Monthly Archives: June 2008

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At my folk’s place, in Florida

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I am taking care of my folks who have both fallen ill. I had to move some of their stuff from the hospital to their home yesterday. They live on a golf development, and I spent the night. That afternoon, I played nine holes. 

It is an interesting course. The developer declared bankruptcy, but fortunately not before selling enough homes to not leave large sections barren. The course itself has changed owners, and despite the drought, it keeps its character. Enough so that a recent Ladies British Open champion calls it her home course. The usual westerly winds were blowing at around 5-10mph. The course had cooled off from the heat that part of Florida suffers from during the day -my wife likens it to being under a magnifying glass. 
I played alone, as is my preference, and a kind couple (husband was teaching wife) let me pass. The golfist appreciates good golf ettiquette and new golfers. The course was empty for a while. I hit from the tips. I used my dad’s spare set. The driver was a King Cobra Speed Pro D 9 degree.  The wind was at my back. I set up for a draw -there was out of bounds to the left and right. The hole was a 350 yard dogleg right with a drop in elevation from the fairway to the green of about 50 feet. The inner corner is protected by cypress trees. The ball went farther right and started to float back. I lost site of it as it passed over the trees, about 250 yards out. I hit a provisional which was a low roller that ended up 150 yards out, but I saw the first ball in a bunker about 90 yards out from the hole on the lower tier. I took a 9 iron and opened it up and I hit it too hard, it landed on the back of the green and rolled off. I took 4 more strokes to get back in the hole. It illustrates the majority of strokes are greenside-in. 
Number 12 is a 580 yard par five from the tips. My drive ended up in the fairway bunker leaving about 230 yards to the green. The ball was sitting flat on hard sand. I opened up my stance and set up a fade. It cleared the lip and made a beautiful arc. The wind took it and it landed just short of the green and rolled to the fringe! I four putted for a bogey while I planned for first an eagle, then a birdie, then a par. 
My first par came on number 14, a 178 yard par 3 that was playing 189 yards from pin placement. The wind was now in my face. I choose a 3-iron -I usually am dicey with these, but the Ping Eye-2 3 iron always feels just right in my hands. I put the ball further back in my stance and take a full swing. It clicks and takes the correct line. It fades slightly, and at the tail, the wind takes it almost straight up. The green is hidden by a hump on the hill, and I drive up to the green -it had landed and taken backspin and bit leaving an 8 foot putt straight uphill. Birdie time. I push it leaving a 5 incher -no surety with my ham hands on the scruffy Bermuda greens that haven’t been watered all week. Tapped in.
At the final hole, I reached the last group of a clot of late afternoon golfers. More beginners which make me happy as golf needs new converts. I wait, and an older gentleman rolls up and asks if he could hit with me. I said fine. He hits a long gentle draw that rolls to the 150 marker about 270 yards out into a now stiff wind. I am now competing and I smack my ball about the same distance out and also the same distance to the right out of bounds. I had committed the grave sin of pride -of wanting to showup this silver haired man. Sheepishly, I put down my second ball and hit my second drive with no thought or effort this time. It was dead straight and landed next to that man’s. We chat. It turns out he plays on the senior mini-tour and was headed to Canada for a tournament. He complimented me on my swing -which was nice for someone who played with Seve Ballesteros only a few years before in Sao Paolo. Feeling charged, I took out my 3 iron to hit the approach which was to an elevated green into the wind. I wanted to recreate the shot from 14, a high fade with intense back spin. I could see it and felt it in my bones -it was going to happen. I missed the ball completely and dug into the grass behind the ball with a terrible thud. 
Greed and pride, anticipation of future gain, the desire to show off and show up, fear of poor execution, and and fear of failure, these thoughts are ruinous and come up particularly around the green where you have to close the deal. The best shots occurred when I stuck to the process of aiming, gripping, aligning and having faith my swing to do the job. 
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Obama plays golf today

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Obama played golf today while Hilary suspended her campaign. Immediately it is being judged as something wrong. Again, if he had gone running, no one would raise an eyebrow, but golf is something that is viewed as “elite,” time wasting, and selfish. Check it out. I think that it is telling that the one thing politicians don’t want to be associated with are prostitutes, bribes, and golf club memberships. 

