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Novelist Mordecai Richler died a couple of years ago. Opening The Montreal Gazette, I couldn't help but wistfully look for his column. It just wouldn't be the same going to Quebec without checking in to see what or who was stuck in his craw. What luck then to stumble upon a collection of his magazine articles on sport, Dispatches from the Sporting Life (Vintage Canadian, 2002), a bestseller in Canada.
Richler grew up in Jewish, English-speaking slums of Montreal and he was not a golfer, but a devout hockey and baseball man (until it all got pompous and self-indulgent), going back to Jackie Robinson's days with the Montreal Royals.
In an article about Wayne Gretzky, circa 1985, there was an anecdote that snagged me, especially given the hubbub over 13-year old Michelle Wie.
Gretzky had a father who was, by today's standards ahead of the curve. Walter Gretzky, like Earl Woods, is also an author. A "mired" Junior B hockey player who was still working as a telephone repairman when the Great One achieved success, Gretzky pere wrote in his memoir that "Wayne learned to skate and Walter Gretzky built a hockey star."
Richler writes: "He had Wayne, at the age of four, out in the backyard skating rink well into the dark evening hours, learning to crisscross between pylons made of Javex bleach containers. Walter Gretzky wrote, "You can just see them thinking, 'Boy, did he push those kids! That's a hockey father for you!' Actually, it was the most natural thing in the world."
No doubt for him it was. Elsewhere Richler writes about Guy Lefleur, perhaps the last of the greats that he suspects learned the game not in organized hockey but on frozen lakes and rivers, the game's sandlots. At the risk of being hopelessly nostalgic, hasn't something been lost in taking these childish games away from children and applying adult standards of precision, organization and competition?
Is it any wonder - this is me again warming to the soapbox - that fans are drawn to those, even in golf (the Dalys, Seves, etc.), who cut their teeth beyond the safe, sanitized, walls of organized play?
Child prodigies burn brightly but as admirable as their displays of potential truly are, there is an adult business-like mien to them, a sadness that remains, at least for me, unattractive. A pint-sized Tiger Woods picking up his ball and placing it closer to the hole on the Mike Douglas Show may have been cute but it reveals an almost robotic, most unchildlike determination. Grinding. Perfunctory. Unsmiling. In hindsight it's mildly disturbing. Forgive me, but I see that look in Michelle Wie's eyes. Not just determination but a borderline joylessness. I hope I'm wrong.
Before you - and especially they - know it, the prodigy's run is over and they're left to fill a void that they can't even clearly identify. The Jennifer Capriatis, Tracy Austins and David Clydes of the world, along with legions of discouraged princess skaters and gymnasts, presumably - one hopes - not forced to sleep in a cemetery to build toughness like Se Ri Pak, but what a life, all for a slab of celebrity that is at best profitable - you bet - but also annoying and often far worse.
Which brings us finally - happily - to scraps of a conversation with Kaye Kessler, a winner of the PGA Lifetime Achievement in Journalism Award and a favorite honcho. Kaye covered Jack Nicklaus when Jackie boy was a lad. There was this comment from Jack's older sister, Marilyn that I was dying to run by Kaye.
"Daddy was a great foundation for Jack," she once told Ray Stein at the Columbus Dispatch, "mostly because he let him find his own way. I don't think anything was ever forced or shoved on Jack…."
What's this? No putting the child to work in the golf salt mine as a tot? Could this be true? The Nicklauses were a sports mad family, that is well known, but I asked Kaye what kind of sports dad Charlie Nicklaus had been. Here's what he told me:
"Charlie was wonderful. He gave Jack every opportunity, certainly they weren't wealthy or, you know, crazy rich but he was a pharmacist with a chain of three prescription drug stores and he gave Jack every opportunity but he never pushed or shoved him. …He followed him. He got a little red-necked occasionally when they started calling him Ohio Fats and Blobbo and so forth when he was beating Arnold up at Oakmont in 1962 but he soon got over that. He never pushed or shoved. He let Jack Grout take him all the way. All Charlie did was serve as a chauffeur, sort of, and give him the opportunities."
You never hear this but it is, perhaps, the most important part of the Nicklaus story. What would the world be like if more parents knew this and acted accordingly? Jack Nicklaus, for goodness sakes! Not that he ever lacked motivation, but that's as it should be. No athlete should be shoved from behind. Does the world need reminding that Tiger and Gretzky are truly exceptions? I have to believe there would be a lot more, happier, recreational golfers without parental meddling. You think?
