Last year I posted a video of myself swinging the club [link]. Its remarkable how little changes with one’s swing despite conscious effort. It also means that your best chance at a natural swing is to learn it as a child. Despite learning at 10, I never really tried to play golf well nor live well by golfism until now. The nice thing about those boring (to me) trips to the range with dad was I did learn to swing fully and not have any really funny looking loops, jags, or stops. The trick is to create a simple platform to base your entire game on. It starts with the grip and being loose. Having a good tempo helps. Beyond that, its the mysteries.
Category Archives: golf history
The Husband Keeper
Login and face the music like a man...husband-man
One Monday on Facebook,
Me, status update: Working for a living.
My Sister-in-Law, comment: yes but at least you get paid for it.
My Sister-in-Law is an out of work Yale MBA currently staying at home with two small children. They live on the west coast with its inherent expenses.
Me, comment: I’d rather get paid for my thoughts on golf, technology, and the future. Or for thoughtful, heroic roles in important epic feature films. Or for inventing something on the scale of post-it notes. By the way, your work is not gratis.
- Cook- 2000/mo
- Chauffeur -2000/mo
- Nannyx2 2000/mo
- Sugar baby 1500/mo
- Consultant -1000/mo
- Cleaner -1000/mo
- Gardener -1000/mo
- Tutors 2500/mo
- Room/board for all these people 3500/mo
I can go on. This is with no benefits -health or retirement.
My Lovely Wife, J, comment: Do you want a bill?
Me, comment: Yikes!
Sister in Law, comment: kee kee…
Guess now that you’ve convinced me I’ve earned it, I can afford to redecorate, treat myself to those spa treatments, and toss in that Marc Jacobs handbag I’ve been eyeing. I think we may also need to add Psychologist, Nutritionist, Hair Stylist and Health Care Professional to the list…
Me, comment, exeunt: You go girl. It doesn’t apply to J because she employs me.
This exchange made me think, which is the first step into getting into big trouble. Why do do women want to get married and stay married? If you look at the job description, the housewife takes on at least 5 or 6 essential jobs, goes through great deal of risk to have children, and starts having incredible headaches after about five years of marriage.
If the husband was the first domesticated animal (link), the husband-keeper was the first pet owner. Some husbands are useful and clever like the sheep dogs in that Samsung commercial (link). Others are more like those giant dogs people get when they’re small and cute, but are horrified soon to find that the dog eats food bought in fifty pound sacks and lays turds bigger than theirs. They’re messy, they’re high maintenance, and they’re horny.
So what do you do about a problem dog? You “fix it.” And that is what the husband keeper does to the problem husband. The fix involves:
- limiting access to non-family activities with the guys (hunting, fishing, golfing!) that increases testosterone driven pack behavior
- letting them overeat (to make them less appealing to other women and by increasing body fat, increase relative estrogens and brooding behaviors while tamping down on demon testosterone)
- making them drive ungainly automobiles that have the profile of pregnant women (minivans, Priuses, Lexus anything). Through about a million years of monogamy, the original savage brute is transformed into the domesticated house-husband.
Being married, I clearly benefit by not having to employ an army of assistants while getting a leg up on unmarried people with the help of my wife. I am presentable because of my wife. The unattached, middle-aged man has the shelf life of a can of anchovies -more than a few years, but not more than about five to twenty. Being unmarried, unattached, or sadly widowed in your sixties or later is a formula for showing up sallow, unshavened, unpressed, and unwashed -a homeless man. There is good data to show that longevity is associated with marriage. Most guys who run off on their wives and families immediately turn around and get married and start another family -what were they running from?
What benefit does a woman get? Pride in ownership? Someone to kill varmints? I have very little insight into this question. I did kill a mouse in my NY apartment in 2003 -last time I did something tangibly useful for my wife. It is shocking to me that we are nearing our 15th anniversary and I look at my wife and nothing has changed about her and us. And maybe this two-happy-bugs-preserved-in-amber-for-a-billions-years thing is it: it is not one person’s benefit or the other’s, but the sum of the whole. By getting married, we enter a time compression bubble where one year can feel like seven but fifteen can feel like one. For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, I am hers and she is mine.
Now about that Porsche.
