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Some Four Line Observations on Golf

August 24, 2009 by 1 Comment

Short poems have their place as well. This week I offer a few four liners in hopes that one or two may linger with you for a while.

From a 1901 issue of Golf Illustrated, an observation made more specific many years later by Bob Toski’s question: Where would you rather be on your drive, in the rough, or 15 yards shorter but in the fairway?

Good people of every sort
Come listen to my song,
‘Tis better to be straight and short
Than to be crooked and long.

From an 1891 issue of Golf, a timeless truth,

Golf without cessation
Brings naught but vexation;
Golf in moderation
Is pleasant recreation.

From a poem, “The Wicked Fairy” by Reginald Arkell,

I hit the ball as clean and true
As any decent pro would do;
I mark the line, I watch it fall —
And then it isn’t there at all.

Two four-liners written by Bert Leston Taylor (1866-1921), an American columnist, humorist, poet, and author. who wrote a column for the Chicago Tribune from 1901 to 1903 and then again from 1909 until he died.

RAIN

The rain is raining all around,
It falls on turf and tee;
But I don’t care how wet I get—
I made that hole in three.

WHOLE DUTY OF GOLFERS

A golfer, when he plays with you,
Should speak when he is spoken to,
And keep his score card free from fable;
At least so far as he is able.

And four lines offered anonymously, in the form of a stanza from the Rubaiyat by Omar Khayyam, that take up where Taylor’s four lines left off,

GOLFAIYAT

Some take a Brassey when they play the Game
Or with a Cleek carve out the way to Fame;
And some there be who but a Pencil Stub
Have used, and yet have Got There just the Same.

(From Lyrics of the Links by Henry Litchfield West, p. 58)

Finally, four lines that I wrote in answer to all those Titelist ball ads,

BEST BALL

The Pro V-1 from Titleist
The pros who play it do insist
With length and spin it beats them all—

Except for someone’s Nike ball.

Filed Under: golf, golf history, golf humor, golf instruction, golf poetry, golf songs, humor, poetry Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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Slow Play – Even In the Old Days of Golf

August 10, 2009 by 1 Comment
Take From the LA84 Foundation's Digital Archives

Take From the LA84 Foundation's Digital Archives

The cartoon is from the September 1913 issue of The American Golfer. The related story centers on the slow play of a talented young American amateur named Heinrich Schmidt, from Worcester, MA, who lost to Harold Hilton in the sixth round of the 1913 British Amateur Championship at St. Andrews. Here is how the article describes the characteristics of Schmidt’s play,

…his deliberative methods anterior to making the making of a shot, the painstaking care in sizing up the situation before selecting the particular club requisite for the stroke, the practice swings indulged in through the green and the same scrupulous care, only very much more so, when the sacred precincts of the putting -green were reached.

Later in the article, the writer admits that the British critics have a point,

Our players generally are painfully slow, even in friendly matches, aggravated ten-fold in competition.

Earlier still, in the December 1901 issue of the magazine Golf, an anonymous poet succinctly and most colorfully describes his attitude towards slow play,

THE SITTING HEN

A malison[curse] upon the man who thinks by taking thought
That he can lengthen out his drive or hole the putt that’s short.
Upon each separate blade of grass he meditates eternally,
Awhile the field upon him wait and objurgate [castigate] infernally.

Reginald Arkell (1882-1959) was a British script writer and comic novelist who wrote many musical plays for the London theatre. He was also a poet who published a book called Playing the Games in 1935 (London: Herbert Jenkins Limited). And presumably Mr. Arkell was also a restive  golfer as his poem, A Public Nuisance, makes clear.

A Public Nuisance

You know the fellow,
I have no doubt,
Who stands and waggles
His club about.

Empires crumble
And crowns decay:
Kings and Communists
Pass away.

Dictators rise
And Dictators fall—
But still he stands
Addressing his ball.

Arkell seems to be describing a tardy golfer, but then again he could have been characterizing a lame political leader of the time. Any thoughts?

