“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” George Eliot
A story: Harvey Penick was the golf coach for the University of Texas for several decades—from 1931 to 1963. He mentored some of the greatest names in golf history. Even after they were huge successes and after years on the pro golfers’ circuit, they continued to seek Penick’s expert help with their putting and Irving.
Like every legendary coach, Harvey observed his players carefully and learned enormous amounts from watching them. For decades, on the fly, he scribbled his random observations about the game he loved into a notebook. One day, he mentioned his golf diaries to Bud Shrake, who was a writer.
Knowing how popular the game of golf was, Shrake saw Penick’s notebooks as an incredible asset. He recognized their publishing potential and worked with him on a book. It came out in 1992 under the title Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book: Lessons and Teachings from a Lifetime in Golf. The Little Red Book sold more than a million copies and quickly became the best-selling sports book in history. Harvey Penick was 87 years old when it was published.
Amazing story isn’t it? We’ve all amassed lifetimes of wisdom, yet how many of us take the time to share it? As writers, we have the precious opportunity to reflect on and convey the life lessons we’ve learned—or what we wish we’d learned—through our plays, poems, and short stories and novels. How fortunate we are! Let’s not let these precious gems slip away. Let’s distill and instill them as we all write on!
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