LETTERS FROM HOME: SPRING-LIKE DREAMS OF CLUBS AND FIELDS

Feb. 15, 2001

Dear Pat,

Here in the final month of an unrelentingly cold winter that has allowed few opportunities to indulge our urge of urges, most golfers I know are in withdrawal. If our jones were heroin we could get treatment. Because it's only golf we get not even sympathy.

At the water cooler, the golfers at work smile weakly at each other. We try not to talk about it. One way to deal with a craving is to pretend it doesn't exist. If only that worked.

Surreptitiously, we look at golf magazines and the catalogues the manufacturers send us, trying to lure us into buying a fix for our games, the season's hot new club. Golfers fantasize about a club that hits the ball 20 yards further, and wouldn't it be nice if it also went straight.

This year our fantasies came true. Unfortunately, they're also illegal.

Scientific tests by the United States Golf Association, the ruling body of U.S. golf, have determined that the ERC II driver hits the ball too far. In technical terms, the spring-like effect of the club face is too great. But the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, which makes the rules for the golf world outside the U.S., says whatever extra distance may be due to the spring-like effect is not detrimental to the game.

So if the tournament is in Brazil, blast away with your ERC II driver. If you're playing in Boca Raton, that's illegal.

Some non-tournament golfers will blast away no matter what. But unlike football, where cheating is only wrong if you get caught, the soul of golf is playing by the rules. And each golfer has his or her own conscience to live with.

My view: What's the difference between playing an illegal club and just forgetting about that extra stroke you took?

I admit, though, to yielding to the golf jones the past two weeks by going to an indoor clinic where irretrievably hooked people hit golf balls that travel only 6 feet before stopped by netting. At different stations in the gym, we chip, we putt. It's like spring training without the spring-like effect.

Carroll Williams, who coaches the university golf team, and pro Jack Connell watch over us and try to correct our swings. Coach Williams takes charge like the basketball coach he used to be. With "Listen up" he gathers us in the middle of the gym for some pointers and afterward barks, "All right, let's get back to work." He whistles as he walks among the 20 or so sweating golfers. He's having as much fun as we are.

Connell is too, even when I send a ball whistling off a wall into his leg. It's a dangerous game.

One of the college golfers videotapes our swings each session. My first peek at myself was shocking -- not the swing, the winter flab. I looked like a bear coming out of hibernation.

On a day of respite from the cold earlier this week, the temperature warmed some by the noon sun, I set out to play nine holes. To swing a golf club again after months of just dreaming about it is exquisite no matter how clanky your parts feel.

My first drive blew into the creek right, my second into the left rough. It didn't matter. But on the second hole came my first birdie of the new year. Wow, that felt good. No. 3 is quite long in the middle of the summer. At the end of the winter I couldn't make par with 14 illegal clubs.

Hole No. 4 parallels Interstate 55. As you're teeing off, truckers sometimes honk hoping to startle you and upset your swing. That's because you're playing golf and they aren't. In years of playing this course, I have mishit some balls out of bounds in the direction of the highway but never flubbed one badly enough to pay the truckers back. Now I have.

The shot was much more a weak pop fly to right field than a blast. I couldn't see the landing area from the tee so I just had to wait until the ball came down. These were long, long moments. I held my breath and began anticipating the sound of wounded steel and shattering glass. Finally, nothing happened.

Shucks, I thought. I'm hitting three.

Love, Sam