The Masters, of golf
The picture above shows a buff President Washington with a six pack posing as Zeus, king of the gods. This kind of florid, frankly, but likely unknowingly, homoerotic display, was typical of the 19th century men who commissioned this work. These men were confident in their mastery over the land and its peoples; they were sure of their place in the world. This kind of confidence brought about the American Century (the 20th) and colors us to this day. It was men with this uncluttered view of their place in the world that brought us Augusta National and the Masters. The neocons that ran purple rampant this past decade hark to this tradition, but I digress. It is dangerous to apply the morals and ethics of the moment to the decisions and actions of the past, just as it is to do use the morals and ethics of the 19th century to view the situations of the present. The beauty of Augusta National is something to behold, at least on television in High-Definition. But like an old line Southern family, there are a lot of bones in those closets. The Masters is a perfect bellwether of America’s difficult relationship with race, gender, and elitism. The Masters transcends golf, but because of golf, it is saved.
As a tournament of golf, the Masters, conceived and founded by Bobby Jones, is unique among the modern major golf tournaments in that it is held in the same place every year. This conservatism is the outward manifestation of a deep conservatism in the membership, and from its founding, the world view was antiquarian and antebellum.
On one hand, it means that the very spot where Sarazen hit his shot heard around the world is an actual spot that you can see during the tournament. Past champions, members, and gallery attendees provide a living link all the way back to Jones, and the founding of golf in America and Britain. It also is a tournament that until several decades ago, insisted that only Augusta National caddies looped for the players -they were all African American wearing distinctively white overalls. This visual from my childhood of white guys strolling with black guys in crazy white mechanics uniforms carrying their bags in a tournament in Georgia called “The Masters” gave me clear notice as a teen in Jacksonville, Florida in the 80’s where progress really was.
This kind of haughtiness lampooned in Caddyshack but not half as funny when the membership’s frostiness to the brown skinned Lee Trevino caused him to let anger keep him from performing to his prowess at the Masters -he even boycotted it for two years and called it a “stupid course.” This is the thing -in America, up to the 1980’s, the popular media normalized blacks with such shows as the Jeffersons, the Cosby Show, and Urkel, but the Masters bucked the trend and showed where we really were at that time. When I was in high school, the San Jose Country Club, where my golf team practiced, was the site of a choral recital. An old lady (white), walked out of a concert there because several members of the chorus were African American. Restricted meant no blacks, Jews, or Asians. A club had fallen on hard times indeed if it let me in -and indeed, this was the kind of club we joined -Baymeadows in 1983, to get easy access to golf. It also played into that club’s view of diversity having some “Chinee” in the locker room. The club has since closed down due to stress in the real estate market.
This changed slowly. In 1975, Lee Elder, played at the Masters, breaking the color line. In 1983, the requirement to use Augusta National caddies, uniformly African American, was rescinded -which had the unfortunate side effect of the African American caddies disappearing. The tsunami then occurred in 1997 with Tiger’s lopsided victory, but even there, the line was being defended, by Fuzzy Zoeller who stupidly had to make that remark about serving fried chicken.
“He’s doing quite well, pretty impressive. That little boy is driving well and he’s putting well. He’s doing everything it takes to win. So, you know what you guys do when he gets in here? You pat him on the back and say congratulations and enjoy it and tell him not to serve fried chicken next year. Got it.” Zoeller then smiled, snapped his fingers, and walked away before turning and adding, “or collard greens or whatever the hell they serve.” (ref).
It cost Zoeller millions, but it was clear that it was the Freudian slip of a significant part of the nation. I don’t think there is a cross burning, lynching, evil-redneck bone in Zoeller’s body and his life of gentlemanly behavior on the course redeems him. The towel waving at the 1984 US Open was beautiful and epitomizes and elevates the game. He was joking, and he is known to be a joker, but in serving up Don Rickels at THAT MOMENT made Tiger’s victory all the more poignant.
It is telling that Augusta National in the years since Tiger’s victory, worked very hard to lengthen and strengthen the course. As if a fortress, once overrun decides “never again” by digging deeper moats and higher walls. The course which was suppose to be timeless, was lengthened in response to modern equipment. But modern equipment had been around since persimmon was dropped for graphite then steel then titanium, way before Tiger. The rough which had always been short, had allowed for a greater range of risk-reward, is now US Open style growth -the kind that gets you in trouble with not only the wife but also the neighbors if you forget to mow. This because of Tiger who has won four Masters.
