Nobel Prize Winner Daniel Kahneman, in his best selling book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, includes the following formula:  Success = Talent + Luck. In golf, the player contributes the talent, but what about luck?

These days luck, good or bad, is often attributed to “the golf gods.” These gods go nameless and as far as I can tell influence the success of all golfers regardless of talent level. In a few cases, lapses in talent are also attributed to the golf gods: for example, from Golf.com in June 2011 — ”[Tiger's] latest setback seems like the golf gods kicking a guy when he’s down.”

During earlier times, at least in England, luck was the province of golf goddesses, not gods. We know this from the poetry of the time. From the first book solely about golf, The Goff, published first in 1743, the author, Thomas Mathison, pleads,

‘O thou GOLFINIA, Goddess of these plains,
Great Patroness of GOFF, indulge my strains;

A second goddess, Golfina, appears in John Kerr’s book, The Golf-Book of East Lothian (1896),

“Then, clad in white, and wearing a gutta-percha crown, tipped with golden balls, her sceptre a long spoon, entered the fair Golfina, Goddess of the Royal and Ancient Game, . . .”

The goddess Golfina is also the subject of a poem by Robert K. Risk that appeared in his book, Songs of the Links published in 1919.

       TO GOLFINA

A New Year Ode
Above the clubhouse portal
Crowned with green turf she stands,
Who gathers all men mortal
In sacrificial bands;
.        Her iron face is sweeter
.        Than Love’s, who fears to meet her,
.        To men who daily greet her
With supplicating hands.

She waits for each and other,
She waits for all men born,
Who straight forget their mother,
Their sins, their wives forlorn;
.        Their food they swiftly swallow,
.        Take wing for her and follow
.        O’er hedge, and hill, and hollow,
Till eve from early morn.

Forgetting loves that wither,
Desks, Pulpits, Stocks, and Rings,
Forgetting bores who blither,
And all disastrous things;
.        We may have done some task illk
.        Been cheated by a rascal,
.        But let us tee a Haskell,
And debts and duns take wings.

Golfina may send sorrow—
Six down and five to play—
But we will win to-morrow,
Which is another day;
.        Though we have lost a fiver,
.        Or broken our pet driver
.        Golfina bates no stiver
The homage we must pay.

From enervated putting,
From topping on the tee,
Perpetual tut-tutting
At things which should not be,
.        Miscalculated pitches
.        That land us deep in ditches,
.        New golf-books that bewitch us,
Golfina, set us free!

I have not been able to determine the relationship between Golfinia and Golfina. Any ideas?

“The Haskellisation of Golf” is the title of an article by the famous English amateur golfer and writer, Horace G. Hutchinson, that appeared in the October 17, 1902 issue of Golf Illustrated, a weekly golf magazine. Hutchinson discusses the question of whether the gutty ball should be replaced by the recently invented Haskell ball. For background see a previous Blog entry, Haskell on the Brain, http://golfpoet.com/2010/07/05/haskell-on-the-brain/.

At the same time, Hutchinson wrote his piece, a poet with the initials F.J.K. wrote a poem to the editor (they did such things 100 or so years ago) in which he versified on the pros and cons of switching to the new balls.

THE NEW BALLS                                                                                            

To the Editor of Golf Illustrated

Dear Sir,

Two of the questions of the day,
We read, in circles polished,
Are whether women ought to work,
Or kissing be abolished?

But though these interesting queries
Might be discussed for ages,
They pale and pall before the one
Appearing in your pages.

The merits of the rubber-filled
American invention
From golfers one and all demand
Their very best attention:

And week by week your paper has
An interesting series
Of answers published in response
To these important queries:

Whether, in driving from the tee,
The golfer finds his task ʾll
Be simpler if he once employs
A Kempshall or a Haskell?

And if he finds that owing to
These aids so adventitious
His skill improves all around, or fate
Is, as before, capricious.

And does the new ball benefit
Our mediocre players,
And help them to attain the art
Of Braid, or Herd, or Sayers?

And if, supposing this is true,
Another finds it hard on
His excellence, a player like
Taylor or a Vardon?

