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A Golf Poem with a Moral

December 14, 2009 by Leave a Comment

If there is one quality that separates golf from other sports it is emphasis on playing by the rules. A player is expected to call a penalty on him or herself when a rule is broken even if no other player is aware of the infraction. And, of course, it is expected that a player’s scorecard includes all the strokes played. And then there are the players who go out alone. James P. Hughes wrote about one of these players in his poem, “Individual Golf,” published in the December 1915 issue of The American Golfer.

INDIVIDUAL GOLF

He stood upon the link’s first tee
And made a straight and perfect drive.
His iron he sliced around a tree,
Dead to the pin. Instead of five
He holed a single putt for three.

Another perfect shot was made—
Two hundred fifty yards or more.
A midiron with a lofted blade
He used to help his medal score,
For with it dead, the ball he laid.

Two threes he had to start the round.
Next came a short and well trapped hole.
His drive, a cleek, rose from the ground
Straight for the green and on the pole
He holed a two with smile profound.

Thus went his game in less than par—
A record for all time, you guess.
No hook nor slice his score to mar;
No balls in rough all down  in less
Than almost nothing—there you are.

No, gentle golfer, ’twas no dream
In which this magic score was  made,
Although at first it so would seem
When former cards were cast in shade,
By this titanic play supreme.

But now the secret bare is shown
Of how these threes and fours were done.
Some putts, of course, he could disown—
In fact, he never claimed but one,
For this great golfer played alone.

Far greater than the best of clubs
Is one lone pencil in the hand—
It saves a hundred strokes to dubs
And proves a blessing in the land
Because it never counts the flubs.

Moral

When golfers tell of shots unknown,
Just ask them if they played alone.

Filed Under: golf, golf history, golf humor, golf poetry, humor, poetry, sports poetry Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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When Golf Poetry Matters

December 7, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Jerome Travers, the great amateur golfer of the early 20th century, included a chapter called “‘First Aid’ to a golfer ‘Off his Game,'” in his book Travers’ Golf Book ( New York: The Macmillan Company, 1913). He began, “What a note of tragedy there is in those few words “the golfer is off his game.” Travers went on to write,

The golfer ‘off his game’ cannot drive, approach or putt, he doesn’t know what the matter is and he has completely lost confidence in himself.

Travers’ prose gives us a straight forward description of what it is to be off one’s game in golf. However, it takes a poet to get to the essence of the problem and its ramifications.

In a book called Humors and Emotions of Golf (1905), a poet known only by the initials (E.M.B.) tells us what it’s really like when “He’s off his game.”

“He’s off his game.”

Like hollow echoes boding ill,
His heart is wild with tremors chill,
And whispers in a small voice still—
An admonition—ghostly—shrill—
.          “He’s off his game!”

His divots fly like night-bats doure;
His drives are never far and sure;
And bunkers, like Charybdis, lure
His erring ball to depths obscure;
.          “He’s off his game!”

In vain seem all the pro’s sage tips;
His little gutty always lips
Or over-runs the hole; then slips
That naughty D——I must ellipse,
.          He’s off his game!”

Thro’ distant whins and stubborn gorse
With grim expletives gaining force,
He plunges on his zig-zag course,
Until he sighs in deep remorse,
.          “I’m off my game!”

At home his brooding spirit shows
The weighty cares of hidden throes;
Too well his Golfing Widow knows
The anguish of her hubby’s woes—
.          “He’s off his game!”

Andrew Lang (1844-1912), a famous Scottish writer and poet as well as golfer, also wrote a poem of similar anguish called “Off my Game.” Could the agonies and frustrations of golf be fully described without poetry? I think not.

Filed Under: golf, golf history, golf humor, golf poetry, golf poetry books, humor, poetry, sports poetry Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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Golf Poetry from the Captain of the Leven Thistle Golf Club, 1886

November 30, 2009 by 3 Comments

In last week’s Post, I included a poem from a book, Divots for Dubs. The book  can be found in only four libraries in the U.S. Last Monday, I received a book in the mail called Golf Songs and Recitations that I bought from a book seller in England. No libraries carry this book!