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Golf Ball Poetry Continued

August 3, 2009 by 2 Comments

Woodley Flier

From Old Golf Auctions Limited

An earlier Post featured a golf ball poem that was part of a Spalding advertisement. “My Favorite Ball,” another golf ball poem, was published in the magazine Golf in July 1900. Its claim to fame is that it plays on the names of golf balls that were popular at that time. I am not an expert on old golf balls, but did look through a number of early golf magazines to try to find the actual names being parodied.

MY FAVORITE BALL

The Blazenger, the Pewtertown,
Atrippa, Would-be Flyer,
The Oysterburgh of some renown—
Of all I’ve been a buyer.

The Cockley and Obobo too,
The Marsity and Skewflite
Have seen me, each in turn, go through
Full many an old and new flight.

Withe B-2 White I’ve tried my hand
And many an N.G. lost,
While Coopinson and also Grand
Have added to the cost.

All these and many more I’ve tried,
But none so good as my ball
On the club-house porch, as I sit beside
A fizzling, cold, Scotch high-ball.

Here is what my research turned up:

Blazenger…………..Slazenger
Pewtertown………Silvertown
Atrippa……………
Would-be Flyer…Woodley Flier
Oysterburgh……..Musselburgh
Cockley…………….Henley
Obobo………………Ocobo
Marsity……………
Skewflite…………..Trueflite
B-2 White………….A.I. Black
N.G. ………………..
Coopinson………..Davidson(?)

If anyone can help out with the blanks or find a better match than “Davidson” please leave a comment.

“My Favorite Ball” was written by Walter N. P. Darrow (1863-1926), a West Point graduate who rose in the ranks to become a General. The New York Times, in reporting his death, wrote,

[General Darrow] was for more than twenty-five years a member of the cottage colony at the Profile House [an exclusive summer-hotel in New Hampshire], and one of the first to introduce the game of golf in the White Mountains.

I found another of General Darrow’s poems in the November 1901 issue of Golf.

HIGH AND LOW BALLS

He could not hit that low white ball
When standing on the tee
Because he had too often hit
A “high-ball,” don’t you see?

So when the “high-balls” he forswore
And took the Keeley cure,
He soon found out that he could hit
The low ones far and sure.

The moral’s clear, my golfing friend,
No matter who may scoff,
If on the ball you keep your eye
It surely will be off.

And, vice-versa, it is true,
When all is said and done,
If off the ball you take your eye
You’re apt to find it on.

Let’s hope the General limited his preoccupation with high-balls to his poetry, at least while playing.

Filed Under: golf, golf balls, golf history, golf humor, golf poetry, humor, poetry Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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The Great Game of Golf

July 27, 2009 by 1 Comment

68F10-duffer

I suspect that ardent golfers who watched Tom Watson’s performance at the 2009 Open  were of two minds when it ended. They were sad for  “Old Tom,” but happy to be associated with such a great Game. For most of us, that happiness is not so much based on our whether we can hit long drives or make short putts, but rather on the many pleasures we associate with participating in the sport. And who knows, with practice or devine intervention, our abilities sometimes improve, even if only for a brief time. Sir Walter Simpson, an early golf historian whom I have previously quoted, wrote in his book The Art of Golf (1892),

Golf is not one of those occupations in which you soon learn your level. There is no shape nor size of body, no awkwardness nor ungainliness, which puts good golf beyond one’s reach. There are good golfers with spectacles, with one eye, with one leg, even with one arm. … It is not the youthful tyro alone who has cause to hope. Beginners in middle age have become great, and, more wonderful still, after years of patient duffering, there may be a rift in the clouds. … In golf, whilst there is life there is hope.

That final thought provides lasting inspiration to us all.

In the May 1915 issue of The American Golfer, the correspondent who wrote “New England Notes” included a poem that reflected both the frustrations and pleasures of “patient duffering,”

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.