And further with what liveliness
This substitute for gutta
Behaves when struck with iron clubs,
Or aluminium putter?

And yet, again, if general use
Will spoil our English courses,
And whether, this being so, there are
Remedial resources?

These questions of the day,
Vìde GOLF ILLUSTRATED
(With which, cf. the title page,
“Golf” is incorporated.

And there one finds set forth, in turn,
Assertion and denial
Of faults and merits in the ball
By those who’ve given it trial.

One hears that certain clubs demand
Restrictive legislation,
To save the gutty from the Trans-
Atlantic innovation.

Now I, unmasked, advise each man
To try, in strict seclusion,
This full-of-rubber novelty,
And draw his own conclusion.

About the distance of his drive
He’ll wax enthusiastic,
But later on he’ll wish his ball
Was rather less elastic.

About the cost he may well feel
Supremely apprehensive,
Seeing that every ball is so
Atrociously expensive.

So, if he thinks with me, he will
Abide no rubber filling,
But use an English ball, for which
He’ll pay an English shilling!

F.J.K.

Of course, issues surrounding the capabilities of golf balls continue. Recently John Solheim, Chairman and CEO of Ping, suggested that instead of a single Ball Distance Rating (BDR) limit (how far a ball can go) there should be three. In addition to the current BDR, there would one shorter and one longer. (See  Golf Digest article) Then we would have to endure ads for the longest short ball, the longest long ball, etc. I’d rather go back to the Haskell!

New Years 1900 for the English was not all happiness. The second Boar War was under way between the British Empire and the two independent Boer republics, the  Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic. The war did not end until 1902 when the Boer republics became British colonies. These colonies later became part of the Union of South Africa.

Golf Illustrated, a new English golf weekly, greeted 1900 by beginning its January 5th edition with a poem and a few hopeful and sober remarks.

A gude (good) New Year an’ health an’ cheer,
Tae ilka (To every) gowfin’ loon,
An’ may we steer o’ hazards clear,
In life and gowf each roun’.

*             *             *

Another round in the great game of life has now commenced. Let us hope that 1900 will have fewer bunkers in store for us than 1899.

*             *             *

“Ring out the Old, Ring in the New!” seems to be a singularly appropriate sentiment this particular New Year time. We have a long and heavy score to wipe off in South Africa before we can settle down in peace and comfort of mind to our ordinary avocations.

*             *             *

We have made the mistake, as common in Golf as in life, of under-estimating our adversary, who, instead of being a third-rate performer, has turned out to be a veritable Colonel Bogey.

*             *             *

The game, however is yet young. We have now fairly got the measure of our man, and a few more holes will put a very different complexion on affairs.

*             *             *

“Ring out the Old, Ring in the New!”

*             *             *

By the time the Championships are here, there ought to be some golfers in Pretoria.

A golf related footnote to the war: Freddie Tait, a highly regarded amateur, winner of the Amateur Championship in 1896 and 1898, fighting as a member of the second battalion of the Black Watch, died in battle on February 7, 1900. To honor his memory, The Freddie Tait Cup is awarded annually to the leading amateur in the South African Open.

 Great Gift for the Ardent Golfer

Legs like Buttah!

I’ve always thought that Ernie Els’ swing was poetry in motion.It looks completely effortless and rhythmic; some might even go so far as to say it is as smooth as Barbra Streisand’s legs… “Like buttah!” (Ooops, I think I’m dating myself ).Anyway, back to golf…Except for my comments on The Big Easy, I don’t ever remember using the words poetry and golf in the same sentence.  But since I discovered Leon White’s book, Golf Course of Rhymes (Links between Golf and Poetry Thought the Ages), I can see how poetic golf really is.

Dr. White’s book is a wonderful collection of poems and songs about golf dating back centuries. But it’s not just a book of poetry; it if full of historical gems from the famous and infamous men and women who share our addiction to this sport.  Did you know that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a golf poet?  Or that women’s golf started with Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots?  Did you know there are at least 11 different ways to spell golf?

