I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.
The Parthenon without the marbles is like a smile with a tooth missing.
If you know that life is basically going to be horrendously difficult at best and all but unlivable at worst or possibly even unlivable do you go on? And the choice to go on is the only thing that I think can be called hope. Because if hope isn't forced to encounter the worst possibility then it's a lie.