The Golf School
The Golf School
By Colman McCarthy
Does it ever fail? No matter how many sevens or eights are on the scorecard, no matter how long are the odds that 100 will be broken, every golfer plays one hole a round where it all comes together: a long, straight drive, a well-arched iron to the green, one or two sweet-rolling putts.
Or maybe it doesn’t happen once a round, but every 10th or 20th round. Or once a summer. Or once a lifetime. The magical happens. Sometimes, it’s only one shot. But that’s enough. It’s the shot that brings you back for another round, and the shot that has you disagreeing with Betsy Rawls, who dominated women’s golf in the 1950s along with Patty Berg and Louise Suggs, when she said: “I’ve always had a drive that pushed me to try for perfection, and golf is a game in which perfection stays just out of reach.”
Usually, but not always.
Playing in a tournament once, my caddy, seeing me tense up on the practice tee even before the round began, sought to calm me by saying that golf is about possibilities—so let the possible happen.
I went with that for a long time. But ten or so years ago, I began seeing it another way, as if lining up a breaking putt from a different angle. I was reading Miguel de Unamuno’s “Tragic Sense of Life”—the Spanish philosopher’s most enduring work—when this appeared: “Unless you strive after the impossible, whatever possible you achieve will hardly be worth the effort.”
That’s what golf is: giving the impossible it’s unlikely chance to happen.
I saw it on display the other day. One of my playing partners—a 6’2” graduate student in his early 30s who once made an ace that qualified him for a national hole in one contest in Las Vegas—was scuffing and topping so many shots that he picked up on most holes. His drives were so off line that he needed a compass and a golf cart with four-wheel drive to find them.
“Haven’t been playing much this summer,” he half-explained, half-apologized.
He suffered for 17 holes, but did so good-naturedly and even laughing at his wildness. Missed shots weren’t getting to him. But then the impossible happened. His drive on the 440 yd. 18th was a straight, low riser of 280 yds with more than sevens seconds hang time. He held his follow-through for a few seconds, the way pros poser when they hit one flush. I was disbelieving: where’d that drive come from?
I’d asked the same question the hole before when my other playing partner rolled in sloping putt for an eagle three. He’s been having a fair afternoon—three or four over par for the day—but then comes the magical moment: getting him in two on an uphill par five and running in a 30 footer.
Plenty of theories might explain these two impossibles: the law of average, luck, flukiness.
My guess is that my pals had finally found themselves in a purely tensionless state, one of golf’s purest and rarest moments. A relaxed, worry-free swing doesn’t always mean we’ll break par, only that we’ll break free—of all the self-imposed shackles we keep bringing to the course.
Leave ‘em behind. Go to the workplace to tense up.