A hundred years ago, golf was a game to embrace for its personal challenges, competitive qualities and unique history. It was not yet a big time professional sport. Nor was it a huge business dependent on tour sponsors, equipment sales and resort travel. It was just golf played for enjoyment, “for [its] vigor without violence, for life-long joy of youth.” The relationship of the average golfer to golf was straight forward. He was a duffer trying to improve without much help from his golf clubs or the few sources of instruction then available. Golf poetry at that time provided an interesting window into the minds of ardent golfers. [Read more…]
Doug Sanders’ British Open Miss for the Ages
January 5, 2009 by 5 Comments
Doug Sanders misses 30 inch putt
My previous post celebrates one of Tiger Woods’ greatest moments when he chipped in on the 16th hole at Augusta during the 2005 Masters Tournament which he won.
Unfortunately, not so great moments have their place in golf history as well. In 1970, Doug Sanders, described by Golf Hall of Famer Johnny Miller as “a crowd-pleasing showman who dressed loud, lived fast and made golf the glamour game it was in the 1960s and ’70s,” missed a critical putt on the eighteenth green at the British Open. I wrote the following poem to memorialize this famous run-by that cost Sanders the tournament. [Read more…]
Welcome to Golf Course of Rhymes
December 19, 2008 by Leave a Comment
Golf’s long and colorful history is well documented. It origins, however have always been uncertain. Sir Walter Simpson, an early golf historian, writes in The Art of Golf, published in 1887, that golf at St. Andrews probably began when a shepherd idly hit a stone into a hole with his crook. An anonymous nineteenth century poet gives us a charming poetic version of this apocryphal story. [Read more…]
Golf Course of Rhymes 
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