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Magnets of the Fairway

July 10, 2011 by Leave a Comment

I play golf on a town-owned 9-hole course called Pine Meadows in Lexington, MA. Over the past 27 years I’ve gotten to know the course well. The layout includes  several attractions or should I say “attractors,” that generally reek havoc with players’ drives: the tree on the 8th fairway, the pond that cuts across the 5th and 9th holes and the sand trap in the middle of the first fairway (until it was removed).

The other day on the 8th tee, I watched golfers hit their balls where they always seem to hit them —  towards the imposing tree.  And on the 9th, the pond was collecting balls as usual. As we all know, this doesn’t just happen at my course.  So I concluded that such a ubiquitous phenomenon is worthy of poetic reflection. My effort is called “Magnets of the Fairway.

 MAGNETS OF THE FAIRWAY

Magnet are mostly made of steel
In golf: sand, water or wood.
When looking at these fairway lures,
The pre-shoot does no good.

On tees with trees control is lost
No matter how you bat it.
The only way to miss a tree
May be to aim right at it.

Sand traps also play a role
Attracting errant shots.
The magnet-makers in this case—
The golf-inventing Scots.

I wish I had a dollar bill
For every tree branch hit.
I’d use the sum to bribe the Keep
To grass each sandy pit.

A third attraction, stream or pond,
On fairways, far from rare.
The only way to circumvent—
Stay totally unaware.

For a holiday trip, sand and trees,
Even a water-fall.
But when you find them on a course,
They’re just magnets to draw your ball.

Leon S White
July 7, 2011

 

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A Golf Controversy Regarding the Swing

June 23, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The question, “How do you swing a golf club?” , has no simple answer today or in the past. Almost 70 years ago, J. A. Hammerton wrote this verse that appeared in The Rubaiyat of a Golfer:

Myself when young would hopefully frequent
Where Pros and Plus Men had great argument
On Grips that overlapped, on Swing and Stance
But came away less hopeful than I went.

As golf became popular in the United Kingdom and then in the U.S. and other countries around the turn of the 20th Century, golf books became the primary source of swing instruction. Books were written by the major golf professionals of the time and by other self-proclaimed experts as well. One of the most prolific writers on golf and golf instruction in the early 1900’s was a New Zealander named Pembroke Adolphus (sometime Arnold) “Percy” Vaile.  Joseph Murdoch’s book, The Library of Golf, lists eight books by P.A. Vaile. (worldcat.org includes 130 entries for Vaile including a number on Tennis about which he also claimed expertise! See illustration above.)

In one of Vaile’s golf books, The New Golf, published by E.P. Dutton & Co. in 1916, Vaile almost lashes out against the idea that the left hand is dominant in the golf swing:

“The hoariest old tradition that ever fastened on to golf was the power of the left. It was more than a tradition. It was a fetich. Authors and journalists worshiped at its shrine.”

Vaile goes on to attack Vardon, Taylor and Braid (“The Great Triumvirate”) as well as Horace Hutchinson, the great amateur and leading golf writer of the day for their “moldy old idea[s].” Vaile first put forth his ideas in a newspaper article maybe eight years earlier. At that time he was attacked. In his words,

” I was in the thick of it. Anybody who bursts up any useless old tradition, or even gives it a bump, in London, is a fool, a faddist, a theorist, or a revolutionist. If he does not recognize this before he disturbs any of the dust of centuries, and if he is not prepared to accept the position kindly and patiently-and temporarily-he deserves all that is coming to him-and that is much.”

And in those days, attacks were not limited to prose:

THE LEFT HAND’S LAMENT
(Picked up on the links at
St. Andrews)

Since first by Heaven’s august decree
The Royal Ancient Game was planned,
I always was allowed to be
The Master Hand.

To Me did text-books all allot
The part of propulsative strength.
The raking drive, the brassie shot–
I gave them length.

The Right Hand was –poor thing!–designed
To guide the club, and that was all;
Mine was the power that lay behind
The far-hit ball.

Now come there one upon the scene,
Whose heresy fair turns me pale–
The Arius of the golfing green–
A wretch name Vaile.

