LETTERS FROM HOME: GOLF CAN BE TOUGH IN THE KINGDOM OF JANUARY ON GOOSE CREEK

Jan. 20, 2000

Dear Ken,

Mild weather has made golf in January a reality. We played on New Year's Eve and a few days since then. Reality is better some days than others.

John and I played Monday because the forecast was for temperatures 55 to 60 with the possibility of rain. The oddness of the weather patterns these days seem to have made the job of forecasting almost impossible. The temperature Monday topped out at 38 degrees, and nothing was slight about the rain that began falling when we reached No. 16.

Until then, blowing on our hands and walking briskly had enabled us to play a credible round. The rain was more of a mist, and the easterly wind occasionally stopped blowing. You could fantasize about being in the midst of a good day in Scotland.

We were two of 10 people on the course that day. What could have kept everyone else away?

At No. 16, the rain moved in. Suddenly the cold and moisture made it impossible to hold onto the club and to hit the ball in a semi-straight line. My tee shot squalled right, barely in bounds, John's went out of bounds left. Every shot afterward was a lesson in what can happen when a stainless steel club wielded by a freezing human body collides with dripping high-tech golf ball.

John was shooting a better than average score until then. But at No. 17, every shot began scooting sideways like a rookie's at the driving range.

My tee shot went over the tree line marking the right out of bounds and into the horse pasture. It was there beyond the barbed-wire fence, perfectly white, glistening and innocent.

John's good score disappeared on that hole as the cold rain continued to fall, and shot after shot squirted directionlessly forward. I could do no better.

We became the Three Stooges Minus One but were too cold to laugh at ourselves or each other. Traversing the bridge over Goose Creek, I realized the feel so crucial to a golfer had disappeared from my hands to be replaced by a stinging, coarse numbness. Suddenly I thought about the victims of the Titanic.

I don't remember much of No. 18. We ended up in the green circle where you roll the ball instead of giving it a knock, then walked to our cars, soaked, runny-nosed and defeated.

Golf is not always or even often about triumphing. It is more often about persevering, playing out the final holes even though disaster already has set in.

In "Golf in the Kingdom," Michael Murphy meets a wizened golf teacher named Shivas Irons who leads him to make mystical discoveries about golf and himself. Among these is True Gravity, a state of pure euphoric awareness. John and I didn't achieve it Monday.

A reader wrote to Murphy that holes on certain days "had a jagged, broken Cubist look." During a difficult time in his life, another wrote of seeing a "loathsome toad" atop the cup when he lined up a putt. Both sought psychological help.

More often, golfers tell of experiences "painted by Vermeer."

Some claim to have experienced psychokinetic abilities, the ability to affect the flight of the ball through mental intention.

"Golf is of games the most mystical, the least earthbound," John Updike wrote, "the one wherein the walls between us and the supernatural are rubbed thinnest."

This is the sort of tale I am reluctant to tell a non-golfer because it seems to reinforce DC's conviction that golf is a silly game under ordinary circumstances and promotes deviant thought and behavior on some occasions. But I knew you'd understand.

Love, Sam