I am not someone who reads a lot of poetry, but I really love this book.  It’s organized so that each chapter is a hole on an 18-hole course, including a practice tee chapter and, of course, the 19th “watering” hole.

There are funny poems, sad ones and ones you have to read a few times to figure them out.  But as the author encourages more than once, you should read them out loud to truly appreciate them.  It’s a bit tricky with the ones riddled with Scottish dialect (he does offer translation), but reading them out loud, you can’t help but put on an accent, which leaves you smiling your way through the stanzas.

One of my favorites in the book speaks to me of heartache and happiness (which is what golf is all about); it  was published in The American Golfer back in 1915:

My drive is erratic, my brassie’s the same,
My irons atrocious, and awful my aim,
My mashie is fearful, my putting worse still,
My scores have the look of a dressmaker’s bill;
My legs are a-weary, my wrists are quite lame,
But I am most happy, — I’m playing the game.

So if you are looking for a gift for someone who loves the links, I would highly recommend Golf Course of Rhymes.  It’s a fun and entertaining read that will also teach you things you probably never knew about the history of golf and those who loved to hate it…and hated to live without it.

But it’s not just oldies but goodies…there are poems about Tiger’s chip from behind the 16th green on the final day of the 2005 Masters and even one about Michelle Wie’s quest to beat the pros in pants.

As Robert Trent Jones Jr. said in his forward in the book, Golf Course of Rhymes “is the best round of golf you will ever play without swinging a club.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Golfgal

Dear Blog reader: I hope that you won’t mind if, from time to time, I post a short excerpt from my book, Golf Course of Rhymes – Links between Golf and Poetry Through the Ages. The book provides a lyrical view of golf and its history through the words of golfing poets from publications dated 1638 to the present. It will make a great present for any golfer who loves the game. The book is available on Amazon.com.

The book is organized like a golf course – it has an Introduction, the Practice Tee, and then 18 Holes (chapters); it ends on the 19th Hole. The 3rd Hole, titled “Joys of Golf” included the following poem which I wrote.

♦On Course

Golf is a singular way
to take temporary leave
following a zigzag path
in search of a small white ball;

to abandon reality,
but stay the course,
hole after hole;

to create a new story,
always different
to be told to someone
before it’s forgotten.

An extraordinary chance
to pretend for a brief time
no matter how unskilled
that each stroke will be flawless;

to endure the pain of failure
without really failing,
and even if only once a round,

to truly enjoy
the pure pleasure
of hitting the ball rock-solid
or sinking a long tricky putt.

Among the other poems in the chapter, one was written by Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Homes and another by Sir John Betjman, a British poet laureate. Both Doyle and Betjman were avid golfers. I’m among good company!

Marketing golf poetry—talk about a tough assignment. That’s what I have been doing with this Blog for almost three years. And now with my book as well. I have had some success with about 54,000 Blog page views and a spot on some of the top 50 golf blog lists.

But just recently, I zeroed in on what I’m “selling.” Let me explain it this way. Products and services are now thought of by marketers as means to an end. And the end has to be a great, memorable, unique, (you put in the adjective) experience. For example, a golf course wants to create an unforgettable experience for its customers. A club maker isn’t selling you clubs; he’s selling you the experience of playing your best golf with them.

So old readers and new, I am not selling golf poetry on this Blog or in my book. I am selling a unique and exhilarating golf experience —the experience of reciting golf poems. And you know what? You won’t get that golf experience any other way on the course or off. For some, reading poetry out-loud will take as much courage as playing a fairway wood over water. For others it may come easier. But whatever your predisposition, this much I know. Unlike golfers of an earlier generation, you have had little or no opportunity to enjoy this aspect of the game. Here is your chance.

You might begin with the opening stanza from a poem called “The Lay for the Troubled Golfer” by Edgar A. Guest (born in England in 1881), a writer for the Detroit Free Press for more than sixty years. This is a poem you just have to read out loud.