What I actually bought was a 1988 reproduction of the original which had been published first in 1886 and then printed again in 1895. This very small (6 1/2″ x 4″) 32 page “book” was written by David Jackson, then Captain of the Leven Thistle Golf Club.  In the book’s Introduction, Jackson says he composed the songs and verses in the book because he had,

heard very few Songs in honour of the Game, and [he] … often thought it a pity that such a popular recreation should be so little celebrated by the Poets.

The first poem in the book is called “Ode to Golf.” In it Jackson describes his love of golf in words that still resonate more than 120 years later. I am including the complete poem since I don’t believe you will find it any where else on the web or in any other book. I think you will enjoy it.

ODE TO GOLF

Oh, Golf, thou art a pleasure dear,
That cheers us on from year to year;
That soothes the heart, and cools the brain,
When stirred with grief, or seared with pain.
Whene’er the wintry snows are over,
Around the Greens we fondly hover;
All blythe of heart as busy bees,
We swing our Clubs, and seek our tees,
The smiling sea, the sunny sky,
The song of larks that heavenward fly,
The flowers that spring to meet the eye
Proclaim the Golfing season nigh.

To Swing, then Drive, To Putt, and Hole,
To some may seem absurd and droll;
To me it is a joy, a pride—
Worth twenty other games beside.
Where is the rival to the game
Of royal and of ancient fame;
Or what is such a cheery houff
As just a friendly match at Gouff?
And when at last, in good old age,
No more at Matches we’ll engage,
We’ll turn to memory’s page and fain
We’ll fight our battles ower again;
And leave to youth the active sport,
The miss, the drive, the miles, the short,
The sclaff, the foozle, the weel sent hame,
The ups and downs of this dear game.

Then fill a bumper, fill it high,
Hurrah for Golf, may Golf ne’er die,
But still from age to age increase—
A game of friendship, love, and peace!

Filed Under: golf, golf history, golf poetry, golf poetry books, golf songs, poetry, Scotland, sports poetry Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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A Rare Golf Poetry Book

November 23, 2009 by Leave a Comment

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Those of you who have been following this blog know that most of the poetry is from old golf books and magazines. Part of the fun of writing the blog is finding new (old) books which provide me with new material.  Brian Siplo (co-author of a wonderful book about Harry Vardon’s first trip to the U. S., called The Vardon Invasion) recently told me about some old golf poetry books. With a bit of luck, I was able to buy one of them called Divots for Dubs through Abebooks. The 96 page book was written by J. Ellsworth Schrite who self-published it in 1934.

The book  explains in verse, how to play golf. The author makes this very clear in his charming introduction,

Divots for Dubs

“DIVOTS FOR DUBS” explains in verse,
How to play golf, better or worse;

The history, the course, the clubs to choose,
The stance to take, the swings to use;

What to wear, and where to look,
How to slice, and how to hook;

Things that on each course are seen,
Things you need to play “Nineteen”;

A bit of humor, a bit of sense,
Some alibis for self defence:

Get your “Divots”, take a look,
You miss a “par” if you miss the book.

If you want to read on, however, you will be challenged. According to WorldCat only four libraries in the world have it! But that’s also part of the fun I have: bringing inaccessible golf poetry back to life in this blog.

Filed Under: golf, golf history, golf humor, golf instruction, golf poetry, golf poetry books, humor, poetry, sports poetry Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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Golf Widows in Prose and Poetry (Continued)

November 16, 2009 by Leave a Comment

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The May 1920 issue of The American Golfer included an article with the title “Yes, I’m a Golf Widow.” It was written “By One of Them.” It begins,

It’s my lot to be the wife of a week-end golfer who from early April till late in November permits nothing to interfere with his weekly pleasure. …  I know he works hard during the week and deserves some pleasant recreation on Saturday and Sunday. He can’t get this by sticking around the house. I was first to discover that he needed something in the athletic line in the open air. I suggested golf to him and he finally got interested, but I am sorry now that I every heard the word.

In the April 1917 issue of The American Golfer, The Rev. John B. Kelly wrote an article with the title “The Moral Value of Golf” in which he counseled,

Let the golf widow not bemoan her lonesome fate, but be glad in her solitude. Her husband may be dead to her when he is embalmed in the allurements of golf, but he will be alive and strong to protect her many years after her neighbor is keeping her stay-at-home husband’s memory fresh in the immortelles she places on his grave.

