Peter Melton’s a standup comic, arriving on the first tee in harlequin plus fours, and insisting he’s playing golf with no ball. He calls it “invisi-a-ball training.” Just imagine the ball soaring off the driver and the putt going in the hole, he says. He even has a chant – “cling-a-ling-ling” – for the sound of ball dropping into the cup. It’s maddening that it stays in your head as if it has been implanted by a Buddhist monk. And, of course, the actual ball didn’t drop in the cup. Cling-a-ling-ling.
But now Melton, a big bear of a bearded man who among other playful, party pursuits, is a professional Santa Claus, has written a book to record what he calls his talk with par. What is par anyway? He asks. It must be the arbitrary construct of golf that gives most golfers headaches and significant others fits – at least my wife as she tells friends, “He comes home and stews over the scorecard.” Well, Melton’s conversation with par might clear the heads of those golfers and might finally make “cling-a-ling-ling” fun instead of mind-bogglingly painful.
“Golf is set up to bring out the worst in ourselves, beat ourselves up,” says Melton, who self-published “Conversations with Par” in October, and has seen the early rankings on Amazon soar to the top in such categories of sports humor, biography, sports psychology. He uses the Zen koan (or parable) approach to search for the meaning of golf, which in the end is what meaning the player assigns to the game. In other words, Melton is simplifying Michael Murphy’s “Golf in the Kingdom,” Harvey Penick’s “Little Red Book,” Fred Shoemaker’s “Extraordinary Golf,” and W. Timothy Gallwey’s “The Inner Game of Golf” in 19 chapters – don’t think of them as 18 holes and a bar at the end. Ironically, Melton insists he hasn’t read Gallwey and Penick, but he has been a standard bearer for Murphy as a member of the Shivas Irons Society. “I didn’t want to read a bunch of books,” Melton said, hinting that his whole book is “talking to myself the whole time.”
Short of eavesdropping on Melton’s chat with Par, Melton starts off summarizing the history of “fore,” and extends into four E’s or “for-E’s” as a template for the reader’s self-discovery for enjoying golf. Simply said, Melton starts off with enjoyment as the first E.
You’ll have to read the book to get to the other e’s.
A lifelong North Monterey County resident, Melton, 62, grew up near Pajaro Valley Golf Course and played with his father. He graduated from Watsonville High School and competed in golf for Cabrillo and Hartnell colleges and obtained a degree in communications and marketing from California State University Chico. In high school, he announced sports on the radio, and later used his radio voice in hosting events, officiating weddings and as a professional Santa Claus. Would you believe Melton’s girlfriend’s name is Hollie?
Melton really started contemplating how to make golf enjoyable when his mother June, who turned 89 in June, asked him to teach her how to play golf, and after a few times, she went one step further, pleading, “How do you make golf fun?” That has long stumped golfers, but Melton gave it a try.
“The ball won’t go where I want it to is the lament of golfers,” he says. “The problem has got to be the ball. Then I figured I would play without the ball. Why is there a ball there anyway? It’s causing trouble.” Of course, “invisi-a-ball” is really the last practice swing before really swinging with a ball.
Don’t tell that to the USGA and Titleist and the myriad ballmakers who want golfers to swing at balls, even if they will be flight-limited in a couple of years.
A final approach to golf and life, according to Melton, is to “let go of the attachment to score, then you’re free to just enjoy your round, wherever it goes.”
Yet another challenge to those who grow the game.