He says our Vardons, Braids, and Whites
Don’t golf’s dynamics understand;
Their view of Me’s all wrong; the Right’s
The Master Hand.

If Fate would let me but devise
Some torture for this villain bold,
Who thus would revolutionize
Golf’s credos old–

Oh! then to ball of rubber core
I’d change him for a tidy spell,
And drop him in “The Swilcan” or
“The Burn” or “Hell”;

I’d lose him in the rock-strewn sand
Whence few topped spheres ejected come,
Of Musselburgh’s notorious Pand-
Emonium.

Clearly, todays controversies  – one plane vs. two; stack and tilt; Tee It  Forward – are mild in comparison.

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Indoor Golf in Chicago Now and Then

June 6, 2011 by 2 Comments

From the current issue of “GolfTime Magazine,” a biannual guide to golf in the Chicago area:

Experience Chicago’s Most Accurate and Realistic Indoor Golf Facility!

Experience a new paradigm in year-round indoor golf facilities at Play 18 in downtown Chicago’s Loop.  Located at 17 N. Wabash, just a few blocks from Millennium Park, Play 18 aims to offer golf enthusiasts full game play and practice facilities with sophisticated golf technologies, amenities, membership packages and more – all 12 months of the year, rain or shine!

We all know that golf has a long history. But the folks at Play 18 may not know that indoor golf was played in Chicago and nearby more than 100 years ago.  According to Robert Pruter, a major golf instructional school, O’Neil & Fovargue Indoor Golf School (185 Wabash Ave), opened in 1910.  (Whether 185 was North or South Wabash, if the Indoor Golf School existed today it would be a very short walk from there to Play 18!)

But a student of golf poetry would have found reference to the Indoor Golf School, not in Mr. Pruter’s article, but in a poem called “Winter Golf” by Bert Leston Taylor (1866-1921), the great Chicago Tribune columnist.

WINTER GOLF

“All the benefits of outdoors winter golf
in the tropics, at the Indoor Golf School” – AD

Within the grimy Loop’s environs,
The rubber pill may be addressed,
A man may swing his golfing irons,
And let his fancy do the rest.

The murmur in the street below,
The elevated’s boom and roar,
Will sound–if fancy have it so–
Like surf upon a tropic shore.

The air within the driving stall
Does not suggest a Stilton cheese,
To one whose mind is on the ball
‘Tis fragrant as a tropic breeze.

We, upon whom the spell is laid,
For tropic things care not a whoop,
Imagination’s artful aid
Will bring the tropics to the Loop.

The sun, the breeze, the fields, the rest–
Of them let railway folders sing.
We know, who are by golf obsessed,
The Pill’s the thing! the Pill’s the thing.

With its continued relevance, Taylor’s poem may deserve a spot on the wall at Play 18.

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Short Golf Poems – Less Than a Foot

May 23, 2011 by 2 Comments

Two line golf poems, such as the Twines I occasionally write for Twitter, are short. But what about really short golf poems?

The widely acknowledged shortest general poem is:

FLEAS

Adam
Had ’em.

I would offer as a possible shortest golf poem:

BACKSWING

Low
Slow.

A three word entry might be:

DUFFER’S GOLF

A profane
Game!

And in the four word category, a familiar refrain uttered by many after a series of bad shots:

A GOLFER’S LAMENT

Can’t hit
For sh–.

If you would like to share your two, three or four word golf poems, please leave a reply. It shouldn’t take long.

[And if you are looking for a unique gift, please consider my book, Golf Course of Rhymes – Links between Golf and Poetry.” Robert Trent Jones, Jr. wrote the foreword.  Thanks.]

Filed Under: golf, golf humor, golf poetry books, Golf Twines, humor, poetry, sports poetry, The book "Golf Course of Rhymes" Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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Was Omar Khayyam a Golfer?

May 12, 2011 by Leave a Comment

In 1965, when I was a young professor at the M.I.T. Sloan School, I wrote a paper with the title, “Markovian Decision Models for the Evaluation of a Large Class of Continuous Sampling Inspection Plans.” In June of 2009, I published a paper with the title, “Was Omar Khayyam a Golfer” in “Through the Green,” a publication of the British Golf Collectors Society. I leave it to you to characterize the arc of my writing career. Right now I’m more concerned with the arc of my drives! The golf parodies of Khayyam’s famous poem, “The Rubaiyat” are  explored more fully in the 7th Chapter of my new book, “Golf Course of Rhymes.”