 His eye was wild and his face was taut with anger and hate and rage,
And the things he muttered were much too strong for the ink of the printed page.
I found him there when the dusk came down, in his golf clothes still was he,
And his clubs were strewn around his feet as he told his grief to me:
“I’d an easy five for a seventy-nine—in sight of the golden goal—
An easy five and I took an eight—an eight on the eighteenth hole!

Not all golf poems, or poems in general, are that dramatic, so reading experiences will be different. But just as with hitting different golf shots, each experience can be rewarding.

Let’s try one more, this one the first two stanzas from a poem in an earlier Post called “St. Andrew’s Law by Robert Browning.” Robert H. K. Browning (not the famous poet) was a Scottish writer, golf magazine editor and golf historian who was active in the first half of the 20th century.

 When prehistoric swipers sliced, and blamed the sloping tee,
They got so riled, Saint Andrew smiled, and “Blasphemers,” said he,
“Henceforth the lightly made excuse shall give you no resource;
Ye may not win to act or use of falsehood on the course.

“Let Peter judge his fisher folk, whose unexamined scales
Their easy consciences provoke to all-unswallowed tales;
But ye the prickly whin shall test, the bunker shall condemn:
The gods of golfing love to jest–but do not jest with them.

If you are having fun, come back to my Blog from time to time and choose from the many poems I have posted. And if you like, look at my book, Golf Course of Rhymes – Links between Golf and Poetry Through the Ages, on Amazon. If you do you can recite the rest of Guest’s poem, “The Lay for the Troubled Golfer.”

I began writing golf poetry posts for this Blog in December 2008. About a month or so ago, the Blog passed 50,000 page views. Those of you who visit from time to time have helped to revived a poetry reading (and reciting) tradition that began with the first golf magazines published in the 1890′s. Golf magazines stopped publishing poetry in the 1930′s. The Shivas Irons Society recently tried to revive the tradition with a Journal of golf, literature and art. Unfortunately, the Society has had to suspend publication.

Up to now, I have only included poems from those old golf magazines, some from long out-of-print books, and a few of my own. All were written by golfers. In this post, I am stepping out of the tee box to offer a stanza from a poem called “Two Tramps in Mud Time” by Robert Frost. Frost was not a golfer, but he was a keen and sensitive observer of nature.

For my purposes, the poem’s story about Frost’s encounter with the tramps (actually lumberjacks) is not important, but the time of the encounter, a day in April, is. What is also important is that you be a New England golfer. If you are not you will have to come here next April and experience what Frost has described.

In short, Frost captures in eight lines what all New England golfers have experienced when they have ventured to play in the early Spring. And at least for me, his characterization of the vagaries of an April day’s weather is a wonderful example of what makes poetry possibly as magical as golf.

Now recall yourself on a New England golf course in mid-April:

“The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You’re one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you’re two moths back in the middle of March.”

If you have a comment on the Post or the Blog, please share it. I would really like to know what you think.

    Guidelines for Selecting Tees

Barney Adams, the founder of Adams Golf, has had a lot of good ideas. His latest is a program called “Tee It Forward.” The goal is to make golf more fun and faster. The basic notion is that golfers should play from tees that match their driving capabilities. So, looking at the chart above, if your drives average 200 yards, you should be playing from tees such that “your” golf course is 5200 to 5400 yards long. Shorter tees for shorter drivers; longer tees for longer drivers. Makes sense. Both the United States Golf Association and the PGA of America have endorsed the program and will try to get golf courses to adopt it.

A few weeks ago I decided to tee it forward and the experience inspired me to write a poem. I’m a decent player, but at age 75 the white tees have become a challenge. Teeing it forward did several things: first, it caused me to be more relaxed hitting tee shots since I no longer had to hit them as hard as possible; second,  it got me to hit different clubs from the fairway since my tee shots often landed further down the fairway than before; and, third, it improved my chances of hitting greens in regulation since I was using shorter clubs on approach shots. Better scoring is certainly not guaranteed, but birdie chances and even the outside chance of an eagle (on a par 5) are now more than dreams.

Of course, ego issues will keep some players from moving up. As I wrote in a Twine:

“Tee It Forward” with the frank admission
That your driver distance is a lengthy supposition.

