Brad's Journey

Brad was one of the top amateurs in the game of golf, but had noticed his game failing leading to him becoming worse and worse. All of his life he had struggled hitting his driver, but now it was worse than ever causing him to having the yips, a mental block that has been the reason many former players have quit the game. Brad had tried every remedy that he and his private instructor could think of. His efforts still were just a waste of time for him and his coach. With the fall season just around the corner, he started to become extremely desperate in his search for a remedy, but in his quest his problem was only made worse. Without being able to hit his driver he was either playing out of the rough or laying back so far off of the tee that he was now at a disadvantage to the field.

Frustrated and ready to give up the game for good Brad turned to his last resort, asking the gods for help. This idea came to him one night in a dream that the gods, if pleased, would be able to help him. To do so he must offer them a great sacrifice so that they may be pleased and decide to help him prevail over the yips. In order for Brad to perform the sacrificial ritual he first had to break his favorite driver in half and then surround it with himself and all of his current teammates forming a circle. In order to help him please the gods, he had to make the sacrifice in a place of great importance for him. Brad decided to make the location of his sacrifice to be on the zoysia tee box on the Ransom Short Course. This is one of the most manicured areas of turf on the facility and it took a lot of convincing to get his coach to allow him to perform the sacrificial ritual there.The next step for Brad was to set the driver on fire so that he might be able to please the gods. The fire had to stay lit for at least two hours or the gods would think of Brad as impatient and refuse to help him out. After it had been on fire for a while and the driver had turned into ash, his next step was to bury the ashes to put the former driver to rest. Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva came down after he had buried the driver and announced to him that they were pleased with his sacrifice and that in one week’s time he would be able to hit his driver just as well as any other club in his bag. The gods gave Brad one warning and that was if Brad ever cursed the gods after hitting his driver he would go back to hitting it as poorly as he did before the sacrifice.

Overjoyed with no longer having the yips, Brad looked like a new man. With no more frustration over his driving confidence was starting to exude from him. That is a great sign with a long season ahead in which he wanted to further proclaim himself and his team as the best in the nation. In order for them to do so we need our top guys to be able to fire on all cylinders. Brad's sacrifice gave them just what they needed in order to be better prepared for the year.

Author's Note- This is my version of Dasharatha's Sons by Donald A. Mackenzie where Dasharatha provides a horse sacrifice to the gods so that he may be granted an heir to his throne since he was unable to father a child with his queens. I changed it by making it about a golfer sacrificing a club to help him improve. I made some big changes to the story, instead of keeping it as a blood sacrifice I changed it to sacrificing an inanimate object. I also made it more modern day and changed the character and context to what I am around nearly every day. I did base this off something that has actually been going on with one of my fellow teammates, though not near as severe. He had been struggling this summer and is a great player, so I decided to use our readings to think of a way he would come back to the top and felt like the story of Dasharatha’s Sons was a great story for me to use. I have never really been comfortable with blood sacrifices so changed it to where his sacrifice was the just the breaking of an object instead of taking a life.

"Dasharatha's Sons" by Donald A. Mackenzie: from Ramayana PDE, Dasharatha's Sons