Sunday Essay's #18: The Parable of the Golfer in the Storm

beautiful idiocy on full display.

There was a thunderstorm rolling through Florida yesterday afternoon.

The kind where the sky goes charcoal gray in about thirty seconds, the wind whips, and the cracks of thunder shake the walls like mortar shells are landing outside your window.

I happened to glance out my window at the golf course.

Pelting rain, palm trees swaying at angles they really shouldn’t.

Really cool lightning splitting the skies in shades of light blue, yellow, and pink.

And then…..

A foursome of golfers still out there, clearly distressed.

Well, 3 out of 4 were.

The one outlier wasn’t going to let something like an insane tropical thunderstorm in arguably the most notoriously dangerous area on the globe for them stop him from finishing up the hole after his sweet approach shot.

“F—- you guys, I’m finishing this out! I don’t care!”

The group was all around my age.

All dressed in that super-patterned, bright golf stuff, the hats with block letters on them, the whole thing.

Their protests, while reasonable, were also kind of funny:

“I can’t even watch”

“Bro this is the stupidest shit I’ve ever seen”

The guy on the back of the golf cart resigned himself to not even being able to watch, choosing to stare longingly at the ground as puddles formed on the cart path.

Then our hero trotted out there in his paisley shirt and salmon shorts.

Didn’t even try to that little fake “half jog, I’m trying to hurry” thing people do when you hold doors for them at the store.

He walked out with his putter, aka a metal rod in a flat open field while the country’s most reputable lightning went off in four different directions around him.

The green squishing with every step.

He addressed his ball, which sat about 9 feet from the cup, slightly uphill.

He drew his putter back pretty far (the green was already so soaked it probably felt like playing mini golf in the sand), and whacked the ball.

I thought for sure he had screwed it up.

It started off hot, rolling at a good clip, slowed considerably….and then totally disappeared off the horizon.

“I F—- TOLD YOU!!”

You would’ve thought our boy just won The Masters.

He ran (like actually ran this time) back to the cart, and hopped on the back.

One of the guys offered the congratulatory dap, the other two just wanted to get the hell out of there.

As they pulled away, that’s when I saw it:

The biggest, ear-to-ear grin from a dude who knows he did something so stupid and awesome at the same time.

Sure, it was objectively dumb and reckless.

But he had guts.

He’s got a great story to tell now.

(Plus a witness he’ll never know about.)

The Timing Was Glorious

I’m not going to leave this short Sunday Essay dripping in obvious CTA’s or cliche’s.

Just try really hard like the golfer did!1!!!

Nobody wants that.

Why it hit so hard, though?

Why I was affixed to my window, watching this dude like he was Scottie Scheffler on the 18th at The Open?

That we can extrapolate.

Super Optimizooor Bubble People

Lately, my timeline has really been irking me.

We talk a lot about health & wellness here.

That’s a good thing!

But I’ve always really, really rejected bowing to the altar of the Oura Ring or the Apple Watch, or making deities of health routines.

Reels or podcast clips about how a couple of glasses of red wine “ruined my sleep score for four days!”, or alcohol-phobia in general (def a future essay).

19-step morning routines.

Elaborate, down-to-the-minute planners.

(Acceptable if you’re Jamie Dimon or something...but are you?)

Talking head videos about the moral grandstanding of not going out, not deviating from the set plan, simultaneously glorifying rigidity and frowning upon risk.

It seems as if the whole culture is in a collective “prevent defense”, and as many an American father has said over the years:

The only thing the “prevent” defense prevents is a win.

You don’t become the heavyweight champion by shelling up for 12 rounds.

So while the rest of the world is seemingly obsessing over their Strava stats or streaming Love Island, measuring macros or scarfing garbage, it was objectively great to see some good old fashioned reckless abandon pay off.

This guy didn’t care about his HRV (probably doesn’t even know what that is) or what his BPM was in the moment.

To their credit, none of the guys had their phones out, either.

This stunt wasn’t measured, it wasn’t performative.

It wasn’t done for a spreadsheet, for engagement, or for clout.

The putt in the wicked storm was an (admittedly really stupid) exercise of the heart and soul.

Pure passion-fueled use of free will.

For those very reasons, I was probably smiling bigger than the golfer himself from inside the safe confines of my living room once they rolled away.

You just gotta love it.

I hope this was inspiring to you guys, too.

Sometimes you just have to shoot your damn shot.

Just don’t go risking your life in the process 😝

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Chat this week <3

-John Abbate

6.28.2026