An art called golf

July 14, 2011

Dear Pat,

Back when I started taking golf seriously in my 40s I naively thought me playing on the tour for players over 50 was possible.

The fact that everyone on that tour began taking golf seriously in their teens or even earlier did not dissuade me. Eventually my goal became learning something from the ground up. The more I learned the more I wanted to learn. Golf was a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

Churchill used that phrase to describe Russia, a country the world still is trying to comprehend.

Like every discipline, golf demands a knowledge of fundamentals. Learn those ABCs and many things become possible. Skipping over them is like being illiterate in a library.

Eventually refinements become possible, like causing the ball to curve left or right or to fly high above a tree or low below a branch. You begin to appreciate golf's artistry and the mysterious pursuit of self-knowledge that can be involved in hitting a ball with a club.

In "Zen in the Art of Archery," Eugen Herrigel describes the moment when after years of daily practice he looses an arrow that actually looses itself. His Japanese teacher bows and exclaims, "Just then 'It' shot!"

"The shot fell from you like a ripe fruit," the Master says. "Now go on practicing as if nothing had happened."

Ego is the golfer's greatest opponent. Initially we all want to bash the ball further and further, or at least five yards further than our playing partners, and to keep from embarrassing ourselves. Eventually we discover the pleasures of having some command over where the ball goes. Some achieve mastery, although no one is immune from humbling and frustrating adventures in a creek or a sand trap.

The writer George Peper said the game is called golf because all the other four-letter words were taken. Golfers often dredge up a quote like that on the next tee box after one in their midst has played a hole poorly. We commiserate. We know how it feels.

Golf has been compared to a chess game played on a 7,000-yard board, but strategy is only one of the tools. Like plein-air painters, golfers work with the tableau God made -- maybe with an assist from a bulldozer.

Apologies if I make too much of this game. This is an exciting week. The British Open begins today at Royal St. George's. Of all the great tournaments, the British Open is the best test of the world's best golfers.

The Open is played on links courses built on sand dunes by the sea. The greens are not soft, and the rivulets of sand beneath them mean balls often bounce where they may. Winds blow hard, and rain usually falls. Miss the fairway and you may or may not find your ball deep in the shrubs called gorse or in the long native grasses. It's no picnic. It's golf.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a former reporter for the Southeast Missourian.