Diving (or Backpacking) and Golf

“I wrote this a while back for my website www.aquacorps.com

Diving and Golf
by Capt. Jim Hinckley

Aqua Shack owner/instructor/philosopher does a tongue-in-cheek comparison of Diving and Golf.

Disclaimer: Before all you golfers out there get up at arms and ready to persecute me for defaming the holy sport, I want everyone to know:

1. I have nothing against golf or golfers; some of my best friends are golfers. Also the two need not be mutually exclusive. Many divers golf and many golfers dive. Let's ALL lighten up and not take ourselves so seriously. After all, this is supposed to be fun!
2. If you think golf is what the article is about anyway, you're taking the example literally, better known as missing the point!
3. The opinions expressed are in no way to be construed to be those of PADI, TDI, NAUI, the USCG, etc., etc., etc., .etc...

Diving and Golf
By Capt. Jim Hinckley

Owning a dive shop and having been an Instructor for many years, I am constantly running into former dive students both here in the dive shop and on the street. Recently, one such former student came into the Aqua Shack for the first time since we opened in Marlboro over two years ago. I hadn't seen him in about ten years. I asked him how he was and exchanged the usual pleasantries. After a while I asked him if he had been diving lately - his response, "No, I gave it up for golf ". MY GOD, I thought, what a premise for an article!

I mean, to choose golf over diving is crazy in the first place, and secondly...why choose? Just because you do one doesn't mean you can't do the other. Personally, I never cottoned much to golf. I'd occasionally jump in the water hazards with a mask and fins to look for lost balls, but whacking a little white ball around with the final goal of putting it into a wee subterranean cup in a certain number of strokes seems a bit pointless to me. I suppose my golfing role models, my father and my uncle, two grown men beating themselves up after a bad round of 18, added to my perception of golf as a form of existential penance. The entire exercise reeked of performing to a standard, a hell of a thing to do on your "day off".

For me, diving has no standard at all. Diving involves gazing into small pieces of unfettered nature, which beats the red, yellow or plaid pants off of replacing divots. To me the entire golf course looks like one big, manicured divot hacked out of the surrounding forest, think about it! I've always been a bit "anti-civilization", at least between meals; nothing beats a good restaurant when you're hungry.

Golfing strikes me as an attempt to master the environment, while diving seems more like dissolving into it. Golf seems like an extension of our "man above nature" view, diving is my attempt to rejoin it. Donning my mask and fins and jumping into almost any body of water I could find, was an activity that promised the wonders of the universe. Golf only held the promise of failure.

Why all this golf bashing? Who knows? Maybe this former student I told you about got me thinking about the modern tendency to take that "performance oriented" attitude to sea. It seems more and more divers have the urge to out-dive the other, to live to up to some standard, to achieve God knows what goal. We always seem to have to have some standard. Why can't we just dive for the sake of diving and enjoy it for what it is. I could go hunting and not catch a thing, or go artifact collecting and not retrieve a thing, hell... I could be a blind and not even see a thing on a dive and I would still love diving because much of the reason I dive is for the escape; not at all what I see, catch or retrieve.

When I'm diving, I don't think of anything but the dive. I'm not thinking about the store, work, the bills, home or the dogs. Not even my lovely wife really enters my mind. I am totally consumed and focused on the dive. Not in an intense sort of way as though it were "work", but more like a meditative sort of way, which is totally involving and ultimately relaxing.

We have prizes for the biggest lobster, biggest and most scallops, most logged dives, and no official prize (unless you count corporate sponsorships) but much admiration for the deepest dive. We have that huge lobster stuffed and mounted to display on the walls in our dive room at home or above the desk in the office, next to the blow-up of the framed photo of ourselves holding that monster fish we speared last summer.

We have our portholes and brass valves stripped from wrecks and polished up to display as though they were made of 24 kt. solid gold. All of this is a long step from meditating on small slices of unfettered nature, a long step from what brought me to diving in the first place.

Perhaps this highly achievement oriented attitude is a sign of our times, perhaps it's just a part of the human package. I happen to believe humans operate at a level not much higher than most animals. We like to think we're so superior but in reality most of our responses to most situations are basically instinctual, albeit perhaps tempered by millions years of "civilization". Making diving into a "performance thing" or a competition is much like some long removed form of instinctive hunting/gathering ritual or macho dominance display.

We all seem to be prone to the "performance thing"... to living up to some external standard in an attempt to find internal reward. I've even recently seen an ad campaign for some video game that says "If you're going to sit on the couch, at least keep score." I mean, please!

Many divers are guilty of coming home some Sunday afternoon feeling totally inadequate. We're ready to kick the dog and yell at the wife or kids, because the day's diving went poorly (re: vis sucked, no lobster, scallops, artifacts, pictures, etc.) and they've somehow taken it as a horrible reflection of their very "selves".

We sometimes refuse to acknowledge that on any given day a diver encounters a myriad of variables that are out of our control. You aren't 100% the author of your own fate, on the ocean you're not even close! If the lobster or scallops never show, the party never starts. You can't catch what isn't there. Sometimes you can't even go if the wind blows too hard, or if the seas are too rough, or if the visibility is zero! None of this is under your control.

Frustrating as this may seem, I prefer it that way. I find it challenging, exciting and interesting to not know exactly what I'll encounter. In diving, we move into the world below, we drift into things bigger than ourselves, and to me, that's excitement! Given the choice, I'd rather be a fully integrated part of the world than lord and master over it. In diving, I find that integration.

For those who seek to dominate their environment, the oceans and seas of the world are a hell of a place to look. For those who desire to perform to a standard while diving, perhaps someone should build a divers theme park. Imagine it..., 18 separate bodies of water in a well manicured weather controlled, dome covered, mini-environment.

