#Not A Race
It Is Not A Race
All previous days are over, consigned to be memories joked about in the future, because today is all they have. Thoughts of tomorrow and what that means seems to have filtered into each players’ mind. The hush around the putting green punctuates the heavy air more than the pockets of nervous laughter, silenced almost before they are breathed into life.
Some are here for the first time. They are nervous, their looks tell you more than their swings, groomed for pressure, but have they been grooved for something like this. False bravado they carry with them as shields, which they hope will remain strong through the first round and each that follow.
Others have been here before, maybe five times or maybe they are back from a first year on the Sunshine Tour. The rigours and tough nature that is the Sunshine Tour, the Monday qualifiers week in and week out, the money spent before it has even been earned. Their investment in the future uncertain and up to the randomness that a qualifier often dishes up. For a year they struggled, grafted, worked hard to earn their opportunity and big break that would mean they need not return to the dreaded week that is qualifying school. Whether they were handed that break or the opportunity never arose, that does not matter, that is the past. Today they find themselves in the present and that means they are once more here, amongst the 90 plus amateurs attempting to fulfil their dream on the green fields of Bloem and Schoeman Park.
If you were to speak to the amateurs, they would tell you this has been their goal for years, to become a pro on the main tour, and this would have been the same tune told by those last year, who now tee it up with the new hopefuls. This year though they will play a different note and a different game. This is because of the knowledge their last year has provided them, this goal, this dream is not the end, but merely a step that simply needs to be taken before the next one can be made.
The steps lead towards their dream and will only get steeper from this moment. Five rounds, five steps that is all this week is. Everyone who tees it up, has spent most their life playing this game, and for the greater portion of that it has been simply that, a game. This week that changes, it now becomes their destiny and after that it will become their life.
For now the quiet remains, and tomorrow they take another step and again another after that…
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