Fred Shoemaker's Extraordinary Golf

What do these text suggest to you about the idea that we gain personal satisfaction through genuine involvement?

Life satisfaction is the way people evaluate their lives, directions and the options they have in place for the future. Having personal satisfaction is a measure of well-being, satisfaction on relations with others, achieved goals, self-concepts, and self-perceived ability. Personal satisfaction can also be gained from economic standing, education, experiences, residence, hobbies, sports, movies, and as well as many other topics. Though, stated by Fred Shoemaker, “It is possible to gain satisfaction and reward when we pursue our own “best game”. However, that our attitudes, can prevent us from genuinely involving ourselves
in what we do.” With Fred’s suggestion, and statement, we can illustrate that personal satisfaction can be ruined by our attitudes, as it can prevent us from genuinely involving ourselves in what we do.

Extraordinary Golf is a story that showcases a nameless man going through the experience of how his attitude reflected on his genuine involvement in a game; causing his personal satisfaction to debach.
The excerpt starts off with a reflection and a shift in time which illustrates the attitude and thoughts after the trip to Africa. The man in “Extraordinary Golf “ is shown through a first person perspective, through the eyes of the author himself; which gives an insight to how the character changed and progressed during the story. Over the course of the story, the man is first shown to be contradicting his words, and creating a biased statement towards “A lavish lifestyle” he had before arriving in Africa. In paragraph two, section five, the man is narrating how the golf area was “were indistinguishable, and that the greens were really “brown” - but I was in no position to be picky. I wanted to tee it up,” - showcasing the man’s views to be arrogant and contradicting. Over the course of the story, the man meets Kojo, a Ghanaian golf champ who carries the same title as the man carried in Africa, “American Golf Champion”. As the man meets Kojo, his description of him is slightly alarming, as it shows how he think of Kojo’s materials as outdated, and the mindset that he will win the game, illustrating his true nature. Though, as the game carries on, the effect and adrenaline of wanting to win and coming out on top, ended up with bringing out the true nature of the man, and
destroying the personal satisfaction from a genuine involvement.

With genuine involvement, and gaining personal satisfaction, it can also root from personal experiences as well.
With the man in “Extraordinary Golf”, he is shown to be playing golf from genuine involvement, which increasingly leads to destroying the idea, and leading to personal satisfaction of winning. At the start of the story, the reader is revealed to the idea of how the man likes to play golf, and enjoys it immensely. Though, the idea is ruined by the mindset of beating Kojo and holding up an image.

With the story illustrating a picture where genuine involvement and personal satisfaction can be ruined by the sheer lack of control on a person's attitude, whether we admit it or not, we prohibit ourselves from experiencing the satisfaction as our desire to win, or our “true nature” fall upon us. Ultimately, our attitude on during the situation, or on it, determines whether or not we simply allow ourselves to enjoy the personal satisfaction from simple things, such as
hobbies.