Yardage Book
Recommended Reading
1. Zen Golf
by Dr. Joseph Parent
Those willing to recognize and then accept one's demons will find this Harvey-sized book positively brimming with enlightened, mindful, entertaining and self-effacing parables and tour-tested strategies. Right alongside Far & Sure, we might add Gentle, Inquisitive, Fearless. Fire that evil caddie!
2. Understanding the Golf Swing
by Manuel de la Torre
A master teacher's life's work, a splendid crystalline dissection of the fundamentals, presented with simplicity, unmistakable kindness, dignity and concern. If you buy one instruction book this year, this be it.
3. Conscious Golf
by Gay Hendricks
Three "secrets" from a best-selling author and accomplished corporate coach, enthusiastic about his golf as only those who come to the game later in life can be. He finds parallels and parables, from the effectiveness of diaphragmatic breathing to the importance of completion. Finishing a swing, dealing with an unresolved hurt, prioritizing tasks in business, it's all the same.
4. The Man Behind the Mystique
by Martin Davis
Hidden behind the mystique is more like it and that ain't ever gonna change. Hogan the sphinx smiles perfunctorily at one award ceremony after another. Nothing's revealed but it's a nice smile. Despite the title's false advertising, the presentation is glorious and sometimes it's fine just to put the baggage aside and simply revel. The swing, displayed here in exquisite detail, should satisfy those who don't know it and delight those who emphatically do. Eternally deserving of scrutiny, Hogan remains an enigma. This book is the official line down to the Mrs.'s spin. It doesn't address the niggling personality flaws because that's not what this is about. And that's OK.
5. The Greatest Game Ever Played
by Mark Frost
In which a skillful novelist and TV writer gives voice, personality, context and vigor to those involved with the most accurately-billed of the historical "Shots Heard Round the World." Francis Ouimet steps up but he's not star quality, no more than, say, Ben Curtis is today. It's the giants of the age, especially Harry Vardon, a truly modern stylist and innovator who emerges as the seminal figure in spreading the gospel of the game that ultimately left him with the yips. Winner of the USGA International Book Award.
6. Fairway Dreams
by Lauren St. John
Out of their "work clothes," stars and denizens alike of the European PGA Tour all appear to the author as well-kempt (if not always well behaved) students. Their travail across the continent and back makes for compelling, if somewhat dated, reading. That top playing Euros continue to come here is hardly a surprise; their success even less unexpected given the litmus test of survival they face overseas but there's no denying they have more fun, or did.
7. Chasing Tiger
by Curt Sampson
The most moving of modern moving targets is explored through the exploits of those in pursuit of an astonishing (and astonishingly mature) talent, armed with an acumen and zeal for checkbook issues perhaps unmatched among professional athletes. Can anyone get close enough to Tiger to dish the dirt? Why would he allow it? Can anyone catch him? Truly Lindburghian in stature, overexposed, only faintly understood, how difficult it must be for Tiger chasing his own tail in search of normalcy.
8. The Wit & Wisdom of Bobby Jones
Edited by Sidney L. Matthew
Selected nuggets from the elegant pen of the great amateur and virtuous paragon, Jones's w. & w. can never stale. The problem is separating the wheat from the chaff. Taking the pearls out of context is slightly grating. With books of this sort, the committed merely satisfies the urge by curling up with the original texts, dog-eared and likely never far from reach. For those new to the subject, well, then, dig in. And, even the devotee needs no excuse to renew acquaintance with the only golfer whose powers of observation are equaled by his playing credentials.
9. Arizona's Greatest Golf Courses
by Bill Huffman
First page of the leaderboard in the Coffee Table Classic Invitational, an experienced newspaper hand gets the glossy treatment, combining solid reporting and feature writing with the bulging biceps of expensive production. What a concept! Throw in one of the game's truly magnificent settings as a backdrop and everything comes up saguaros.
10. Golf's Greatest Eighteen
Edited by David Mackintosh
Working pundits tee up a top shelf-selection chronicling the famous doings of: Watson, Nelson, Snead, Player, Casper, Faldo, Hagen, Floyd, Jones, Ballesteros, Norman, Palmer, Irwin, Hogan, Nicklaus, Trevino, Sarazen, Woods. The novel comparison of their prospective stacks of loot in modern terms rounds out an exemplary collection of profiles.
NOTE: Yardage Book © appears monthly, exclusively on THR. All books listed have been
reviewed elsewhere on THR in greater depth. They are informally ranked at the editor's discretion and
are not based on sales, date of publication, hype, the stars, financial inducement (Ho! Ho!) or anything
other than his own personal preference. Only books that have been reviewed on THR are included.
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