" events. This last week at the Schwab wasn't the world's most exciting tournament, but it didn't need to be since we just had the PGA. Now that a couple weeks have passed, they're ready to ramp it back up with a signature event at the Memorial, and the timing feels perfect.

5. I will admit this: Watching Jon Rahm in contention was fun at Quail, and it was the first time after any major that I really wished a guy was back playing signature events on the tour. For whatever reason, I enjoyed Bryson at the majors but wasn't dying for him to come back week to week, and ditto for Brooks, but even looking at the Memorial leaderboard, it could benefit from the spice of having Rahm up there. It feels like with Rory not playing, the very good field is just one guy from being excellent, and Rahm is the missing piece. It is a serious shame that he's signed through at least three more years.

THE ABSOLUTE IRONCLAD LOCKS OF THE WEEK

Golfpocalypse is not a gambling advice service, and you should never heed anything written here. Better picks are here.

Career Record: 7-73. I can't even buy a Champions Tour win, and there are like four guys who win every event.

At the Memorial, give me the highly controversial pick of Scottie Scheffler. I think this young man is going places, and I'm not afraid to say so.

Oooh, it's U.S. Women's Open time! Did you know that in the last 17 women's majors, there have been 16 winners? Compare that to the men, and you have to go back 22 majors to get 16 unique winners. Which means this is a total crapshoot, so what the hell, I'll go with Ingrid Lindblad as another first-time winner.

We're not doing the DP World tour anymore, because America is the best country. (Kidding—I just want fewer losses accruing each week.) That means we'll go right to the Champions Tour and the Principal Charity Classic, where in honor of his Oakmont U.S. Open victory I'll ride with Ernie Els.

Finally, at LIV Golf Crazy Gus's Golf Park in Skokie, Il, I'll go with Sporty Spice.

THE "DUMB TAKE I KIND OF BELIEVE"

In researching Oakmont for the U.S. Open, I learned that they used to rake furrowed trenches into their hundreds of bunkers, which is one of the most egregiously cruel things I've ever heard of. Basically, you'd only ever be able to punch out sideways because every ball would fall into one of the little ditches. The players complained enough that they stopped in the '60s, but I very much want to see them bring this back.

READER EMAIL OF THE WEEK

This beauty comes from Chris:

Late September 2009, Twins (my team) locked in a division battle with the Tigers. They’re playing a 3-game series. On the day in question, the previous night’s game was rained out and rescheduled for shortly after tee time. So golf was not on my mind anymore. First hole, I 3-putt for bogey from 10 feet (very fast greens). 2nd hole, I airmail green off cart path into water. Pitch after drop to 4 feet. 3-putt again thanks to hard breaks in green. I fling the putter into the woods (it was getting replaced anyway). Tee shot at 3 slices violently into the water. I walk back to the cart, take clubs off the back, grab my drink, and walk back to the clubhouse. Every year on that date, I text my group (who amazingly didn’t disown me afterwards) a happy anniversary note.

The "(it was getting replaced anyway)" truly makes this one special.

Previously on Golfpocalypse:

Did I dishonor the game via handicap shenanigans?
Rory's Masters win was the ultimate "dudes crying" moment in golf
I want to be a draw alpha, not a fade beta
If you had to give up golf or sex for the rest of your life, which would it be?
I am the recent victim of golf snobbery, and I'm mad
Should the Tour just move to an F1 style schedule and be done with it?
I was the world's most annoying teenage golf maintenance worker
Can golf still be a spiritual experience in 2024?
There is nothing stranger than a golfer's brain...just ask us
I have the dumbest golf pet peeve, but I can't shake it
If you talk about politics on the course, please, for God's sake, stop
Loving Golf in 2024 is about finding where the money isn't
I believed in the magic of Tiger Woods when I was a kid, but I'm a cynic now
If you can enjoy playing golf alone, you have achieved Nirvana
I took 12 stitches to the head for golf before I even loved it
An annual 'Friends Ryder Cup' trip is the greatest thing in golf
Marshals at public golf courses need to get way meaner
I, and I alone, have the genius tweak to fix the Tour Championship
It cannot be fun to play golf when you're egregiously bad
Confession: I break clubs when I'm mad
Playing golf in bad weather makes me feel alive
Caring what other people think of your golf game is annoying to other people
Sympathize with Rory, because choking sucks