At the time of the Buddha, golf had not yet been invented, but what the great sage discovered when he achieved his enlightenment— namely, The Four Noble Truths—can be directly applied to golf, making the game a vehicle to higher consciousness. The first is that all human beings suffer, a truth felt all too often during any given round of the great game.
The second truth is that suffering occurs as a result of desire, and don’t all golfers desire to get better? The third Noble Truth is that there is a way out of suffering and that way is a cessation of desire, and don’t all of us golfers want to know that way out of suffering, especially in relation to slices, shanks, and finding all sorts of hazards?
And finally, the Fourth Noble Truth addresses a way leading to the cessation of suffering via the Noble Eightfold Path, namely, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. Applied to golf, that’s a lot of “rights” for a game where a lot of “wrongs” can come into play.