From the hearth: Surprising how often golf turns up if you look for it. Crossing the Atlantic, excited to curl up with Graham Swift's latest novel, I savored the following passage. Like all Swift's books, The Light of Day is painfully penetrating and evocative, not unlike golf for those who stop to consider it. The game serves his purposes here beautifully, on several levels. The thoughts are those of an ex-cop who occasionally plays golf with another cop soon to retire.

We watch each other's game. Trail each other up the fairway. I play with a certain edge (early training as a kid), if neither of us is exactly top-league. But sometimes - I think he knows - I let him win. He outranks me, after all, in a manner of speaking. (Though I'd have made Super.) But it's not the golf really - that's the thing about golf, for me, it's not the golf. It's the walk and the talk. It's the way you can talk when you're looking at something else, shielding your eyes to gauge a line, a distance, not staring face to face.

The whack of a decent drive, and the ball will sit and wait for you patiently, far away. The breeze in the silver birches, the scent of clipped grass. These moments when a golf course can seem like perfect safety.

Reprinted without permission from The Light of Day by Graham Swift, published by Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin Books, 2003.

The Golfer's Ten Commandments
Royal and Ancient
Into the Bear Pit
Helicopter Words
The Walter Hagen Story
ClubAlert . . . The Electronic Club Leash
I Remember Augusta
Hoch as in Choke!
Bud, Sweat, & Tees
Only Golf Spoken Here
Passion for Golf
Fourteen Clubs and the Auld Claret Jug
Gleanings from the Wayside
Discovering Donald Ross
The Art of Golf Design
A Round of Golf with Tommy Armour
Lazy Days at Lahinch
Letters to a Young Golfer
Understanding the Golf Swing