Try to think back to the last time you bought a new piece of furniture. You likely brought it home, and opened the box to begin assembling. Many of us try to pridefully push the assembly diagrams to the side, armed with the thoughts of “how hard can this really be?”
It’s nearly inevitable though, that we come back at some point to the instruction pamphlet. Whether it’s after staring at the pieces and parts for 15 minutes before we give up, or after we’ve finished the build and have five extra pieces left over.
If we were maybe a little more systematic and pragmatic in our approach though, we’d likely all learn that if we just slowed down and tried our hardest to learn the material and also learn why we’re doing it this way, that we’d be in a much better spot to operate from (and probably have a much sturdier piece of furniture).
It was almost 25 years ago that Jim Swartley started to wonder why about the game of golf. When he began to really think about it, it seemed so obvious.
“I thought that if I really wanted to learn to play the game of golf, I should know the rules. So, I started taking some rules seminars so that I knew what to do when something came up.”
That mentality didn’t stop there though for the retired Ophthalmologist. It wasn’t long after immersing himself in the rules of the game that he began to study a piece of golf paraphernalia that we all know (or at least think we do): the scorecard.
“I was so interested in the slope and course rating numbers, I knew I needed to educate myself a little more,” Swartley says.
So, it shouldn’t be surprising that he began volunteering for the Idaho Golf Associations Course Rating committee. It was there that Swartley learned the ins and outs of how courses in the state are rated for handicap purposes so that the game can be played fairly across a wide variety of players, with a wide variety of skills.
This all eventually led to Swartley becoming a member of the IGA’s Board of Directors, where he served as the secretary throughout his tenure. During that time, things at the IGA and within the state of Idaho changed. A lot.
“We’ve grown exponentially in our membership numbers as the state has grown, but we’ve also changed in many ways as far as our leadership, bylaws, and how the game is governed in Idaho,” Swartley says. “But I think the one place we’ve really grown is because of our President Russ (Peterson) and Lexie (VanAntwerp, Manager of Member Services). We’ve become so much more uniform in terms of how we rate courses, and how to make handicaps easily transferable. We’ve also become so much better at making sure that our handicap committees state-wide are well-informed and educated.”
After helping the IGA reach new heights, Swartley announced in December that he is retiring from his seat on the Board of Directors.
“Jim’s presence on the board of directors has been invaluable to the organization over the course of the last several years,” Caleb Cox, Executive Director for the IGA, said. “His leadership presence has shown us all what it means to be a team player with the IGA. His tireless efforts in improving the elements of the GHIN system in Idaho, both through being a course rater and through training others in the World Handicap System, have been second to none.”
Swartley will remain on the Course Rating Committee despite leaving the Board of Directors, and certainly hopes that the foundation he’s helped lay in the last few years serves the IGA well.
When asked if he had any advice for incoming Board members, Swartley was thoughtful but concise: “Really do your best to figure out where you can be the most useful. Finding the spot where you excel is maybe the best way you can help the organization.”
One has to wonder though if taking a page out of Swartley’s playbook is maybe not just a key to success in golf, but also in life. If we take a step back and just look at why we’re doing something, we can understand ways to make it better or more fulfilling so much easier.
After all, how hard can this game of golf really be?