Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect

Chapter 1

On My Interprectation of Dreams

I have two things in common with Sigmund Freud. I have a couch in my consulting room. And I ask people to tell me about their dreams. But there the resemblance ends.

The couch is in my basement rec room, near the Grounds of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. The picture frames above it hold not the psychoanalyst's carefully neutral art but a print of a golfer swinging a mid-iron and a flag from the 18th hole at Pebble Beach, signed by Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson and Tom Kite. A four-and-one-quarter-inch putting cup, sunk into the floor, and a universal gym complete the decor. And no one lies on my couch. They sit, and we talk face to face.

Freud believed dreams were a window into the subconscious mind. From them, he spun a web of theory that, too often, boils down to a belief that people are the victims of circumstances beyond their control -- of childhood traumas, parental mistakes, and instinctive impulses.

But the dreams I ask about are not the ones that crept from the unconscious the night before. They are the goals and aspirations a golfer h ... read full excerpt from: Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect ebook