Filed Under: golf, golf history, golf humor, golf poetry, humor, poetry Tagged With: , , , ,
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WATSON AT TURNBERRY – THE 2009 OPEN

July 22, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Photo Credit AP

Photo Credit AP

I’m giving myself a two stoke penalty for breaking my rule of posting only on Mondays. But Tom Watson’s performance at Turnberry deserves at least one poetic response.  So I offer the following:

WATSON AT TURNBERRY – THE 2009 OPEN

From the tee at eighteen
He looked down towards the home hole
Like a pitcher with a one run lead
Looks toward home plate needing one more out.

As he drove his ball
We knew what the magic number was
When the camera showed a safe white speck
We exhaled in unison and subtracted one.

Now it was an eight iron to the green
Or was it a nine?
A question to be answered twice
The first time by Watson alone.

He was thinking nine but hit the eight
And as we watched with growing anxiety
The ball bounced hard and rolled too far
We held our breath and subtracted one.

Again a choice: to chip or putt
“One of the best chippers of all time”
The words of an old pro in the booth
But the third stroke would be a putt.

From off the green the ball raced up
Then by the hole a good eight feet
He said he had seen grain
Down to one, we saw trouble.

Once more a putt to win the Open
But this was not a kid with a dream
This was a Champion Golfer five times over
Yet now we feared the worst.

While he took two short practice strokes
We lost interest in counting
And as the ball rolled weakly off his putter
We lost all hope as well.

“I made a lousy putt,” Watson’s words
“Then it was one bad shot after another”
A self-stated epitaph marked the close:
“The Old Fogy Almost Did It.”

And so the golf writers lost their story
To an illustrious sage from an earlier time
It wouldn’t be about Watson winning or losing
But how he had played the Game.

And did he ever!

Leon S White
July 22, 2009

Filed Under: golf, golf history, golf poetry, poetry, putting, Scotland Tagged With: , , , , ,
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Does Golf Improve Health? – A Turn of the Century (20th) View

July 20, 2009 by Leave a Comment

PlayGolfForHealth

Before I begin, please note that this Post is not an argument for adding Golf to the President’s Health Care Reform Bill!

According to Murray G Phillips, an Australian sports historian writing in the May 1989 issue of the Journal of the Australian Society for Sports History, around the beginning of the 20th Century,

“Golf’s major justification rested on the belief that sporting participation improved one’s health. The game was lauded for its ability to aid in health-related matters. Consider the testimony of the English champion of 1902 [Sandy Herd] who was successful at 53 years of age. To him it was ‘golf and golf alone that kept him of the youthful side’.”

Philips goes on the quote a review article on golf in Australia written around 1900 in which the writer claims that,

“There is no other form of sport which is so recommended by the medical faculty.”

Interestingly, some of the golf poetry of the time echoed this theme. For example, from a 1906 issue of Golf Illustrated,

There is an old person of Bickley
Who for sixty long years had been sickly;
.       Since taking up golf
.       His ailments are off,
He’s renewing his youth very quickly.

Here are a quick four lines from an 1893 issue of Golf,

To drive the Golf ball on the ground,
To spoon it o’er the hill,
Will keep both mind and body sound,
And save the doctor’s bill.

And in another issue of Golf, later the same year, a poem “A Song of Golf” included the following healthful and colorful stanza:

When doctors fail to cure you, and you go from bad to worse,
Your head just like a toy shop, and existence but a curse,
You need not knuckle under, be it fever, chill, or cough,
Just take your clubs and caddie, and then whack away at Golf.
.                Then whack away at Golf,
.                Then smack away at Golf,
You can banish pills and potions if you whack away at Golf.

(These verses all come from an unpublished collection of poems put together by the late Joseph S. F. Murdoch, the renowned golf book collector and bibliographer. I was extremely fortunate to receive a copy of this collection from one of his close friends.)

