For Schilling, developing a smooth, fluid, languid golf swing has always been a battle against every fiber of his baseball being. He knows it. And he knows that if he wants to get very good at golf, which he eventually does, he has to retrain his body. But he also knows that now is not the time. At this point, golf is a pleasant diversion.
Baseball is life.
Still, he loves the game - the controlled physicality of it, the competition, even the relaxing beauty of a golf course at sunset. No surprise, then, that for those first three or four years after he took up golf, he played with the zest of a fresh convert, even packing off to a golf school in Florida for a week about a year into his addiction. During spring training, especially after short days in the first couple of weeks, he'd play with Kevin Stocker or Gregg Jefferies, both low-handicappers, and Lenny Dykstra, another avid player. Over time, his swing improved and his scores fell to the point that he played to about a 5 handicap. Like most top-notch, natural athletes, he plays more by feel than by rote.