I’ve been reading Dr. Bob Rotella’s new book, The Unstoppable Golfer. His basic thesis is that to play your best golf you need to develop repeatable sensible pre-shot routines, establish targets for all your shots and then go as “unconscious” as you can while hitting the shot or putting. While this approach is important for all shots, Rotella believes it is especially important for the short game. Rotella assumes that the reader can play, but is being stopped from improvement by a weak mental game that shows up more frequently from 100 yards in. By following Rotella’s mental prescriptions readers will become “unstoppable”  on the golf course. The book is easy to read and his mental game approach is well accepted among professionals. If you are looking for help with your short game and know the basics of chipping, pitching and putting, this book will help.

In the book Rotella rightly points out that sports psychology is a relatively new profession. However, he may not have come across what is likely the first reference to the mental game which appeared in a poem written by an Edinburgh medical student in 1687! The 12 line poem appears in Thomas Kincaid’s diary and is the first poem entirely about golf.

Gripe fast stand with your left leg first not farr
Incline your back and shoulders but beware
You raise them not when back the club you bring
Make all the motion with your bodies swinge
And shoulders, holding still the muscles bent                   (5)
Play slowly first till you the way have learnt
At such lenth hold the club as fitts your strength
The lighter head requires the longer lenth
That circle wherein moves your club and hands
At forty five degrees from Th[e] horizon stands             (10)
What at on[e] stroak to effectuat you dispaire
Seek only ’gainst the nixt it to prepare.

The mental game reference is in lines 11 and 12. These last two lines suggest that if you hit a bad shot, put it out of your mind when preparing to hit the next. Still good advice.

In my book, Golf Course of Rhymes – Links between Golf and Poetry Through the Ages,  I include a poem that I wrote which sums up the challenge of following the prescriptions in Dr. Rotella tome.

The Futility of Thinking

With golf and sleeping
The more that you think
The odds of succeeding
Are likely to shrink.

Be it sheep in a line
Or the ball at address
Your thoughts only lead to
An increase in stress.

But,

To swing without thinking
Requires that you
Fill your mind up with blanks
It’s darn hard to do!

But in spite of the challenge, Dr. Rotella’s book may help. Check it out on Amazon. Oh, and you can check out mine as well. Thanks.

A lot has been written about the new Master’s champion, Bubba Watson, since he put on his first green jacket. But unlike, a hundred years ago, it’s all prose and no poetry. So I’ve turned back the clock with a few verses to celebrate his well deserved and colorful victory.

Bubba’s Way 

Bubba doesn’t mind confessin’
He’s got this far without a lesson
But what’s the lesson in the tale
To the top, more than one trail.

Bubba’s Swing

Bubba’s swing is nice an’ breezy
Makes his monster shots look easy
But with that driver you’re tempted to think
They’ve got to go longer because it’s pink.

Bubba’s Shot 

About BW let’s be candid
Fortunate that he’s left handed
If he had hit a slice instead
“Our usual shot,” all we’d have said.

Bubba’s Game

Hit it and find it, that’s his game
To walk that far you’d have to train
And with his flat stick he might sink
Every putt…were it too pink!

Leon S White (golfpoet)

April is Poetry Month, so why not a Post focusing of some of what I’ve learned about golf poetry.

In doing research for my book, Golf Course of Rhymes – Links between Golf and Poetry Through the Ages, I found that the earliest poem known to include a reference to golf was called “The Muses Threnodie” by Henry Adamson, published in Edinburgh in 1638. Some have argued that Shakespeare preceded Adamson. For example, here is King Lear on pressing: “Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.” But, I think we’ll stick with Adamson.

Possibly the first poem devoted entirely to golf was found in a 1687 diary entry of an Edinburgh medical student, Thomas Kincaid. In 12 lines, Kincaid establishes himself as golf’s first swing instructor. The poem begins,

Grip fast stand with your left leg first not farr
Incline your back and shoulders but beware
You raise them not when back the club you bring

The complete poem is included in my book. I found it in a wonderful reference book on early golf history called A Swing Through Time by Olive M. Geddes, a Senior Curator in the National Library of Scotland. The “triumvirate” of early golf poems is completed with “The Goff,” a 358-line mock-heroic poem written by an Thomas Mathison and published in book form first in Edinburgh in 1743. The Goff is thought to be the first book entirely devoted to golf.

As golf developed in Scotland and then in England, golf poetry developed as well. One of great golf poets of the first half of the 19^th century was George Fullerton Carnegie, a member of St. Andrews. His poetry is included in a book edited by Robert Clark called Golf: A Royal & Ancient Game. One of Carnegie’s poems, “Address to St. Andrews” begins,

St. Andrews! They say that thy glories are gone,
That thy streets are deserted, thy castles o’erthrown;
 If they glories be gone, they are only, methinks,
As it were, by enchantment, transferr’d to thy Links.

In 1886, David Jackson, Captain of the Thistle Golf Club, Scotland, published a 32 page pamphlet/book called Golf – Songs & Recitations. You can search this Blog for three Posts that include poems that Jackson wrote. A few years earlier in 1873, Thomas Marsh, described as the poet-laureate of the Royal Blackheath Golf Club in London, privately published a small book called Blackheath Golfing Lays. A rare 1^st edition copy recently sold for $8400.