We could have a lobster site, a scallop site, and a wreck site seeded with real authentic artificial artifacts, mass produced out of brass plated plastic with a slight green patina for realism, just waiting to be picked clean.

There would be divesite full of dolphin for petting. Of course dolphin are tough to catch, unpredictable at show time and expensive to feed and keep alive, not to mention totally illegal to harvest from the wild so we would have to use a silicone covered, computer controlled robotic dolphin. But what the heck, no one will ever know, they'll look real in the pictures.

Our park wouldn't be complete without a site with an artificially produced current for a drift dive. Lastly of course the most popular, the shark dive with the sharks in the cages (rather than us!). Each divesite could offer a new dive under totally controlled conditions. If things began to get too rough or out of hand, divemasters at each site would simply "turn off" the dive, much like a programmed scene from the "Holo-deck" on the Starship Enterprise.

Of course we would keep score on underwater slates set up in each site, or what would be the sense. At days end we would sip cocktails on a waterside patio next to the 18th site watching an artificial sunset. Lastly, when our day came to an end, we would go home nine Sundays out of ten, feeling like sub-standard jackasses who couldn't quite cut the mustard in the real world.

Keep Diving (and Backpacking) and Be Safe,

Capt. Jim”

“WTF? Captain Jim dives after filling his bacpack with golf balls?”

“I know a couple of divers who make good money diving for golf balls at golf courses.

Last Saturday my ball was sitting barely in the water. Intead of taking the strok penalty and drop I played it out of the water and covered myself with water and mud head to toe.”

“Great article! I love the message it sends. I don't want to bash on guys that do the 50 peaks (I've thought about doing it too), but really, who are they doing that for? For themselves? Hell no, so they can brag about it.

I love to go to exotic places on my hikes. One reason I like mixing photography with backpacking is that I have trophies for when I'm done. "You may have seen Yosemite, but look what I got a picture of. You gotta be way more commited to get that shot!" But in reality, some of my most enjoyable hikes have been in the regional park 10 minutes from my front door.”

“Ya know, diving and backpacking aren't all that different. It's just that with backpacking you go up to come back down, and with diving you go down to come back up. Wow, it's almost like the yin and the yang...

But anyway, to me, both are recreational activities. Don't hold yourself to a standard; there's a good chance you'll be disappointed if you do, which to me, would defeat the whole experience. Rather just take the experience for what it is and just accept the tranquility that comes with it. Future you will thank you.
last edited: 2/15/05 7:32:34 PM”

“LOL, I love golf. It's a game in which almost everybody sucks and they're supposed to be on the honor system for scoring. Many people straight up lie and others bend the rules. Infinite mulligans, not counting the drop, etc. The best part is the anger. You can't keep a straight face as your buddy beats his club against a tree and chucks it into the woods.”

“Hey Capt. Jim, I tried golf and sucked at it. For many I guess it is relaxing, to each his own I say. If I had my choice I'd be living your life. I breezed over your website and have come to realize you are the guy I always wanted to be. I'm building my warchest right now so I can get there. My life isn't too shabby just a little to conventional. Whatever life we want is out there, it is up to us to live it.”

“Golf is a person's struggle with himself to attain the unobtainable... perfection. Golf is a very demanding sport. Unlike other sports golf is not about physical domination. It's about timing, feel, finesse, control, and most importantly, handling pressure. Your average Joe going out there to hit balls around a golf course, taking mulligans, disobeying the rules of golf... that isn't playing golf. That's just hitting a golf ball, another way to kill an afternoon outside enjoying the beautiful weather.


For me golf is like Texas Holdem. Texas Holdem loses all of it's subtlety without the added pressure of real money on the line. When you don't have the pressure of the consequences of mistakes you make if you hit a bad shot... you lose all the pressure and you might as well have gone to a driving range to hit golf balls.

The golf swing is mechanically a very complex body motion. Because it's not a natural body movement it's very hard to learn, and takes years to master. When the pressure is stepped up... whether it be you approaching a personal best score, a chance to make a birdie on a hole and win the hole, or playing Net games for money with a $20 spot laying on the line... that is when golf truly becomes a game. Your adrenaline starts pumping through your veins, your muscles become stronger, your body wants to move faster, your tempo increases... but you must remain in control. Without that control you will blast shots to the left, right, or way past the hole. The difference in percentages of made putts decreases exponentially as you get farther away from the hole... so the difference in %chance to make a putt from 5 feet to 15 feet is unbelievable. If you let fear take over... the fear of your adrenaline taking control of your shot... often times you let up on the shot and hit it well short.

Imagine the pressure Tiger Woods must face when walking up to the #18 hole at TCP Sawgrass. It's all the pressure of a kicker kicking the game winning field goal at the end of the game... but instead of once... he has to hit the perfect shot 4-5 times on just this ONE hole. Feeling the pressure... remaining in control... and hitting that perfect shot. That's a feeling very hard to duplicate.

I've dived... I've hiked... I've mountain biked... I've road biked... while they are all very similar in that they occur outdoors, the highs and rewards you get from each sport is drastically different and just cannot be compared.”

“That is the very reason I don't golf. You would be laughing at ME. I just don't have the patience for that game. So I don't golf because I would likely fling a club into the woods only to hit a duffer looking for his ball!”

“Chicago, I've been out with my brother when he decided it was 'time to replace a club'. I love watching him go through the tantrum. I think the problem with golf is that it's a sport everybody can get in on and they all feel they have to play like Tiger Woods. That's like dropping in at the rec. center hockey game on Friday night and expecting to play like Mario Lemieux. We're all still partaking in the sport, we're just not any good at it. I just think of all the cheating as a 'pay as you go' handicap ;^) Most people don't take the time to get an 'official' handicap so they do what they can to balance their game out.”