Chess and Golf

My obsession with chess caught me by surprise. I had never played chess before and had only a minimal understanding of the rules. I didn’t set about looking to fill a need in my life. I simply needed an app to open on my phone that wasn’t Twitter news in November of 2020. And then I realized I could play (and occasionally beat!) other actual humans. And then I watched Queen’s Gambit and read Bobby Fischer Goes to War. And then I found GothamChess. And, eventually, made my way back to Twitter and #chesspunks. My obsession is now total.

My childhood was dominated by sports. I was obsessed with baseball, both playing, watching and history, in the same way I am with chess now. By my mid-20s the sports were down to just softball and golf, both of which I played rather well and competitively. However, between various injuries and the time requirements involved conflicting with a new family life raising twins, both activities fell by the wayside in my 30s and 40s, apparently leaving a void that chess was waiting to fill.

The void, however, wasn’t for competition, although I do enjoy that. The void was not having something to constantly work at and improve- for decades and decades. To me, that is what golf provides for so many people, for instance my father, and I see many parallels between the two activities.

Both activities are individual pursuits where each participant has their own personal goals, even though both can be occasionally played in teams. Unlike team sports, chess and golf each have an objective measure of your progress. In chess, this is the ELO rating. In golf, it is your handicap, or average number of strokes above par. Although these numbers have their differences, both can serve a short-hand for others about just how good you are at these games. A handicap under 9 might give you the same kind of gravitas at the golf club as a rating above 1800 would at the chess club (although I’m still struggling to draw those lines and figure out what a “decent chess player” looks like in terms of what a “decent golfer” looks like).

Although maybe not profound, I’m also struck by the similar structure between golf and chess. Each golf hole has an opening (the drive), a middlegame (your irons, or approach shot) and the endgame (chipping and putting). Like chess players, golfers typically prefer one of these elements above the others, in terms of actual play, desire to practice and its relative importance. Selling new drivers to golfers is likely a billion dollar industry. Do all these mediocre golfers need these technologically advanced drivers? They need them just as much as they need a Chessable opening course with 20 lines of theory they will never see. Back in my golfing days I would happily go to the driving range and hit irons til I had blistered hands, the puzzle rush of the golfing world. I so hated the driver, that I eventually I gave it up altogether, preferring to play it safe with an iron off the tee just to avoid ruining my hole in the opening- playing the London System of golf if you will. Many would argue the only way to truly lower your handicap is to spend hours grinding on the putting green. While likely true, that always left me equal parts bored and frustrated- just like endgame studies leave me. Golfer debate the question- Is the driving range the best way to improve your game, or do you need to be actually placing 2-3 times a week?

While I’m sure it isn’t true for all golfers, I do think there is an important difference between how golfers view their often life-long quest for improvement to how chess players view it. My dad, for instance, has played golf for almost 70 years. For probably 60 of those years, he held roughly the same handicap, around 10, making him a pretty good golfer. For the whole of those 60 years, he has been constantly trying to improve. It would be a lie to say that my dad has never been frustrated by the state of his golf game, or hasn’t threatened to quit altogether numerous times, but I still believe the overall attitude to golf improvement is better than the chess improvement.

Even though one’s handicap may stay the same, lots of learning can still occur and no one talks about a plateau with such self-loathing that takes place among chess improvers. For instance, a golfer may spend some time after being frustrated in a sand trap working on how to hit those shots and become genuinely better at them. But the reality is that over the course of a month, there will be very few actual chances where that skill saves all that many shots- likely not enough to change their overall handicap. But no one lectures that golfer about how they are wasting their time practicing that skill while they are still shooting 85 because a few times a round they hit a drive into the woods or three-putt. And at the end of the day they are happy to have learned a skill and consider themselves (rightly I would argue) a better golfer regardless of if the handicap remained where it was before the new skill was added.

I do think there are two very real reasons that chess players have this different attitude and they may honestly be hard to change. The first is the binary nature of the chess match. At the end of the day you are either winning or losing (well, okay, you can draw also) against an opponent. That makes if far more difficult to take away anything positive and find other ways to evaluate your game for places you are truly improved. Golf gives you tons of these opportunities- a concrete score on each hole for one. Perhaps you had a bad round, but had three pars in a row at one point. Or maybe you are working on putting, and again, had a bad round, but one with no three-putt holes. It is easy to feel progress even when they don’t show in the final score or your overall handicap (average).

The second is that in golf there are very real physical limitations that separate your average aging weekend warriors from the professionals. Naturally there are exceptions, but your average 60-year old simply isn’t going to hit the ball as far as someone in their 20s. As such, it requires a certain amount of improvement just to stand still, but knowing there is a physical limitation to, say, shooting below par, for most people makes a steady handicap much easier to take. Whereas in chess, there is no physical barrier to my play. I can move the pieces where they need to go. Therefore, any failure to do is purely mental and should be under my control, regardless of my age.

I don’t have a great counter to this second barrier, to be honest. I do think that the barrier to entry in the chess community is a bit too high. The world is filled with terrible golfers out there enjoying themselves and talking about the newest driver they want to buy. Maybe this is starting to change with the rise of the #chesspunks, but I’ve always had the sense that unless you weren’t a Master or 1800 you couldn’t dare speak about chess or have fun playing it. I’m happy to see an on-line community developing that supports people just starting out (and maybe that has always existed in chess clubs- I confess to not having any experience there). Or maybe we all just need to be a little easier on ourselves and try and have some more fun.

I do really want to improve at chess, very much so, but also, I am just happy to have found an activity I love that promises a lifetime of always being able to learn something new and improve.