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The Essence of Golf in an Old Poem
 

April 4, 2011  by  3 Comments 


Today (3/30) I drove by the local driving range and it was open! Always a good sign. And the afternoon temperature was above 50 degrees — another good sign. But the weather report warns of wet snow tomorrow night and Friday. And there you have it – early spring for the golfers of New England.


In the past at this time of year, I have offered spring celebration golf poetry, see “Another Golf Season Begins” and “A Springtime Exchange . . .” To start this golf season I would like you to read (out-loud and slowly if possible and more than once if you have the time) a poem “Ode to Golf” that gets at the essence of the game. The poem was written by Andrew Lang (1844 -1912), a prolific Scots poet, novelist, literary critic and appeared in a book titled, Ban and Arriere — A Rally of Fugitive Rhymes, published in 1894. [The poem makes several references to St. Andrews.]




Ode to Golf


‘Delusive Nymph, farewell!’

How oft we’ve said or sung,

When balls evasive fell,

Or in the jaws of ‘Hell,’

Or salt sea-weeds among,

‘Mid shingle and sea-shell!


How oft beside the Burn (stream),

We play the sad ‘two more’;

How often at the turn,

The heather must we spurn;

How oft we’ve ‘topped and swore,’

In bent and whin and fern!


Yes, when the broken head

Bounds further than the ball,

The heart has inly bled.

Ah! and the lips have said

Words we would fain recall –

Wild words, of passion bred!


In bunkers all unknown,

Far beyond ‘Walkinshaw,

Where never ball had flown –

Reached by ourselves alone –

Caddies have heard with awe

The music of our moan!


Yet, Nymph, if once alone,

The ball hath featly fled –

Not smitten from the bone –

That drive doth still atone;

And one long shot laid dead

Our grief to the winds hath blown!


So, still beside the tee,

We meet in storm or calm,

Lady, and worship thee;

While the loud lark sings free,

Piping his matin psalm

Above the grey sad sea


The old golf poetry, well represented in this Blog, time and again makes clear how timeless the game is. One drive “featly fled” will bring us back for another round, yesterday, today or tomorrow.


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A Golf Poem with a Boston Accent
 

March 21, 2011  by  Leave a Comment 
Grantland Rice


Grantland Rice wasn’t from Boston, he was born in Murfreesboro, TN in1880. And I don’t think he spent much time there. Nevertheless, in the following poem “Beating ‘Em To It” he somehow picked up at least a slight Boston accent. The poem appeared in The Winning Shot,  a book written by Jerome Travers which I have mentioned in previous Posts. Rice’s poetry is sprinkled through out the book’s pages.




BEATING ‘EM TO IT


Yes Pal, I know just how it was–you should have won a mile;

You had him trimmed ten ways on form and twenty ways on style;

You had him stewed into a trance–you had him strung until

You went and blew a ten-inch putt where something tipped the pill;

A putt you wouldn’t miss again the whole blank summer long–

A pop-eyed pipe to anchor– am I right or am I wrong?


I get you pal–don’t say a word–he wasn’t in your class;

You had no less than twelve bad kicks that plunked you in the grass;

While you were straight upon the pin, he foozled every shot,

But somehow skidded on the green and gathered in the pot;

No not a word; I know, old top–your case is nothing new–

I know, because each time I lose they beat me that way, too.


Now that golf season has begun,keep the poem in mind when you have one of those matches or one of those days.


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The Golfer’s Wife
 

March 7, 2011  by  1 Comment 


If you search this blog, using “Wife” as the search term, you will find five Posts that one way or another characterize the golfer’s wife of about 100 years ago. In these early days when golf was becoming popular and affordable the men played and for the most part their wives did not. A popular description of such wives was (and still is) “golf widows.” Yesterday, while searching through a Google book called Humours of the Fray by Charles L. Graves (published in London in 1907) I found yet another poem with the subject as its title, “The Golfer’s Wife.”