The current battle is over the admission of women. This is not a problem at many clubs because of finances have dropped class, race, and religion for simple money, but it remains in the strange custom of Ladies Day -usually Tuesday after the club is mowed on Mondays. Meant to reserve the course for women as a tradeoff for restricting them from play on the weekends, it is a shameful reminder of the same antediluvian instincts that created exclusive clubs in the first place. The solution is very straightforward and fair -if you can’t play a hole in 10 minutes, you shouldn’t play on the weekends during prime time. And this is the strange thing that I have discovered in using Augusta National as our bellwether. Its accuracy is undoubtable -we now have an African-American President a decade after Tiger’s acceptance into Augusta National. Augusta’s line on women members reveals the last true fault line -one that I had frankly doubted in many heated college dorm arguments with feminist friends. The lady, my friends, is the last nigger.
So why do we watch the Masters despite its failings? It is the golf, of course.
Golf doesn’t care about your race, your viewpoint, your class, or gender. It’s the ball going from here to there, and its story a perfect mirror of your character and integrity. Life is not perfect, and nobody’s golf is, but golf holds out the promise of a more perfect round, and really a more perfect individual and nation.
My Picks:
The Iowans: Zach Johnson and Jack Newman
The Korean-American and Korean-Kiwi: Anthony Kim and Danny Lee
The Irishmen: Rory McIlroy and Padraig Harrington
The Cablinasion: E. Tiger Woods
The Chicago Cubs: Phil Mickelson and Greg Norman
and my final pick:
Fred Couples -I have modeled my swing intentionally on his effortless mechanics since I was a kid watching Boom Boom take the TPC in 1984 -I was there.
The Bonfire of the Bonus Babies
The Fifth Horseman - TARP Fund Distribution
On some level, I understand why the management at AIG took their bonuses. If it was part of their contract, why shouldn’t they? If their pay was part of the balance sheet that the rescue package was meant to help pay for the negative side of the sheet, why shouldn’t they collect? After all, the laws requires the company to pay its debts. Are we then to decide which of these debts take priority? Is it then not a fiction that we are rescuing these institutions when in fact we are just paying out to companies owed by AIG who in turn have their own contractual bonus obligations to meet. Why must the AIG boys hang and not the people about to collect on insurance floated by AIG.
It begs the question: is it wrong to be rich?
The Plaza Hotel
It’s a question that comes starkly to me as I wandered around ground zero of this pickle. I got to visit Southampton on Long Island and stayed in a luxury building on Central Park South. I ate Chinese a stone’s throw from Wall Street, and meandered past the half empty emporia of the vilified wealthy.
I noticed that among the well heeled, they never feel all that wealthy and they envy, resent, or at least are aware of someone wealthier than they. It is human nature to feel inadequate and to want. It is easy to live in the myopic view of the world in front of one’s face and not see the wider world around.
We notice only this world of the nearby and can be disassociated from images of suffering around the globe. Its that most people living near the median never actually see the lives of the people living one or two grades above them. The talk has always been about the invisible poor, the hungry and the homeless, but reveal the invisible rich, and it’s “to the barricades.” The French had these spasms of violence against the rich. Most recently in 1871, where mobs ransacked, butchered, and raped (in random order, usually all three) the wealthy and privileged of Paris. We are coming close to this when we vent rage at the managers of AIG.
View from Central Park South
The culture of the past twenty years has degenerated to a worship of things and their acquisition. By putting credit in front of people not used to wealth, the earnings of many years and even generations were made available to people who could not manage this kind of wealth. The packaging and selling of these loans and the skimming of fees as they were passed around, the leveraging of fractions of this debt, and the insuring of the particles thereof produced great wealth for a time, but it all came due.
Everybody is at fault. This is a national vice issue where there were pimps, whores, and johns, and no victims, but lots of perpetrators. If you’ve ever carried credit card debt beyond a month, you have been a party to this. If you bought lots of stuff borrowed from the value of your home, you have been a party to this. Right now, though, we’re concentrating on destroying the narrow class of Ivy-League educated ruling class living in smart enclaves in Connecticut and Manhattan, with their retreats in isolated burgs and islands.
