Summer reading for students of the game

July 2, 2009

Dear Julie,

Some of the best young golfers in America are here this week to compete in a tournament at Dalhousie Golf Club, one of the best golf courses in the Midwest. Barely into their teens, many of them already know how to swing a club almost perfectly. Some have been swinging golf clubs since age 3. Some are just naturally talented athletes who would be good at most any sport. Most are good students of the game.

At 58, I am still a student of the game, and maybe not such a good one. I'm still trying to figure out new ways to swing a golf club better. I've exhausted the golf offerings at Barnes and Noble. The golf titles in my bookcase number more than 80. Some are classics, like Ben Hogan's "Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf." Some are only fancifully written oddities, like Arnold Haultain's "The Mystery of Golf." Mr. Haultain might not have understood golf as much as he understood other mysteries. "A woman can say more in a sigh than a man can say in a sermon," he observed.

Having run out of new titles, I scoured the university library for some old ones unknown to me. Julius Boros was a mid-20th century golfer known for his effortless swing. So he wrote a book titled "How to Play Golf with an Effortless Swing." Effortlessness is achieved through timing and rhythm, Boros writes. In what pursuit isn't that true?

In "All About Hitting the 'Sweet Spot,'" George Cherellia takes an academic approach befitting an assistant professor at Auburn University. You might not know what he means by the sweet spot. It's the small place at the center of the golf club where hitting a ball feels as if you've hit nothing at all, almost as if you've missed the ball. Feeling that feeling is one of the reasons people love golf.

With the club head moving at close to 100 mph, hitting the ball in the precise center can be a good trick indeed. Cherellia says the secret is in the left arm position.

Perhaps the most intriguing of these books is Joe Dante's "Four Magic Moves to Winning Golf." People who write about golf like to use the words "magic" and "secret" because those of us who play golf in an average way fervently believe in the existence of some bit of magic or some secret that, if we only knew it, would enable us to play as well as those talented teenagers at Dalhousie.

One of Dante's magical moves is based on a law of physics called the conservation of angular momentum. It's a bit complicated for me, but the law is the reason a flip of the wrist can make a bull whip break the sound barrier with a resounding crack. It's the reason a well swung golf club accelerates from zero to 100 mph in little more than a second.

Sometimes I feel like Sisyphus, constantly rolling the golf-swing boulder up a hill. At least this boulder never rolls all the way back down. Maybe there is no secret or magic move. Everybody thought Hogan must know a secret because his golf shots looked like laser beams. Hogan said the secret is in the dirt, meaning practice.

Oh no, not that.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a former reporter for the Southeast Missourian.