As is often true in these poems, the golfer himself is subject to the poet’s ridicule, while the wife though suffering is clearly the “hero.”






THE  GOLFER’S WIFE


OF  perfect stamina possessed,

From centenarians descended,

Jones spends his lifetime in the quest

Of health-although his health is splendid.

Last year he throve upon a fare

Which  now he views with utter loathing,

And monthly he elects to wear

New hygienic underclothing.


His doctors order exercise,

Fresh air and healthy recreation;

And Jones assiduously tries

To combat physical stagnation.

Llandrindod welcomes him to-day,

To-morrow Droitwich  lures him brinewards;

Next week ’tis Bath, or Alum Bay,

Or  Bournemouth,  and he hurries pinewards.






At scholarship inclined to scoft,

Yet  fond of neither dogs nor horses,

Upon his diet and his golf

Jones focusses his mental forces ;

Unmoved by mountain  peaks sublime,

Or  ‘mid the most enchanting  greenery,

Because he’s musing all the time

On  his inside, and not the scenery.


To travel with this fearsome freak,

This  valetudinarian* loafer,  (*unhealthy)

I should decline, though for one week

He gave me all the gold of Ophir.

Yet  his self-sacrificing spouse,

All normal interests resigning,

Beneath her lifelong burden bows

Without  the semblance of repining.


With  him she trots from links to links,

Wearing  a smile of saintly meekness ;

With  him eternal cocoa drinks

Though  China tea’s her special weakness.

Nor  is her sympathy profound

Relaxed at luncheon or at dinner,

When  Jones reconstitutes each round,

And turns the tables on the winner.




Fine weather keeps him out of doors,

But when it rains or even drizzles

The  slightest moisture he abhors

Her fate is worse than patient Grizel’s*. (* A reference to the wife of Marc Antony)

For Jones exacts attentive  heed

To his malingering recital,

And poses as an invalid

When  Mrs. Jones deserves the title.


No chance of respite or reward

To her the future seems to offer,

Unless some random rubber-cored

Despatches this dyspeptic golfer.

Already shrunken  to a shred

By her devotion self-denying,

She perseveres, and when she’s dead

He’ll  blame her selfishness in dying.


Divines are wont  to disagree

Acutely in regard to Heaven,

Some doctors holding it to be

A single sphere, and others seven ;

But Jones’s consort entertains

No doubt about one crucial question ;

There will, upon the heav’nly plains,

Be neither golf nor indigestion.


Mr. Graves lived from 1856 to 1944. He was a prolific writer and poet. Among his books were a four volume set called Mr. Punch’s History of Modern England. Though I searched widely, I could find no other connections between Graves and golf beyond his poetry.


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“He’ll yet a gowfer be.”
 

February 21, 2011  by  1 Comment 





If you search my blog using the word “duffer” you will find 10 Posts out of a little over a hundred that include the term. Duffers are common on the golf course and in golf poetry as well. But what is the opposite of “duffer?” It might be the perfect golfer, except there are none. But that hasn’t stopped golf poets from musing about the possibility of playing perfect golf or what it might feel like to be a perfect golfer. In my book, Golf Course of Rhymes – Links between Golf and Poetry, I include several poems on golf perfection. I found another, this one on a duffer’s view of perfect golf, in a book called Divots for Dubs, privately published by J. Ellsworth Schrite in 1934.




The Par Buster


I pray that some day I might be,

Allowed to step up to the tee,

And there with all my friends to see,

I’d swing–so smooth and evenly

That they, who’ve seen me in disgrace,

Would marvel at my new-found grace.

And as the ball sailed straight and true,

I’d hear them murmur: “What hit you?”


With practiced calm I’d stand and stare,

And watch the ball sail thru the air.

And when it settled to the land,

My friends would grasp me by the hand

And mutter: “Gosh! I’ve never seen,

A drive hit so near the green.”

I wouldn’t strut–I’d trudge along,

Stilling my heart from its victory song.


My second, with an iron I’d hit,

With plenty of spin to make it “sit.”

Of course, I’d be allowed to grin,

When it rolled almost to the “pin.”

