That's Golf
The Best of Barkow
By Al Barkow
Burford Books, 2001
$24.95 ISBN: 1-58080-096-3
In a memorable aside, during an investigation of whether we're too smart for our own good, Gardiner Dickinson says that he learned from codgers like Sam Snead and Horton Smith that, at least as far as golf was concerned: "self-deprecation never helped anyone."
Whether the same is true for writing is debatable, but there's no denying the feature pairing of sound journalistic instincts and determination.
Dickinson's recollection is but one juicy morsel plucked from this banquet of insight, a retrospective spanning a discerning lifetime in golf and decades of top flight observation and gumshoe work.
We learn, for instance, in a profile of legendary touring pro Ky Laffoon, the partial contents of his Cadillac's trunk.
Laffoon was one of the game's [last] great characters, no stranger to hustles, strong enough that he could tear a deck of cards in half. (There is a course in Florida where he's alleged to have shot and buried his putter in a greenside bunker). The back of his car was filled with a clothes rack, a "Men's Shop on wheels." Before the trunk was closed (One wonders what Laffoon made of the scribe's keen interest), the author spied: several sets of clubs, two golf bags, two handguns, several pairs of golf and street shoes, two bottles of Scotch, a vibrator ("Does wonders for a sore back," says Ky), chewing tobacco, a can of sardines and a jar of peanut butter ("In case you get hungry. You never know."). Archival matter worthy of a WPA Guide, the detail says so much more about the life and outlook of a traveling pro playing for peanuts than the easy-way-out sanitized versions we get today, all money list this and greens in regulation that.
Barkow asks good questions and is often rewarded. In a 1994 article for Golf World article, he sought out Arnold Palmer's sister, Lois Jean Tilley. She provided just the sort of humanizing detail a reader hopes to learn about their heroes, in this case that their mother drove Arnie to every tournament in high school, and while "he was always an emotional guy," his confidence and charisma came only with time.
Ralph Guhldahl, who captured two U.S. Opens in the late 1930's, was a most reluctant interview, but when his chatty wife popped up with this beauty: "When he sat down to write that book of instruction - that's when he lost his game" - Barkow must've experienced the sort of tingle Harvey Penick noticed whenever a beginning student first got the ball off the ground.
All that came out of Ralph's mouth was a dismissive, "Ah, I just got too heavy and laid off the game too long and hurt my back." His body language suggested otherwise.
"Ralph didn't straighten like a bolt at the remark, because Ralph Gulhdahl doesn't move that way. But he shifted in his chair with perceptible uneasiness. The glaze came off his eyes. A sensitive nerve had been struck. Struck again, because the remark was not a new one."
Along the way there is the occasional opera reference, not to mention Scrabble words like quondam and fulmination, or, when discussing the dearth of great left-handed golfers (make that, especially when discussing the dearth of left-handed golfers!), the 17th century philosopher-mathematician Leibniz - Liebniz?! - well, now.
It doesn't hurt that the beat spans an especially verdant run in American professional golf. It may be "old school" to look at golf with an investigative eye, but it never gets old, and it never fails to lead one (reader in tow) to interesting places like Cadillac trunks or prejudice - or those as yet unexplored. The classic Nightmares! (Golf, 1979) memorably ventured a toe into the subconscious world of golf dreams. It's not always pretty. Hogan had a timeless response (which I won't spoil by revealing for those unfamiliar with it), but what are we to make of Dave Marr's contribution of being on the first tee at a U.S. Open without his clubs? Here's what he told the author:
I'm looking back at the USGA official, one of those stern guys wearing gray and dark blue, and I'm worried he's going to put two strokes on me for slow play, or delay. I see a can on the tee with a handle stick out of it that is actually the small end of a ham. I decide I'll use this for a club, but now I can't find a level lie on the tee. I'm paired with my buddies, Bob Goalby and Mason Rudolph, and they're pulling for me, but I can't for the life of me find a level spot. And the USGA man is frowning. It never gets resolved. The dream ends at that point.
What else but that's golf.
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