Thursday, August 21, 2008
migrated to new site
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
The Master
The Mysterious Montague
The overwhelming conclusion that I reach from reading the book is that Montague was a golfist who reveled in the pure joy of being on the links, of the fellowship it afforded him, and the ecstasy of tracing that perfected hit ball.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
The Society of Darwin
The beast and the five towers
This is the question when faced with a seemingly insuperable opposing force. To join the crowd, to resist, or to flee (to fight another day). Golf offers an infinite variety of responses to this question. Pride, desire for glory, these trick you into one of the lines.
There are five golfing towers of misfortune: lying to yourself, lying on your scorecard, lying about your handicap, rolling the ball to improve your lie, and giving yourself putts. Given 600 yards to the green, you can hit four 7-irons and good putt. Two putt it or miss the green and chip it close, and leave with a bogey, you can live to fight another day (or another hole).
Golf is about leaving the golf course with your integrity intact. It's about being honest about your daily labors. It's about giving yourself to the process knowing that the process is an enlightening one.
Three tempests
Looking back, I think that the three tempests represent the three things that trap people: desire or want, addiction or attachment, and finally pride or narcissism. These are the hazards that we face everyday.
What's up for today? Life being a metaphor for golf, today is a 348 yard par 4 with a drive over water that edges the whole right side of the fairway, dogleg right with trees and sand on top of the turn's knuckle, the whole outer curve being OB, being bounded by ancient temple ruins. Approach protected by a thousand year old baobab tree that will block anything lower than fifty feet. If you're big enough, you can drive the green, but anything less than perfect, you're taking a stroke.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Hype from tips
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Golf is a cruel mistress
Wakonda gets facelift
Pictured here is Wakonda#1 with her fairways stripped. The rough we will keep, but the fairways and greens are going to be seeded with A1/A4 hybrid bent grass. Trees have been cut down to open a 8 hour window of sunshine to the grass. Can't wait for May 2009. Googling A1/A4 hybrid bent grass, it comes up time again in relation to clubs renewing their greens because of encroaching old growth trees and climate change.
Wakonda Club #1
#1 is a par 4, but it really plays like a par 5. It doglegs to the left, but topography serves to effectively lengthen the hole -if you land in the center of the the flat landing area, you end up with a 170 yard approach. If you fade right, you are looking at 190 to 200 yards. Slice it, and you now have a downhill lie effectively eliminating long woods. The perfect drive is a draw over the tree on the left that pitches you forward into the flat that is about 120 yards out. Anything less than perfect leaves you in the woods, tangled in the tree and into a sidehill lie out of dense rough, or you stop on the upslope. The upslope leaves you with a 150 yards to the pin, but because the green in elevated by 30 feet, you will land short if you sky it, but will run it through if you land too hot as the green is canted front to back and left to right. You need to hit a high shot with backspin that will go about 160 yards from a steep uphill lie. If you pitch it right, you end up in a wooded pit that requires a blind pitch up 20 feet around and under trees. If you draw it, you end up on the space between #1 and #4 with a tree that guards the right front of the green. And the green tilts away from you. When I get a par here, I feel like I've birdied the hole. A bogey is a good score. But at no point on the course does it seem unfair, except when the leaves fall making your balls difficult to find (even on the green).
Saturday, August 16, 2008
HAC played - blech
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Back at Hyperion
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
HAC -what kind of man are you?
Hyperion, the substitute teacher
Monday, July 28, 2008
Thursday, July 24, 2008
The natural swing is...natural.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
No. 11, the carnival hole -hey you, with the face!
The tree on the right of the frame blocks the approach to a green which is sunken and hidden from view. It is just taller than a 60 degree wedge's ball flight, and snags and deflects balls into a pit below and to the right which is about 10 feet lower than the green. The green tilts away from the fairway making it very hard to stop a low shot. The best shot from the right is a fade with a mid iron which lands at the end of the fairway and rolls onto the green. Needless to say, you'd rather be left, but there is a long bunker and then a row of oaks. I love this hole because success is rare.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Truth or consequence
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Tiger's win and my brain chemistry -too much of a good thing
Monday, June 16, 2008
A thoughtless round
Sunday, June 15, 2008
"Thinking instead of acting is the number-one golf disease."
Saturday, June 14, 2008
You are the One, Neo
Thursday, June 12, 2008
It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing
Golfism dictates that the golfist bring new players to the game, and the most important thing to learn first is a sound, good looking swing, and this is easiest when you learn it as a kid.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Virtual fairways in the R.O.K.
Wie back!
Monday, June 9, 2008
Golf is good for you!
America's DNA rejects elitism. If you watched the animated feature, Ratatouille, it's market appeal is through its anti-elitist stance. "Anyone can cook," is the motto of Chef Gusteau. But look closely, and you see that it's message is still elitist in its original sense: that the best qualities are in fact rare qualities that deserve to be celebrated.
America's political tapestry is fraught with this uneasy relationship with elitism. It walks hand in hand with America's uneasiness with class. American political figures sublimate their blue blood and ivory tower schooling to avoid looking "out of touch." George H.W. Bush looked titanically out of touch when he marvelled at grocery store bar code scanners -this was likely a generation gap issue, but out of touch with the common man (and woman) he looked. George W. Bush, despite the ichor and Yale/Harvard background, talks like an assistant manager at the Wal Mart in Plano and got a second term where his father failed. Both, by the way, are golfers. I don't know if they are golfists.
Golf is in siege mode because it is viewed as the sport of the elite, particularly when it applies to politics. In some corners, it fits the same bill as polo, fox hunting, and oil drilling. The fact remains, it is costly to maintain 18 verdant holes, to buy good equipment, and to get lessons during childhood (to get that good swing). The time it takes to play a round on a busy East Coast public course runs up to 5 hours, taking up a whole day.
Golf is like whiskey -you mostly drink it in private, you don't talk about it, and your moderate your consumption. The good stuff is basically out of reach of the average bloke, but there is plenty of cheap stuff to make it attainable. Bottom line though, it is a luxury, and fie on the fellow who imbibes daily. As a luxury, it is morally suspect to enjoy it too much.
Golfism changes that. Read the USGA rules of golf and you see the New England Primer, the U.S. Constitution, and the Rule of St. Benedict: words that bring structure and order to a stochastic universe. Playing golf, then, is a celebration of a way of life. How can you live without it. If you can't live without it, how can it be a luxury? Any way you look at it, a year of golf is cheaper than a year of Prozac and counseling, and better for you. How is that a luxury? Playing golf means you aren't flirting with women who aren't your wife, it means taking the time to think about the meaning of your life and your place in the world, and being a better person.
On the course, you are a better man than you are off of it. You let people through. You report your sins and assign your own punishment. You keep a respectful silence as other people go about their business. You offer to share your cigars. If all of the world adhered to golf ettiquette, we would have none of the current mess we are in.