By Michael Mattingly | June 28, 2026
Smithton, IL
It’s the dead of night.
The clock ticks in rhythm. You can turn up the television, pour another drink, or let the music play, but it never stops. When everything else grows quiet, time remains.
Pink Floyd understood it. They even wrote a song called Time on The Dark Side of the Moon…back when there were albums. Madonna got it too, “time keeps ticking”, she said.
And so it is tonight. The clock keeps ticking.
But the time between moments isn’t always linear, is it?
We plant. We train. We practice. We work toward an outcome we cannot always schedule. We measure progress in days, weeks, and years, believing growth should arrive according to our timetable.
It rarely does.
Years ago, a mentor of mine, Dave, gave me the best advice I’ve ever received.
“The path of progress is not always linear.”
Dave an executive vice president at the time, was talking to a young leader in his organization navigating his way through the labyrinth of corporate America.
I’ve since learned he was talking about life.
And maybe golf.
Take the space between golf shots.
Time.
Distance.
Thoughts.
What exists there?
Sometimes focus.
Sometimes doubt.
Sometimes the weight of the shot we just hit.
One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that some of the best golf shots amateurs hit come immediately after some of their worst.
Why?
Perhaps before the bad shot, we’re so afraid of failure that our focus slowly erodes. We tighten our grip. We steer the club instead of swinging it. We stop playing golf and start trying not to fail.
Then the bad shot happens.
The fear has nowhere left to go.
There is release.
The next swing is freer. Easier. More committed.
Nothing changed mechanically.
Something changed emotionally.
Maybe that’s what separates amateurs from professionals.
Not that professionals avoid bad shots. They don’t. I watched Rory McIlroy skip a ball across the water before it somehow found the fairway this week. I watched Wyndham Clark spend much of last Sunday flirting with disaster at Oakmont.
Watching Scottie Scheffler, though, I wonder if freedom is his greatest gift.
As Saturday evening settles over the Travelers Championship, there’s a familiar sight atop the leaderboard.
Scottie is there again.
Not because he never comes up short. He did exactly that a week ago at the U.S. Open.
But there seems to be no emotional residue.
A swing happens. It ends. The next one begins.
When his round is over, he’s rolling putts while his young son tugs at his leg, blissfully unaware that the best golfer in the world is preparing for another Sunday.
It looks so ordinary.
It isn’t.
Most golfers don’t play one shot at a time.
We play the memory of the last one.
A missed shot becomes a question.
A good shot becomes an expectation.
Soon the round is no longer something we’re playing.
It’s something we’re managing.
Maybe that’s why the best swing often comes after the worst one.
Fear has already spent itself.
Scottie seems to begin there.
Wyndham Clark offers a different expression of the same idea.
For another week he found himself answering questions about mistakes that had nothing to do with the shot standing in front of him. He answered them directly. Without defensiveness.
Then he walked back inside the ropes.
At some point, that’s all anyone can do.
Not rewrite yesterday.
Not carry it forever.
Just return to the present tense.
Golf has a habit of reducing people to a single moment.
Players resist that reduction simply by continuing.
And maybe life isn’t so different.
Life rarely announces its transitions.
We move through unmarked endings without realizing they are endings at all.
The last time you watch Saturday morning cartoons.
The last endless summer afternoon that seems as though it will never end.
The last basketball game with friends you’ve known since kindergarten.
The last time someone tells you they love you.
The moment passes cleanly.
Meaning arrives later.
Maybe that’s why we spend so many quiet nights reaching backward through memory. Not because we want to relive those moments, but because we never realized we were living them for the last time.
We carry versions of ourselves that no longer exist.
Just as we carry golf shots that are already gone.
Looking back, Dave was right.
The path of progress is not always linear.
Neither is healing.
Neither is forgiveness.
Neither is golf.
The game isn’t played only in swings.
It’s played in what we’re willing to let end.
Scottie Scheffler shows us what it looks like when nothing lingers.
Wyndham Clark shows us what it looks like to return anyway.
The difference, in the end, isn’t talent.
It’s weight.
What we carry forward.
And what we finally decide to leave behind before the next shot begins.
Sunday will tell the tale of who does that best.
Enjoy Your Sunday – MWM
Michael Mattingly is a freelance journalist from Smithton, Illinois, with a background in advanced mathematics and creative writing. He is a student of the game of golf, drawn to its pressure, rhythm, and unpredictability. He is also an avid St. Louis Cardinals fan and a loyal Chicago Bears supporter.
