If you’ve ever had that feeling that you wish you could just turn back time, just a little time even, and start over, make another choice, take a different path, you know what it is to want a mulligan.
A mulligan is a do-over, a second shot at something. Named, supposedly, after a Canadian golfer of the first half of the twentieth century, David B. Mulligan, it is the chance to redo a bad shot without counting the first try at it against you. Seriously?! We feel that this just goes to show how the game of golf can often exist in a fantasy world.
Because when we hear that crunch of metal after backing into some obstacle to a parking place, or realize we have let fall some prized pair of earrings down the drain never to be seen again, we know there is no such thing as a mulligan. What’s done is done. So, we suck it up and move on.
On the other hand, golf is golf. And wouldn’t it be nice if life were more forgiving and more like a friendly eighteen holes of golf? A nice stroll across the manicured fairways and greens, the clack of the golfclub against the hard little ball, and the occasional mulligan when something went wrong? Sounds pretty nice, actually.