Those are pretty strong words! James J. Montague, an American poet and writer, and  penned an equally strong message in his poem “Lines to a Golf Widow” which appeared in the November 1921 issue of the same magazine.

Lines to a Golf Widow

If you had said eight months ago
When January blizzards blew,
And all the greens were deep with snow,
That I must give up golf or you,
I might have stayed the fatal step,
I might before it was too late,
Have vowed that we should never sep-
Arate.

If, even in the early Spring,
When we were playing winter rules,
When mud flew thick on every swing,
And balls fell “chug!” in casual pools,
You’d been disposed to raise a row
And talked of leaving me again,
I might have listen to you now
And then.

Indeed along in mid July
When sultry blew the listless breeze,
And temperatures ran rather high—
Say ninety-two or -three degrees,
Had you the riot statute read
Till I agreed to quit, I might—
I can’t be sure—I might have said:
“All right!”

But now, when greens are hard and fast,
And fairways like an emerald floor,
When I have got the swing at last
And confidently bawl out “Fore!”
Your threat to part may be a bluff’
Or you may really pack and go,
But I shall not be home enough
To know !

Filed Under: golf, golf history, golf poetry, humor, poetry, sports poetry Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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Golf Widows in Prose and Poetry

November 9, 2009 by 2 Comments

Mrs. Pastern was a woman with an air of bereavement, who 20 yrs. ago would have been known as a golf widow. Mr. Pastern was the brigadier of the golf club’s locker room light infantry, who would shout: “Bomb Cuba! Bomb Berlin!”

This quote is from a description of the story “The Brigadier and the Golf Widow” by John Cheever that appeared in The New Yorker in November 1961.

Actually the term “golf widow” goes back to at least 1890 where an illustration titled “A Golf Widow” appeared in Horace Hutchinson’s famous Badminton Book Golf.

Montrose (a town in Scotland) is … the site of the first recorded ‘golf widow’. She was ‘sweet Mistress Magdalene Carnegie’ who married the son of the 4th Earl of Montrose, James Graham. His diaries record that he played golf with his future brother-in-law, the Laird of Lusse, on the 9th November 1629, the day before his wedding,and then a few days later he sent to St Andrews for new clubs and repairs to his old ones as well as playing more golf. However his controversial lifestyle caught up with him in 1650, after he had become 5th Earl himself, when he was hung, drawn and quartered in Edinburgh at the Grassmarket as a traitor, when he backed the wrong side in the English Civil War.

In June 1915, Grantland Rice published a poem, “The Golf Widow Speaks” in The American Golfer.

THE GOLF WIDOW SPEAKS

You have kicked in with a serum for the Great White Plague;
You have uppercut the Typhus on the jaw;
You  have copped an anaesthetic
To relieve the diptherethic
And the rest of it you’ve cut out with a saw
But tell me, gentle doctors, ere the mortal coil is off,
Is there nothing you’ve discovered in the medicated trough
That may curb the raging fever of the game called “goff”?

You have cantered into Gangrene with a knock-out punch;
You have hammered Scarlet Fever to the ropes;
You have even found the answer
To a mild degree of Cancer,
And you’ve killed the drug enticement of the dopes.
But tell me, learned doctors, is there nothing you can do
For hydrophobic horrors in the heads of husbands who
Can only rave of Stymies and a Perfect Follow Through?

More next week.

Filed Under: golf, golf history, golf humor, golf poetry, humor, poetry, Scotland, sports poetry Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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The Epic of a Chronic Slicer (Continued)

November 2, 2009 by Leave a Comment

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The previous Post (October 26th) introduced the epic of  “Frenzied John.” The poem, a painful description of a chronic slicer, was left unfinished by Bert Leston Taylor, maybe for good reason. It was included in an article in the June 1926 issue of The American Golfer. The article also included a proposed ending. In addition, readers were asked to write their own endings and submit them to possibly win a prize. The ending that was included is as follows:

FRENZIED JOHN (proposed ending)

And Then

He tried the left side pivot,
Although he found it pained;
He turned his knee in from the tee
But still the kink remained.