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Perfect

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As a middle aged man, there are very few things that we can learn to do well, aside from degenerating in the usual ways. Golf offers the potential of perfectibility. I can’t walk onto Yankee stadium and expect to hit a home run, but put me on a par three at Pebble Beach or Pinehurst #2, both of which I can get on way easier than Yankee stadium, and there is a calculable probability of an ace, a birdie, a par. The more I play, the more perfect I can become, like this sunset in Puerto Vallarta.

golf mysticism, golf philosophy 1 Comment

The green grass grows all around

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Green grass off into the horizon clicks a genetic switch in our brain -it is the peace of the African savanna ape seeing the lush green after the rainy season. Time of prosperity and fecundity. The sap rises from the roots, and it is the spring of our days. 


Hunting and gathering is in our bones and sinews, and this is replicated by the tracking and seeking of the white ball. Smell the grass. Root along the leaf litter for the prized nut. Club that small prey animal with your 3 iron. Signal to your fellow ape with your call “Fore!!!”
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The rules

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A conversation overheard before a goatherd’s wedding night on the steppes of Kazakhstan.

 

My son, unlike the Americans, you won’t see your wife until the wedding night. Romantic love is viewed with suspicion because it cannot be given an economic value, while fifty goats can. So on your wedding night, you are seated next to some woman covered in wool and silk, draped in coins, and all you can see are her eyes which occasionally dart over to yours. They might be pretty. Its hard to tell, but then again, all of your cousins have pretty eyes, so its a safe assumption that she too would have those dark eyes. There is much feasting -too much, because there can only be too much. Not enough would be an insult, a cause for feuding. The laughing and shouting of the the men is broken up by the occasional report of automatic gunfire -your brothers are celebrating by emptying their AK47’s up into the stars -a glorious night! As the party goes on, you and your bride are escorted to your wedding tent. It’s hot inside. You ask her name, but she doesn’t speak. Both of you are terrified. Your mother is waiting outside. Your new wife lies back as she has been instructed to by her mother, and you do your duty. You’ve had practice -so much practice, that it doesn’t take very long. You reach under your bride and pull out the white sheet stained with her hymenal blood and hand it over to your mother. She ululates her joy and holds up the flag of Japan to all the waiting wedding guests. More gunshots and a return to feasting. The years pass, and you have many children. You have many opportunities to marry again, as you are a wealthy man, but curiously, you pass. You are content, after all. Then your eldest son is ready to marry and as his wedding day approached, he asks you about the truths about marriage and why you have stayed with one wife. You now lean back and stroke your beard and give your son this wisdom.

 

Rule #1: Over the course of any relationship, you can only have about a hundred meaningful conversations before something truly awful happens.

 

In fact, you tell your son, you rarely have more than 10 with anyone, and this conversation is number 3 between you two. The first one was about him practicing too much and too loudly. The second was about the superiority of boxer shorts. The more you talk, the less you have to say. You are on conversation number 6 with your wife, and that’s only because several years back she found some magazines under the rug. The important thing is listening, you tell your boy. Women will talk incessantly if given the opportunity, but the trick is to divine their meaning. This takes practice. You tell your son you can buy time by scrunching up the eyebrows and making a constipated noise, but to keep the peace, you have to dig through the words and understand. It can be like predicting the weather, you warn him. Women want to be understood, but not by words do you divine their thoughts. And that is the key. Divination. The better you get at divination, the less the need for those conversations which suck the life force out of you. Telepathy is what they call it in the decadent west.

And keep track of those meaningful conversations, because when you pass one hundred, something bad happens. Usually you die. You can ward off that evil day by much furrowing of the eyebrows -but avoid using that too much because eventually you will be cornered into a meaningful conversation. 