It is interesting to note that today, at least in the U.S., the health benefits of golf are often lost to golf carts, unwalkable golf courses and cigars. Meanwhile, many professional golfer prepare to play golf by adhering to rigorous exercise routines designed by expert trainers. Golf isn’t the source of their improved fitness, it’s the driver.

Filed Under: golf, golf history, golf humor, golf poetry, humor, poetry Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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Golf and the Need for Self-deception

July 13, 2009 by Leave a Comment
Bernard Darwin

Bernard Darwin

Herbert Warren Wind, himself an outstanding golf writer, described Bernard Darwin as “the greatest writer on golf the world has ever known.” Darwin (1876 – 1961), was a grandson of Charles Darwin. He was trained in law at Cambridge where he also played golf.  He disliked the practice of law but loved golf. So despite having no formal training, he began what would become an illustrious career writing about golf. He covered the sport for The Times of London from 1907 to 1953 and for Country Life from 1907 to 1961, the first writer ever to cover golf on a daily basis, instead of an occasional feature.

Darwin wrote more than 20 books on golf. In one, simply called Golf, he wrote,

“Is there any other game in which the player is so constantly wondering what is the matter with him and so regularly finding a cure which he believes will heal him for ever, only to suffer a dreadful relapse next day? I can hardly think there is since so few other games give the same opportunity for solitary practice, and it is the solitude above everything else that promotes this pleasant  form of self-deception.”

Robert Risk, a Scottish writer and poet, published a book of 36 poems in 1919 called Songs of the Links that included a poem “The Golfer’s Discontent” that expands on Darwin’s observation. The last stanza is acutely perceptive.

The evils of the Golfer’s state
Are shadows, not substantial things—
That envious bunkers lie in wait
For all our cleanest, longest swings;
The pitch that should have won the round
Is caught and killed in heavy ground.

And even if at last we do
That 80, coveted so long,
A melancholy strain breaks through
The cadence of our even-song—
A 7 (which was “an easy 4”)
Has “spoilt our 77 score.”

And thus, with self-deception bland,
We mourn the fours that should have been,
Forgetting, on the other hand,
The luck that helped us through the green;
Calmly accepting as our due
The four-hole which we fluked [luckily stroked] in two.

The drive that barely cleared the sand,
The brassy-shot which skimmed the wall
The useful “kick,” the lucky “land” —
We never mention these at all;
The only luck that we admit
Is when misfortune comes of it.

And therefore, in a future state,
When we shall all putt out in two,
When drives are all hole-high and straight,
And every yarn we tell is true,
Golf will be wearisome and flat,
When there is naught to grumble at.

Filed Under: golf, golf history, golf humor, golf poetry, humor, poetry, putting, Scotland Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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Advice on Putting in Prose and Poetry

July 6, 2009 by 1 Comment

Fig-40-PUTTING-OFF-THE-LEFT-LEG-MR-l-AIDI-AY-ADDRESSI

In last week’s Post I included a poem, “Dedicated to the Duffer” from a book, The Winning Shot, by Jerome Travers and Grantland Rice published in 1915. But what is “the winning shot?”  According to Travers, who won the U.S. Amateur Championship four times and the U.S. Open once,

“Undoubtedly “the winning shot” in golf is the putt. There can be no question about it.”

Travers later on in the chapter continues,

“We all know that there is less of the physical and more of the psychological in putting than in any other part of golf. To be putting well the golfer must have absolute control of his nerves…”

Travers ends the chapter with “a few condensed suggestions” to improve your putting:

  1. Stand well over the ball and keep your head still.
  2. Keep your eye on that ball and don’t move your body.
  3. Cut out the jab or the stab, learn the pendulum swing, and get a follow through with the club.
  4. Cultivate, in practice as well as play, the knack of being a trifle beyond the hole if you miss. Make a steady practice of giving the ball a chance.
  5. Cultivate the habit of concentration.
  6. Cultivate the habit of confidence and determination, for mental faults can be improved as well as physical ones.
  7. And then practise putting wherever and whenever you get the chance.