He thought of weight and balance,
By toe and then by heel;
With shifting stance he did his dance,
But still they heard him squeal.

He sought a new instructor,
And seemed to be O. K.
But left alone, they heard him moan—
“I’m off again today.”

He bought a spoon and mashie
To help correct the ills;
They both felt great, but sad to state
They would not whang the pill.

His neighbors fled in panic
When he came off the course;
His wife in tears was game for years
And then grabbed a divorce.

He tried a slight pronation,
And said—”I’ve got it now”—
But by next day it went away
And furrows creased his brow.

“Perhaps,” he said, “I’m dipping
My shoulder down too far”:
He held it up, but missed the cup
And never got a par.

“I’m through,” he yelled in fury;
“I’m through for good—You’ll see”;
He quit a week, then grabbed his cleek
And hustled to the tee.

He tried the upright system.
Until I heard him curse;
And yet his game was not the same,
For it grew worse and worse.

In my view, Taylor’s unfinished poem is long enough and just needs maybe two more stanzas to bring it to a close. With that in mind I composed the following. (Note that the first stanza is Taylor’s last and then my two follow.)

My Proposed Ending

He laid the club-face forward,
He laid the club-face back.
His face grew thin, his chest fell in,
His mind began to crack.

He slumped but then remembered.
There was one other book.
He read it quick, and grabbed his stick
Ye gads no slice, a hook.

The moral of the story,
Grasp it ‘fore it’s too late.
Off the tee, ‘tween you and me,
It’s hard to hit it straight!

Filed Under: golf, golf history, golf humor, golf instruction, golf poetry, humor, poetry, sports poetry Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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The Epic of a Chronic Slicer

October 26, 2009 by 1 Comment

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Bert Leston Taylor (1866-1921), who wrote a column for the Chicago Tribune under the initials BLT, wrote a poem with the title “Frenzied John” which he never finished. In June 1926, The American Golf published an article with the unfinished poem and offered a prize of two dozen golf balls to the reader who best finished the poem in ten stanzas or less. I searched later issues of the magazine in vain trying to find the winning entry. Here is the poem (slightly shortened), as far as it goes.

FRENZIED JOHN

He worked as hard at golf
As any man alive;
For  nothing went the time he spent—
He always sliced his drive.

He held himself like this,
He held himself like that;
By hook and crook he tried to look
And see where he was at.

He changed his stance and grip—
It mattered not at all:
The same old thing with every swing,
He sliced the bally ball.

He put his right foot forward
He put his right foot back;
But still his game remained the same—
He sliced at every crack.

He told it to the lockers,
He told it in the hall,
Till more and more it grew a bore
To hear he sliced the ball.

He read the books of Vardon
Of Taylor, Braid, and all;
But every shot went straight to pot—
He sliced the cursed ball.

He went to Doctor Vardon,
And got the best advice;
He whaled the pill till he was ill,
Nor ever lost his slice.

Doc took him out to pasture,
And showed him what to do,
And while the Doc was there to knock
He hit them fairly true.

But after Doc departed
The stuff was off again;
He shot it on to Helngon,
And nearly went insane.

No matter how he whacked it,
He sliced into the tall.
“O Lord, how long,” his frenzied song;
“How must I hit the ball?”

Again to Old Do Vardon
He tottered for advice.
Said Doc: : “We’ll have to operate
And cut away that slice.”

He put his right hand under,
He put his right hand up,
But still the ball would hunt the ball,
Nor ever reach the cup.

He put his heels together,
He put his heels apart.
With anguished brow he wondered how
He’d ever learn the art.

he laid the club-face forward,
He laid the club-face back.
His face grew thin, his chest fell in,
His mind began to crack.

If you would like to enter the contest, it’s too late to “Please mail all answers to ‘The Contest Editor,’ AMERICAN GOLFER, 353 Fourth Avenue, New York, N.Y.”  But you can leave your ending as to what became of Frenzied John in a Comment below.

In the next post, I will provide the ending that the magazine included in the article. Yours may be better.

Filed Under: golf, golf history, golf humor, golf instruction, golf poetry, humor, poetry Tagged With: , , , , ,
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The End of Golf Season

October 19, 2009 by Leave a Comment

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Yesterday morning (10/15), here in Eastern Massachusetts, a thin white covering could be seen from the kitchen window for a brief time. An early warning of things to come. In fact, it has been very cold all week. Even colder than the Red Sox were in LA!