 

Rule #2 -Human interest and passion in any subject or person lasts about two years. Human life lasts about 50. Do the math.

 

You remind your son the time he decided to dabble in homing pigeons. Everything was pigeon this and pigeon that. Silly messages about runaway goats sent in from over the hills, for a year this went on. Then one day, the pigeons were, in his words, too boring. Then it was roast pigeon for a month. It takes two years for your passion fades into routine. In the west, they call it the sophomore slump. Never let something take away your reason. You can get to the next watering hole by keeping a steady pace, but if you rush, you will lose goats. Passion is like small bag of salt you carry out to pasture the goats for a month. You only need a pinch of salt to make a roasted goat tasty, but use all the salt in one day, and the rest of the month is tasteless and bland. Remember too that your woman is subject to this two year rule. Renew her interest in keeping you comfortable and sated by keeping yourself unpredictable. Like anything else, inscrutability takes practice. Be aware of your routines and mix things up. Keep a mental chart of your routine and change some aspect of it every year. For example, if you change your underwear once a week, after a year, make it once every two weeks! That will keep her off balance. Never let things go for two years. If you feel yourself reaching that two year point, you may have to have a meaningful conversation, but remember rule number 1! Having children is also a good distraction. Remodeling the yurt is another. 

 

 

Rule #3 -In all that you do, reduce it to simple, silent acts of nature.

 

Man is cursed by thought. A chicken without its head will run well. When you learn something, learn it with your heart and your bones. Don’t let thinking get in the way. This is the best way to manage rules #1 and #2. 

 

I have talked too much and used up one of my meaningful conversations. 

 

 

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Golf’s black heart

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The HAC is my neighborhood society of gentlemen devoted to golf mostly for the opportunity to get together and:

 

1. avoid wives, children, and lawncare duties

2. drink beer and consume artery-clogging foods that accompany beer and fellowship

3. connive, lie, steal, revel in a fellow’s misfortune, and cheat

 

Yes, cheat, because within the heart of all golfers beats a small fifth chamber that pumps black bile, that motivates sin, and drives competition. No way around it, golf competition is a zero sum game of winners, cheaters, losers, and those who failed to cheat effectively. 

 

Golfism seeks to cleanse the black heart of golf. It should be played from the tips with no handicap. You get what you get and you can’t throw a fit, to paraphrase my 6 year old. 

golf mysticism, golf philosophy, my golf 2 Comments

Golfism’s numerology

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Golfists are keenly aware of the mystery of the numbers that form the tapestry of a round of golf. 434454453 is instantly recognizable to the golfists at my club as the par sequence of the front nine -each number brings the image and the feel of walking up to each tee. 444535434 is the back nine. Each golfist can recite their courses numerical map by visualizing each hole from memory. These numbers add up to 36 a side, 72 for the whole. My course from childhood (Baymeadows, Jacksonville, FL): 543443454 435344544. The first number, the 5, brings to mind my first tee off on a Saturday morning at 12 years of age -a train of carts full of old impatient men looking up at me. The inability to swallow my spit, the terrible awareness of about thiry eyes, and the need for me to get out of the way. 

 

I top my drive, refuse a mulligan (always thought mulligans were the worst kind of lie -the lie you tell to yourself), walk the twenty feet to the ball which happily is perched on the rough, and I smash a 4 wood (remember those) 200 yards to applause. That first par five is burned into my memory. These numbers are pregnant with as much meaning as cosmological constants.

golf philosophy 1 Comment

The golfist is more than a golfer.

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The golfist is a follower of golfism. A golfer will play occasionally for company, to avoid yard work, and to hide from the wife. A golfer plays for money, for competition, and for status. 

A golfist, on the other hand, goes to worship in the greeny cathedral of his passion. He labors for that pure moment that affirms the presence of perfection in his otherwise imperfect world, no matter how evanescent. The turn of his swing is like the turn of a prayer wheel. His sufferings, his achy joints, his deep pain the mortifications and deprivations of a monk.