I wouldn’t have to use my putter,

For, “Pick it up”, I’d hear them mutter.

From every tee I’d drive them far,

On every green I’d laugh at par.


The rough, the traps, and all that stuff,

Would see that I was good enough

To guide my ball beyond their clutch,

I’d pass them by with hooks and such.

And when the course I’d travel o’er,

I’d let my caddy add the score.”

I wouldn’t faint nor shout with glee,

If he should look with awe at me.

But how we all would celebrate,

When he shouted–sixty-eight.


I wonder, would I lose the thrill,

Playing that well–perhaps I will.

Oh well, a day dream now and then,

Gives us hope–we try again.


So in the end it is not unreachable perfection, but the hope of getting better that drives us all. John Thomson, an Scottish lawyer, golfer and poet, put this idea to verse in 1893:


See yonder lads upon the links.

Go, find a duffer there but thinks,

For a'[all] the jeers and wylie winks,

He’ll yet a gowfer be.


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“St Andrew’s Law” by Robert Browning
 

February 7, 2011  by  3 Comments 


Much of the golf poetry in this Blog is straight-forward. You read it once, understand what the poet is trying to convey and respond with some kind of thought or emotion . . . or not. For the most part, the best of the golf-poets of the past were entertaining verse-writers who on occasion reflected their feelings for the game poetically.


A few of these poets went beyond verse writing and wrote at what might be described as a higher level. Their poetry requires more careful reading (not necessarily what Blog readers are looking for), but such reading can also be rewarding. One such golf poet is Robert H. K. Browning, a writer, golf magazine editor and golf historian who was active in the first half of the 20th century. His poetry has been included in my last two Posts.


I found Browning’s poem, “St. Andrew’s Law,” sub-titled “(With apologies to Rudyard Kipling)”, in a book called On the Green edited by Samuel .J. Looker, published in 1922. The reason for “apologies” is that the poem is a parody of Kipling’s poem, “Poseidon’s Law.” Both poems include warnings about lying while recognizing the inherent inevitability of stretching the truth, whether in a sailor’s tavern or clubhouse bar. I hope you will take the time to read “St. Andrew’s Law” out-loud . . . to fully enjoy Browning’s humor, his keen understanding of golfers’ foibles and his poetic skills.




St Andrew’s Law


(With apologies to Rudyard Kipling)


When prehistoric swipers sliced, and blamed the sloping tee,

They got so riled, Saint Andrew smiled, and “Blasphemers,” said he,

“Henceforth the lightly made excuse shall give you no resource;

Ye may not win to act or use of falsehood on the course.


“Let Peter judge his fisher folk, whose unexamined scales

Their easy consciences provoke to all-unswallowed tales;

But ye the prickly whin shall test, the bunker shall condemn:

The gods of golfing love to jest–but do not jest with them.


“Ye may not hope with putts untrue to reach the narrow tin,

Nor cozen [bamboozle] of their lawful due the bunker and the whin,

Nor tempt with drives that are not straight the slice-avenging rough,

Nor keep your ‘good’ strokes from the fate of stokes not good enough.


“But since the twisting ball that’s bent before the rising wind

Must always meet its punishment to tell you ye have sinned,

Be yours the frank unwavering eye, the open soul that shrinks

From any though of rotten lie–while ye are on the links.”


About the rugged moorland track on which his course was laid

The cave-man kept the law intact–until his game was played;

But once the last short putt was holed to crown his heart’s desire,

Audaciously mendacious [duplicitous] strolled the cave-man to his fire.


The prehistoric head of flint adorns our clubs no more,

But still the new clubs drive a-squint, exactly as of yore;

The prehistoric stone is now the radium-centred ball,

But ah ! the prehistoric man has never changed at all.


And driven in by rain or sleet, or by the Evening Star,

He moistly occupies his seat beside the clubhouse bar

And as or yore around Stonehenge, when golf was in its youth,

The swiper takes his great revenge upon the gods of truth.


If you have the time, you might find it interesting to look at Kipling’s poem and see just how Browning went about transforming a poem about sailors to one about swipers. And here is a website for help in understanding Kipling’s lines. But don’t worry, there won’t be a quiz.


 


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