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…]
Willie Leith’s Records in Teaching Golf
January 11, 2009 by 1 Comment
Golf professionals today use a wide array of high tech and low tech gadgetry in their never-ending quest to help us improve every aspect of our games. Video replay, interactive DVD’s, shotmaking simulators, putting arcs, whippy drivers, impact balls and hundreds of other teaching and training aids all have their advocates.
So what did golf pros offer before this industry developed? [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…]
Tiger Woods’ Masters Chip for the Ages
December 24, 2008 by Leave a Comment
The PGA.com headline read “The Chip Heard ‘Round the World.’” The shot, of course, was Tiger Woods’ chip from behind the sixteenth green on the final day of the 2005 Masters. Art Spander, an Oakland Tribune’s golf writer, started his article: [Read more…]
Ageless Advice from Lord Darling
December 21, 2008 by 1 Comment
The following appears in a description of the book A DUFFER’S HANDBOOK OF GOLF by Grantland Rice and Clare Briggs, on the Classics of Golf website.
There is no doubt “duffer” is a pejorative term. While the word’s origin is unknown, it appears in the 1800s as slang for an incompetent, ineffectual, or clumsy person. What better word to describe a neophyte attempting golf? The first “wave” of new golfers occurred when the gutta percha ball became available in the 1850s. Its lower cost and superior durability enticed many citizens to gather a few clubs and try their hand at the sport, some woefully ignorant of the rudiments of the game. “Duffer” first appears in the golf lexicon in 1875 in Clark’s Golf: A Royal and Ancient Game, in a poem by “Two Long Spoons.” [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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