I’ve arrived at the point in my life – and I can’t even believe I’m writing this – that I don’t want to play golf year-round.
Not that I don’t miss the game during what is mostly a long winter lay off, but my body needs a break. A lot more hurts these days than it used to. I’ll make a trip or two down South, but golf for me – for more than a few of us – in the winter is less playing it and more reading about it.
Which is OK, because that, too, is a unique pleasure. Settling in by a fire and cracking a good book can still be a way to get exercise – of my imagination – and the beauty is, I can’t make a bogey!
Another benefit: there’s an old saying of uncertain origin, but first attributed to George Plimpton, that “the smaller the ball, the better the writing.”
Not to disparage any of the legion of fine baseball, football, basketball, or hockey writers, but some of the most genius sports writing I’ve ever read – from the elegant to the hilarious – has been about golf.
Tarde has been on the job for 40 years. His perspective on what makes so many of the game’s observers exceptional boils down to a simple skill: “Seeing golf in the context of the world and life.”
Part of the beauty of the genre too is the variety. There’s the historical … like Mark Frost’s The Match, an account of the time that Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson teamed up to play Ken Venturi and Harvie Ward at Cypress Point. The unusual competition was arranged by a pair of millionaires to see if the two best professionals of their era – now retired – could beat the two best amateurs of the day.
There’s the instructional, like Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons, written with Herbert Warren Wind (the man who gave “Amen Corner” its name). Published originally in 1957, it contains not only the Hawk’s philosophy of the swing but stunning artwork by Anthony Ravielli. A new edition with contemporary observations and commentary has just been released.
Legendary teacher Harvey Penick teamed with Bud Shrake to also write a book that was nominally about instruction, but the Little Red Book seemed more than anything else to be about life. The simple compendium of homespun Texas wisdom ended up being one of the best-selling sports books of all time.
There’s even the mystical: Golf in the Kingdom and The Legend of Bagger Vance.
From fiction to astute (and distinctive) reporting, Dan Jenkins has touched about every base in the sport … all of it brilliantly (Dead Solid Perfect, The Dogged Victims of Inexorable Fate).
There’s no shortage golf books, either – 10,000, according to Google. There’s even one with my name on it – Breaking the Slump.
And just when you think you’ve got your arms around it all, something pops up seemingly out of nowhere. The Mystery of Golf by Arnold Haultain is a clever and funny reflection on the strange appeal of the game. When my friend Hew sent it to me as a gift, all I could think of was, “Where has this beauty been hiding for the last century and change?” It was written in 1908.
Best golf book ever? Anything Jenkins or Michael Bamberger ever wrote.
Until the thaw, there is always simulator golf – and there are some nice places in the Met Area to keep yourself in touch with your swing. (You should see what they’ve created at Quaker Ridge.) But the new professional league TGL notwithstanding, indoor golf – which is kind of like indoor skiing – still feels like a video game, which I guess it kind of is.
So, until the grass starts to grow again, and it’s time to blow the dust off my polos and shorts, you’ll find me traveling to the far and wide places my imagination and curiosity will bring me.
I’m not sure I have the words to say how I feel about this game; for the next few months though, my plan is to try and read as many of them as I can.