Atlas -aka as President Obama
I have to say, it is a terrible injustice to point the finger at a few and say, these people did it, and by burning them at the stake, we’ll be free. Everyone carries some of the blame.
For the so-called middle class, this comes in the form of giant homes made of pressed wood fiber and synthetic petroleum byproduct, filled with unused exercise equipment, scattered and broken toys, and flat screen televisions. An anodyne futuristic lifestyle made available by the floating of a couple of years worth of disposable income.
The whole country’s occupation for the past generation had become the building of far-flung exurbs reachable by SUV, with no town center but a giant parking lot attached to a WalMart or a Costco. This was our wealth, to build these pressboard homes and borrow future earnings against their ever inflating values to accumulate jet skis and recreational vehicles, and Praise the Lord in colossal arena churches with concert level sound systems, sermons delivered in Powerpoint, and self-justification assured in the liturgy of accumulation and consumption.
The poor managers of AIG, the ones with death threats and private security guards, are merely the sacrificial scapegoats, the fools thrown out to the zombie mob in hopes that its attention will be distracted. What we aren’t seeing is a concerted message that the old ways are done. International commerce is done for a while, especially after we wash our hands of the accumulated debt by devaluation and nationalization.
What to do? Think about what it was that sustained life in the area around you. There is no reason why millions should live in the desert when the original population density was a few people per square mile. These areas should be abandoned. The general population should get used to working for and creating food. Our treasure and work should be spent creating sustainable economies, healthy strong communities, and planning for the future rather than consuming and destroying and breeding with the hope of some end of the world bringing salvation. Or worse, go to Greenwich, Connecticut, to burn it down, and turn eastern Long Island into Rwanda.
The President gets it when he and his family started a garden. Say hello to your neighbor and wake up to the fact that he is really your fellow tribesman, and not the guy relocated there last year from Charlotte by his multinational now going belly up. The people around you and your relationship to them are the most important tools to survival. Humans were evolved to live in bands and tribes. The idea of holing up in some mountain redoubt with a lot of guns is a failure to recognize the lessons of zombie movies.
We have to see these times as transformational, and that in fact we need a new contract that returns to the basic framework of the Constitution but acknowledges the challenges of the modern economy -too many people, not enough resources, inefficient ways of distributing them.
For myself, the ethos of golf applied to life out of the bounds of the fairway, the application of the USGA rules of Golf to life, makes perfect sense. It is the need to create a new concept of the citizen and player in this country.
The Mast at the Empire State Building
The Life, all thanks to the Wife
Santa Rita of Cascia, Patron Saint of the Impossible
J, mysterious lady of wonders, gave the rarest of gifts to me a month ago. It’s a passport so rare that it has caused gasps of astonishment among my fellow married men. Yes, I got the green light to go on a golfing weekend road trip to Houston with three of my golfing colleagues from Des Moines.
Why is this such a great gift? Because J gave it to me with no strings attached -no emotional collateral or labor based mortgages. It was a gift given from a wife to her man from the heart. That’s why my partner, DC observed to me yesterday, “You married a saint.”
Indeed I did.
The Master
I took a lesson with Mr. William Rose, emeritus golf professional of Wakonda Club. He is a walking treasury of golf. He once spent two hours at Bobby Jones’ residence where they had a fascinating conversation about everything but golf. Mr. Rose has that knack for distilling golf knowledge into the simple facts. Thirty minutes on the range with him resulted in untwisting of that nasty duck hook and introduction to a controlled power fade, which I always thought was the better shot to have if you plan on trying to pinpoint your shots. With a slight adjustment, I still had my draw which I hammered out against the far fence on Fleur Drive. What I enjoyed immensely was the time spent with Mr. Rose who is a one degree separation from the deep roots of golf. Through him, I am only two degrees of separation from Harry Vardon, Francis Ouimet, and Gene Sarazen (through Bobby Jones). He personally trained club pros that went on to staff many of the elite clubs throughout the nation. And above all, he is a great human being.
Golfism -life is a metaphor for golf 