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Gary Player can look back with satisfaction.
On top of his accomplishments, he's lived long enough to see his beliefs, from family values to fitness to holistic prescriptions, become mainstream. Not that long ago, after all, health food storeowners wore lab coats. Now organic produce is in chain grocery stores and pharmacies stock copper bracelets. Why golfers even exercise. At 66, the spring in his step remains, he's living proof of an Alger-esque triumph of determination.
Permissible as the swagger may be it can get trying. Part of you wants to say, "Well done," where the other half sighs, "Enough." But by any standard he's enjoyed a remarkable run. Also unusual, he speaks his mind. One never fails to come away from a conversation with the Black Knight with anything less than a considered, shake-hands-and-look-him-in-the-eye, response.
His exercise regimen is unbelievable (duly noted here from 300 crunches to sets of one-legged squats and 100 swings of the heavy club, left- and right-handed). His homilies on motivation, winning, adversity and even common decency will strike those weaned in the age of irony as slightly cornpone. He's sticking to his story and his methods. Golf, he realized early on, "was a game of wild contradictions. It was the mind and heart that got things done."
The book's filled with similar observations from the heart. To take a little off the austerity, he drops
in the occasional whimsical profundity, among them several from Wodehouse including this: "The gods of golf lie in wait to chasten the presumptuous." Words
to live by.
In "A Golfer's Essential Reading," he cites several favorites including: The Holy Book of Proverbs, a collection of Churchill's speeches, Kipling's If, Macbeth, Harvey Penick and Dan Jenkins, also the entertaining oral history, Eyewitness to History.
Gary Player's precepts for life may not be for everyone, wheat grass juice (one of his tricks of the trade in battling jet lag) among them. We should all be so blessed, however, to have the moxie of the 8-year old who lost his mother and grew to see the wild contradictions of life, old-fashioned as it may sound, as opportunities and challenges rather than hardships and dead ends.
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How I Play Golf
By Tiger Woods
With the editors of Golf Digest
Warner Books Inc., 2001
Available from
Golfsmart, 800/637-3557
ISBN: 0-466-52931-1 $34.95
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M.C. Escher, step back. The variety of angles used to depict Tiger's swing in this bound, over-sized Golf Digest is impressive! Lips pursed, going at it full throttle with so much preparation and force brought to bear, just admiring Tiger's move brings a twinge to the lower back. It's another reminder that the famous equation of meat + motion is easier to depict (or even sing about) than describe.
We will not live long enough to see another golf book published in 14 languages and in Stephen King, John Grisham-like numbers. How will it do? One wonders if Tiger will suffer the apparent decline in fortunes that follows many of his clan's literary forays. Corey Pavin comes to mind, Ernie Els, Steve Elkington, Nick Price. The books arrive and the names seem to magically fall from leaderboards. There does seem to be a touch of flu associated with sharing secrets. Maybe, speculation here, the blame is in stopping to reflect.
The disclaimer here is, we shouldn't need reminding, in the title. On the Oprah Winfrey show, Tiger mentioned that the book was directed to children but that hardly seems fair, unless there are more toddlers out there then we know who enjoy watching daddy from the high chair hit balls into a net.
Make no mistake, this is an advanced, strategic manifesto: hitting the driver off the deck, the low hook around trees, the two-iron stinger. If we needed another stab in the gut, there's also a wonderful photo of a smiling Sam Snead demonstrating his freakish flexibility by kicking a low ceiling from a standing position. Ouch.
Tiger tells us "Poor ball position is a silent killer" and "Silk undergarments help keep in my body heat." He's also never five-putted. More interesting are the cursory insights into the mental game, something he's been reluctant to discuss. His creative mind is his greatest weapon, he says - the vision thing that ultimately separates the great from the very good. Does he meditate? He doesn't say. "I refuse to give into fear, real or imagined…I refuse to yield to pressure." Ah, okay. A 119-mile per hour swing, overseen by the studious gaze of Butch Harmon and the unblinking eyes of thousands of lenses, doesn't hurt either.
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Get a Grip!
By John M. Capozzi
In Association with the Editors of Golf Digest
JMC Publishing Services, 2000
ISBN: 0-9656410-5-8 $19.95
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Conceived initially as a "fund-raising vehicle," this nicely produced book of quotations and cartoons is destined for the basket beside the john in the guest bathroom.
As discussed with each new book of golf quotes, there are two great pitfalls: 1) over familiar quotes (ex: "The woods are full of long hitters." Please.) and 2) no matter how ringing the wisdom, providing us with one pearl per page does not constitute good value.
