Year after year, month after month, week after week, hour after hour and minute after minute, you observe golfers attempting to strike a golf ball with a golf club. These people aren’t world class athletes but they have athletic ability. They aren’t physically ripped but they have adequate sinew in some of the right places. They are reasonably intelligent — intelligent enough to understand the task at hand. Even so, they hustle to spend thousands of dollars for expert instruction, just to affirm that the expert instruction agrees with previous expert instruction, with previous video instruction, with previous instruction manuals, with previous books by every PGA Champion that every lived, and most important, with previous instruction from fellow players. They have devoted mind, body and soul, money and time, to countless hours of repetitive practice to accomplish one basic skill — to strike a golf ball in the general proximity of the center of the face of a golf club. The ball in no way attempts to avoid this strike. It doesn’t weave, dodge or duck. Very calmly, it sits there, composed, anticipating a thrilling flight but most often disappointed by a bumpy ride. Some would say the balls get to know their owners and thus have no high flown expectations. In their fruitless search of even modest success, all golfers, especially senior golfers, are essentially ignorant about the secret to golfing mastery. They understand the importance of physical fitness and flexibility. They do something about both. They understand the urgency for tempo and balance. They improve both. They understand swing plane, spine angle and follow-through. They studiously repeat all three. And still, despite using an instrument that approaches the size of a squash racket, they fail time and again, as did their ancestors who, by today’s standards, used prehistoric equipment. Yet a tiny minority of those very ancestors could strike the ball dead center almost every time, as do a minority of players today. And please don’t be confused. The objective is not about propelling a golf ball straight or high or low or long. The objective is simply for the center of the club — any club — to meet the center of the ball — any ball. The preponderance of evidence proves that this objective is physically impossible for the vast majority of golfers, for a simple reason. They do not possess one key physical ability, the vital ability, needed to accomplish this one basic  act — the raw ability to concentrate. Admit it. Until now, you didn’t think of concentration as a skill, asset or physical endowment like running, jumping and throwing. You thought concentration was some sort of grit or willpower that you turn on and off, willy nilly; and you punished yourself repeatedly for lacking proper disposition, temperament and character. Now you know the truth. Concentration is an ability, like singing. Like dozens of other God-given talents. It just exists, nestled in your DNA. You either have it or you don’t. Of course, what little you do have you begin to lose as you age. And as you age, you also suffer memory loss. Therefore, during the elapsed two seconds of a golf swing, whatever concentration  you begin with takes a leave of absence — time and time again. But you won’t be dissuaded. You stay with it, firm in the knowledge that accidentally, when you least expect it, your club will strike the center of the ball. Perhaps once. Perhaps twice. Enough to promise that tomorrow you vow to concentrate even more.