Golf in Florida in March...sense-ical

Our enjoyment of golf is multifaceted, a perspective that grows with each year we play. When we are just starting out, all we have is our score to provide us our main source of pleasure. We chronicle with joy our progress from over-par scores to getting our first par, then first birdie, then if we’re really good—and lucky—we may experience a jackpot of eagles, a hole-in-one and a double eagle in tandem with lowering handicaps.

But that’s just surface stuff. Our score improvement can only take us so far and our bliss last just long enough before we need our relationship with the game to deepen, which it does with time. What really gets us going is the experience. The comfort of spending time with others, the friendship, the laughter, the fresh air, all of it gives us the satisfaction we find in no other sport.

Fueling our experience is our sensuous nature. Not sensual, mind you, but playing golf does arouse us all the same, and the senses it brings to life are smell, sight, sound, and touch.

I hardly ever get to act on this impulse, but one of the nicest places and times to play golf is in Florida in March. That’s why I find the Florida swing of the PGA Tour the most satisfying to watch of the places it goes in the first half of its season, which is when the Northern half of the country impatiently waits to get out of winter.

The tour concludes its Florida swing with this week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by MasterCard. Love will be in the air this week at Bay Hill—there’s the sensual part—to honor the first A.P. Invitational held after Palmer’s death in September. But I will be sad to see the Sunshine State events end, although I know it means improved weather is creeping along for all golfers. Playing golf in Florida in March has a unique hold on how my senses feel. And seeing the pros play in Florida for a few weeks reminds me of my times there in March when I’ve been able to escape for a trip from the Northeast, and sadly this month, a reminder of a hoped-for trip I had planned and had to cancel.

In the Florida-March element, the air feels and smells new and in transition, the sun feels just warm enough, the Bermuda grass and palm trees are a distinct visual stimulant and of a different texture than I’m normally used to, the wildlife sounds are unique, the air feels more like it wants to hug you like a blanket at night, and the mix of water hazards and housing in and through a course’s layout says Florida loud and clear. Whenever you could escape to play golf there it was always a good feeling to get a jump on the golf season over your regular golf mates still in snow.

Summer has its heat that causes oily muscles, and fall has stimulating cool air that makes one feel alive and vibrant—I enjoy both. But playing golf in Florida in March is an environment that I’ve never forgotten, a stimulant to my golf senses that made a permanent memory.