C.P. McDonald saw this kind of weather in the Fall of 1913 and lamented the end of golf season in the following poem.

STOW THE STICKS

When Autumn’s chill is o’er the land,
And maple leaves are turning gold;
When coal trucks are on every hand,
And Summer’s radiant tale is told;
When steam first crackles through the pipe,
And geese fly southward day by day;
When hunters trek the fen for snipe,
Then, golfers, stow your sticks away.

When days are short and nights are long,
And sweethearts hover ’round the grate;
When winds no long croon a song,
But shriek in tones that irritate;
When Summer drinks have disappeared,
And rye and bourbon hold full sway;
When stalwart trees stand gaunt and seared,
Then, golfers, stow your sticks away.

Just bid the caddie sad farewell,
And in your lockers put away
The pristine balls, that eke would tell
The splendid scores you did not play;
Go, golfers, get an ample stock
Of rock-and-rye without delay;
Then get your blanket out of hock,
And stow your golfing sticks away.

The poem first appeared in The American Golfer in December 1913 and was later reprinted in Lyrics of the Links compiled by Henry Litchfield West and published in 1921. Though the coal trucks have bit the dust, “rock-and-rye” still makes headlines.

Filed Under: golf, golf history, golf poetry, poetry Tagged With: , , ,
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At the Docks to Send Off Ouimet in 1914

October 12, 2009 by 2 Comments
Ouimet's ship to England

Ouimet’s ship to England

Suppose you lived in Orlando and wanted send Tiger off to the 2009 President’s Cup matches. Chances are you would not have known where to go or when. Things were different 95 years ago.

If you lived in Boston and the date was March 29, 1914, then in the late afternoon you might have decided to go down to the harbor where the steamship Lapland was docked. You’d have gone there to wave goodbye to Francis Ouimet, the current U.S. Open champion, who was off to England for the Amateur and Open championships. At the dock you would have been “surrounded by a hundred and more golfers who risked the loss of a good Sunday dinner in order to be on hand and give a rousing cheer when the ocean liner started on its way across the deep.”

The quote is from an article in the May 1914 issue of Golf Illustrated. Also included is a song about Ouimet written by “the golf poet-laureate of Boston, Joseph A. Campbell…” that a few of his friends might have sang on board ship before it sailed.

Oh! He wasn’t known in Europe till last Fall,
But they know him now in far off Hindustan,
In Bombay, in Baroda, in Bengal
He’s known to ev’ry blooming Englishman.

He had read about this Vardon and of Ray,
But they didn’t seem to feaze the lad at all,
He just simply kept on playing,
Did not mind what folks were saying,
And proved himself the topper of them all.

Chorus:

Oh! Francis, Francis Ouimet,
You’re a golfer through and through,
You rose to the occasion
When our last hope was in you;
May your good luck never fail you,
May your shots be always true,
God bless you, Francis Ouimet,
All our caps we doff to you.

Oh! He’s always on the job when Duty calls,
He’s the golfing pride and glory of the Hub,
He’s modest and his modesty enthralls,
And a deadly shot he is whate’er the club.

He knows we like to hear the Lion roar,
And to see the knots a’tying in his tail
And Johnny Bull he’ll show once more
What he showed him once before,
That the golfer who is best must prevail!

Ouimet along with his sailing partner Arthur G. Lockwood, 1903,1905 and 1906 Massachusetts State Amateur Champion, landed in Dover, England on April 6th. Unfortunately, both golfers faired poorly at both the British Amateur and Open. Ouimet would later write in his book, A Game of Golf, first published in 1932, “My trip to England was a horrible failure from the competitive point of view…” (p. 62)

So neither the golf trip nor the song turned out to be memorable. But had you been at the dock, you would have had a good story to tell.

(Note: After Francis Ouimet returned to the U.S. , he did win the 1914 Amateur Championship, becoming the first career winner of both the U.S. Open and Amateur Championships.)

Filed Under: golf, golf history, golf poetry, golf songs, poetry, Tiger Woods Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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