The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Folks, we made it. On Thursday night at my Maryland home, the humidity was down. The windows were open and up. There was football on the TV.

It’s September. There’s never a bad month to play golf. But the best one is September. Like a great piece of corn in August or some fruit that pops during a specific season, golf this month in a great majority of the United States is elevated. This is your official pep talk, your reminder to attack this holiday weekend and this month with an enthusiasm previously unknown to mankind, to quote a suspended football coach.

It’s hard to slow down and value many of the things that are lost in the stresses and constant shuffle of adulthood getting from day to day. There’s far less time for the curiosity of your youth. But one advantage over young naïveté: a real understanding of and gratitude for the blessing of a good weather day. You value them. They make you slow down for a moment. They’re harder to overlook. You more easily recognize how good you got it out there on the golf course. Weather talk can be less about small talk and more about a real recognition of what’s around you.

At my son’s practice the other night, a fellow dad remarked on how the temperature had come down while the breeze had picked up. He was enthused about maybe just “opening the windows tonight!” I didn’t know his name yet and hadn’t formally met him but at that moment, and with a knowing head nod, I felt as connected to him as if he were my brother. It was 70 degrees and the sky was on fire. This was reason alone to feel good and grateful.

September is full of these days. The best days. Great days for golf and for more than golf. Sure, there will be some that remind us of the weather horrors we left behind in July and August. But the best are here and now.