charlie lamb

My name is Charlie Lamb, I am from Arlington, Va, and I love golf. Growing up, I was always baseball. In the morning I would wake up early before school, so I could throw with my dad. I played on my brother's coaches pitch all-star team when I was in tee ball. Although everyone knows you can't actually tell if a 5 year old is going to be the next Derek Jeter, people thought I would be, especially me. My glory days continued until everyone just seemed to catch up. Kids grew faster than I did, and although I was still good, I wasn't great like I used to be. I started to stress about why I was falling off, I would get nervous at the plate, and get way too down on myself. When I didn't make the varsity team as an 8th grader, a comical goal in hindsight, I quit. So I picked up golf.

I played golf as a kid very casually with my friends and my dad but never competitively. When I played casually, I was good. I beat my dad, who has played all his life, almost every time. At this point, my freshman year in high school, I had 4 more years of sports to go, so I decided why not play competitive golf. Again, in 20-20 hindsight, my expectations were far from realistic, but I still had hopes of playing in college. I fell in love with the practice, the playing and getting better. I was getting better, too, but hat was until the tournaments came where it actually mattered. I couldn't quite put all the pieces together during the tournaments, and it drove me crazy. Up until my junior year, I had aspirations of playing in college but no scores to show for it. I finally threw in the towel, but instead of quitting, I just played a much more relaxed style of golf because now it really didn't matter. Not surprisingly, the scores began come. I even had colleges reach out after my junior summer, but I didn't want to go back down that path.

Although I haven't picked up a baseball in quite some time, I'm sure my softball days are ahead of me. As for golf, it's as therapeutic as ever despite the mental challenges it still brings.

Side note: I'm not actually a social media manager, public speaker, or life coach from Athens. I just chose some random things.