In my opinion, one of the best golf poets of the 19^th-early 20^th century, was the Scottish writer, poet and drama critic, Robert K. Risk. In 1919 he published a book of 36 golf poems called Songs of the Links with illustrations by H.M. Bateman, a famous British cartoonist. I was fortunate to win a copy of Risk’s book at auction three years ago. Risk was a golfer, as were virtually all of the golf poets of this time  Only a golfer, Risk in this case, could write lines such as these,

Here, with an open course from Tee To Tee,
 A Partner not too dexterous – like Thee—
Beside me swiping o’er Elysian Fields,
And Life is wholly good enough for Me.

Other British golfer-poets of Risk’s time included Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling (born in India), Andrew Lang, better known for his children’s fairy tale books, Robert H. K. Browning (not that Browning) and John Thomson who wrote a wonderful short book called A Golfing Idyll under the pseudonym “Violet Flint.” The book, subtitled The Skipper’s Round with the Deil (Devil) On the Links of St. Andrews, was first published privately in 1892.

In my research I discovered one golf poet of the time, Harry Vardon, who may have borrowed the verse he offered to an auction during World War One. This story can be found in an earlier Post and also in my book.

Golf poetry was also being written in the United State and Canada during the late 19th and early 20^th centuries. One of the best American golf poets was Grantland Rice, the first dean of American sports writing. Rice wrote hundreds of poems about many sports, wrote prose and poetry for a number of New York City papers and was editor an early golf magazine, American Golfer, in the 1920’s. Among the many golf poems Rice wrote, here is one of his shortest:

The bloke who lifts his well known dome
Will let it hang when he starts home.
And he who finds missed puts are rife
Is no companion for a wife.

Other American golfer-poets, contemporaries of Rice, include Charles “Chick” Evans, Jr., the great amateur player, Tom Bendelow, an important early American golf architect, who wrote a parody of “Casey at the Bat” called “Hoo Andra Foozled Oot,” Ring Lardner, one of American’s best short story writers, the Chicago Tribune columnist Bert Leston Taylor, and a New York lawyer, Norman Levy.

I also discovered three Canadian poets: Edward Atherton, who wrote a song called “Far and Sure” in 1901; W. Hastings Webling; and a Montreal judge, writer and poet, Robert Stanley Weir, who was most famous for writing in 1908 the first English lyrics to O Canada, Canada’s national anthem.

Outside of Scotland, England, the United States and Canada, I have found only one golf poet. His name was Barton “Banjo” Patterson from Australia. The poem he wrote is called “The Wreak of the Golfer” but he was much more famous for writing “Waltzing Matilda.”

If you know of any golf poetry by poets from other countries, for example, Ireland, India or France, please leave a comment with the reference or poem. And to read poems by most of the poets mentioned above, please consult my book.

Note: Part 2, the next Post, will focus on the question: who reads golf poetry?

Last Summer, at the time of the U.S. Women’s Open, an Internet headline read “It’s Open Season on Michelle Wie . . .”  The story included the statement that, “school [Stanford] was too much of a distraction for Wie . . . “ In fact, Ms. Wie has had her critics almost from the time she began playing competitive golf more than eleven years ago. Her detractors would have liked her to satisfy their plans. She had her own ideas and has carried them out exceedingly well.

Now that Ms. Wie is graduating from Stanford this month (fairness requires me to admit that long ago I earned two degrees from the university), I thought she deserved poetic recognition for her achievements and best wishes for a great post-graduate career in golf and otherwise.

  FOR MICHELLE WIE

Michelle Wie, Michelle Wie,
Will your critics ever see,
That a Stanford ed has done for you,
What winning on the tour could  never do.

If you’re a star, the critics said —
Play the game — get ahead,
Full time’s required, if not more;
A degree from Stanford won’t help your score.

But a different scorecard you have kept,
Not just at golf are  you  adept,
Your student days deserves acclaim;
Golf, scholarship and fun have been your game.

But now Degreed, you can roll,
Through tourney gates in your Kia Soul.
Ready to play; give it your all —
Dispatching your critics with an educated ball.

Leon S White, PhD
Stanford, ’58, ‘59

First, I would like to thank all of you for supporting golf poetry by visiting golfpoet.com. We have passed the three year mark and you have registered more than 60,000 page visits. Together we have made golf poetry, mostly poems written before 1920, a little more visible to the golfers of today.

Response to the Blog also encouraged me to complete my book, Golf Course of Rhymes — Links between Golf and Poetry Through the Ages with a Foreword by Robert Trent Jones, Jr.

The Blog now has more than 120 Posts. Of that number, I though it might be interesting to list the Top Ten at this point. They are as follows:

1.  Golf Ball Poetry

2.  A Golf Poem You Can Relate To

3.  Doug Sanders’ British Open Miss for the Ages

4.  An Old Golf Magazine and a Poem for Old Golfers

5.  Lying in Golf Poetry

6.  Golf Ball Poetry Continued

7.  If Johnny Cash Had Been a Golfer

8.  Attitudes Toward Women Golfers in the Early Days (Part 1)

9.  The Importance of Golf – A Sentimental View from the Past

10. Twines — Two Line Golf Poems from Twitter

If any of these titles look interesting, please take a look and enjoy.

Finally, I would encourage you to send links from this Post/ Blog to any of your golfing friends who might enjoy the experience a reciting golf poetry. Thanks.

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!