Most important is that course managers endorse and promote the program. Why not, if they recognize that it will be more fun for most who try it and faster too. Course managers would do well to encourage newer players to tee it forward as well.

Now on to the poem:

TEE IT FORWARD

I played the closer tees today —
Nothing bad happened.
Actually,
One under
After three —
Not my usual score.

I teed it forward today —
Hitting eights,
And wedges
To the green.
Like —
Golf on TV.

I teed it forward today —
For the fun of it.
Unhampered
By ego —
Energized
By the experience.

I teed it forward today —
An experiment,
Kind of
Interesting —
Longer drives,
When not needed.

I teed it forward today —
Blew one hole
Completely.
A big number
Lurking —
No matter which tee.

So —

Tee it forward?
Seems right for me —
How about you?
Just move up.
Guaranteed —
Nothing bad will happen.

And who knows,
You could be —
Under after three.

 

Leon S White
September 4, 2011

For example, Shakespeare wrote :  ”Double, double, toil and trouble;/ Fire burn and caldron bubble” which in read by the three witches in his play, Macbeth.  (This is actually a golf twine now where Shakespeare is referring to Tiger’s scores on the 11th and 12th holes during the second round of the 2011 PGA Championship!)

I was hoping that my golf twines would catch on, and other Twitterers would write them as well. So far no such luck. But then I found William G. Van Tassel Sutphen, a Victorian-era fiction writer, editor of the original “Golf” magazine and author of The Golfer’s Alphabet, originally published in 1898. In The Golfer’s Alphabet, Van Tassel Sutphen wrote 27 golf twines, but he was just a little early for Twitter.

Sutphen, wrote a twine for each letter of the alphabet and added one more for the symbol “&”. His twines were illustrated by A. B. Frost. Frost (1851-1928), was considered one of the great illustrators in the “Golden Age of American Illustration”.

Below is an example:

The caption reads:

.                                                     I is for Iron that we play to perfection,
.                                                     So long as no bunker is in that direction.

And who says golf has changed!

Here are a few others from the book:

C is for Card, that began with a three,
And was torn into bits at the seventeenth tee.

H is for Hole that was easy in four,
And also for Hazard that made it six more.

N is the Niblick, retriever of blunders,
And now and again it accomplishes wonders.

And,

W in a Whisper: “Between you and me,
I have just done the round in a pat 83.”

Sutphen’s book was reprinted in 1967 and is widely available on the net.

Rudyard Kipling

Bill Pennington, in today’s New York Times, notes that Keegan Bradley, a Vermont native, played golf in the summer and skied in the winter while growing up there. Rudyard Kipling, the famous English author and poet, is credited by a number of internet sources with also golfing and skiing in Vermont in the 1890′s. What appears to be certain is that in 1894 Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Homes, visited Kipling at his temporary home outside Brattleboro at Thanksgiving time, and gave Kipling some help with his golf game. From Doyle’s diary, ”I had brought my clubs and gave him lessons in a field while the New England rustics watched us from afar, wondering what we were at, for golf was unknown in America at the time.” [Actually the first permanent golf club, The St. Andrews Golf Club in Yonkers, N.Y., was formed in 1888. But golf may not yet have reached Vermont by 1894.]

Doyle is also said to have brought with him or sent Kipling skis. One internet source goes so far as to say that “according to legend, skiing was introduced to Vermont by Rudyard Kipling.”

The extent of Kipling’s interest in golf is not clear. Doyle, however, was an avid golfer. He was for many years a member of the Crowborough Beacon Golf Club in Sussex, England and was the club’s captain in 1910. He even wrote a golf poem, “A Lay of the Links,” that is included in my book, Golf Course of Rhymes – Links between Golf and Poetry Through the Ages.

Kipling’s poetry also includes references to golf. One of his poems called “Verses on Games” includes the stanza:

Why Golf is art and art is Golf
We have not far to seek–
So much depends upon the lie,
So much upon the cleek.

Clearly, Kipling understood golf.