Remember these words were written almost 100 years ago. They hold up well when reading the modern gurus Pelz, Utley, Rotella and Valiante.

And yet, as the following poem suggests, when you compare all the words of wisdom regarding putting, the result is more often confusion than improvement.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: golf, golf history, golf humor, golf instruction, golf poetry, humor, poetry, putting Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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U.S. Open Champ and Ace Sportswriter Produced Golf Book of Prose and Poetry

June 29, 2009 by Leave a Comment
Jerome Travers 1915 Open

Jerome Travers 1915 Open

Grantland Rice

Grantland Rice


The November 1917 issue of The American Golfer includes a column by a writer who used the pen-name  “Sam Solomon” in which he considers the relationship between golf and poetry:

“A certain affection appears to exist between the spirits of this game and the muse of verse. There is an old affinity between golf and poetry. It is natural, surely, that is should be so, when we consider that golf is a thing of Nature and freedom and the open world, and makes a riot of the emotions, and that, again, it is a thing of history and traditions, and colourful romance all the way from the beginning until now. Great pictures have been painted of golfers at their game; statues of golfers have been raised; art and the sport have had much to do with one another, and agreeably so.”

He continues,

“Here in America there has for long been the tendency in the game to versify. Our own pages within the golden covers from time to time bear witness of it. Perhaps Grantland Rice has come nearest of all Americans to the true sentiment coupled with graceful phrasing, and he has maintained the most indispensable quality of dignity. He has known that the truth can often be told in verse better than any other way. In his [poem] “Dedicated to the Duffer” at the beginning of The Winning Shot, and elsewhere in that book, there are some pretty pearls:”

This is the substance of our Plot—
For those who play the Perfect Shot,
There are ten thousand who do not.

For each who comes to growl and whine
Because one putt broke out of line
And left him but a Sixty-Nine.

At least ten thousand on the slate
Rise up and cheer their blessed fate
Because they got a Ninety-Eight.

The Winning Shot (published by Doubleday, Page & Co. in 1915) was actually written by Jerome Travers, a great amateur golfer of the early 20th century who won the U.S. Amateur Championship four times and won the U.S. Open as an amateur in 1915 at Baltusrol. Travers wrote the prose and Grantland Rice, arguably the greatest sportswriter of the first half of the 20th century, wrote the poetry. Rice, of course, is best known for his lines,

For when the One Great Scorer comes
To write against your name,
He marks – not that you won or lost –
But how you played the Game. [Read more…]

Filed Under: golf, golf history, golf humor, golf poetry, humor, poetry Tagged With: , , , , ,
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The Origin of The Royal and Ancient Game of Golf

June 22, 2009 by Leave a Comment

image0-4

With the site of the British Open at Turnberry in Scotland next month, it’s an appropriate time to review what is known about golf’s beginnings.

We know that the earliest written reference to golf in Scotland was in the famous Act of Parliament of 1457. We know as well, as Robert Browning writes in his book A History of Golf (1955), that

“from the Peace of Glasgow in 1502 to the Revolution of 1688, every reigning monarch of the Stuart line — two kings and one queen of Scotland, four kings of the United Kingdom — was a golfer.”

It’s not called “The Royal and Ancient Game of Golf” for nothing!

But what of golf’s actual origin, its “big bang?” Sir Walter G. Simpson in his book The Art of Golf, published in 1887, suggests the following “two shepherds theory:”

“A shepherd tending his sheep would often chance upon a round pebble, and having his crook in his hand, he would strike it away…On pastures green this led to nothing : but one on a time (probably) a shepherd, feeding his sheep on a links—perhaps those of St. Andrews—rolled one of these stones into a rabbit scrape. “

The shepherd then hailed another who attempts to duplicate the feat, but fails. They then deepen the rabbit scrape and begin practicing. Simpson continues, [Read more…]

Filed Under: golf, golf history, golf humor, golf poetry, humor, poetry, Scotland Tagged With: , , , , ,
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