Without being too grumpy, there's bound to be a quote or two or three new even to those who read these books. (Apparently, someone must, or why would appear with the frequency of spider mites.) The aforementioned Mr. Player pitches in with "Every shot makes somebody happy," - a clever enough truth. The irrepressible Kaye Kessler has his quips vault picked with this gem: "I don't take my swing out of town. If it breaks down, I may not be able to get parts."
One would have to feel for someone who pays full retail for this. Should it bring joy (Every book makes somebody happy?) and raise a few bob for a good cause, please don't misunderstand - your correspondent is certainly down with that.
Collectors will recognize this shaken-not-stirred bit of Old Boy folly as The Haunted Major, first published in Britain in 1902. It's a silly, well spun yarn of a match, a magical set of hickories, a faint love interest, a pompous ass and a ghost with a zest for match play. A first edition of THM is considered an essential in the well-rounded golf library but the story stands on its merits, even for those unfamiliar with the pleasures of smoking jacket and snifter.
There is the occasional roadblock of reading Scottish dialect, which can even in moderate doses tax the reader's enthusiasm. "Will 'ee dae't?" and such, and perhaps some day an apparition will appear who can tell me what's up with "Sic a clanjamfray o' vermin!" (which I guess would be apropos for missed three footers.)
Our hero steps back now and then and says things like: "The dinner was delightful. Excellent food, perfect wine, charming people, and myself the center of interest. I ask no more at such a function."
Occasionally there is air for others, only just. A "celebrated actor-manager" is introduced at a party. "I didn't know that he was celebrated when first I met him," Jacky Gore, the protagonist confides, "but I gathered it from the few minutes' conversation that passed between us."
Droll stuff, old chum. Jacky, "the finest sportsman living!" takes a golf lesson in an effort to win the hand of a fair maiden. [Note: Does that trick ever work?]
"Cauld watter keeps the heed cool at goalf," a grizzled old pro tells him during a memorable lesson, "and praise is a snare and a deloosion." Here. Here. Or, Sic a clanjamfray o' vermin, dear chap. Sic a clanjamfray o' vermin.
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How to Play Links Golf
By Martin Davis
Instruction by Colin Montgomerie
In Praise & Celebration of Links by Donald Steel
The American Golfer, 2001
ISBN: 1-888531-09-6 $30
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What is it about 'Monty' that enrages people so? It can't just be the dour exterior or his chunkiness. He's certainly a fine if uncharismatic golfer; no crime in that. Statistically, he's long been one of the world's best, uncommonly straight off the tee, if he is nearing the end of his run and has been haunted, as many before him, by an inability to answer the bell on cue in the big fights.
I'll take a stab. In his book on Donald Ross, Brad Klein writes that the ancient links are so barren that playing golf on them "often strikes the modern player as a shocking indecency, tantamount to outright nudity."
A bit over the top perhaps but then the same day
I came across a similar comment from Sean Connery in the foreword to another book. He called links golf "quite naked golf." Could the distaste for anything Monty be a literal American reaction, juxtaposing the thought of seeing the understandably…how should we say…voluptuous Scot playing his native game…in the …buff?!
At any rate Monty deserves far better and here he forms an admirable tag team in making the case for the traditional virtues of golf in the old country. Longtime architect and writer Donald Steel begins by pulling out all the historical and lyrical stops with a history-laced, lavishly illustrated, sermon. He suggests the existence of "a growing reluctance" among golfers to accept the surprises associated with the links, "bad bounces…as essential an ingredient as the good" in favor of the "temples of bad taste," as Peter Dobreiner called the more egregious modern designs, anathema to the skill and imaginative spirit of golf by the sea.
"Colour is no yardstick of quality," Steel reminds us in a list of the special virtues of the Old Course's mystique. He's talking about the so-called Augusta syndrome, which has heightened expectations not to mention over-reliance on pesticides.
Steel offers a links primer and an explanation for those unfamiliar with hitting, say, an 8-iron one day and for the same shot a 3-iron the next. Short of spraying the pages with an ocean scent, his manifesto stirs the soul for making the pilgrimage.
Monty's instruction, with help from the staff at Turnberry, is admirably presented and outlined. I'm not sure any written instruction, let alone any life experience, can truly prepare a Yank for the vagaries and challenges of golf played on courses stripped down to the birthday suit.
Light Reading - Edition I
Light Reading - Edition II
Light Reading - Edition III
Light Reading - Edition IV
Light Reading - Edition V
Light Reading - Edition VI
Light Reading - Edition VII
Light Reading - Edition VIII
Light Reading - Edition IX
Light Reading - Edition X
Light Reading - Edition XI
Light Reading - Edition XII
Light Reading - Edition XIII
Light Reading - Edition XIV
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