Finishing

Who am I to tell golfers how to golf? I don't even golf myself. I'm a lay person. A casual fan. I don't even follow the pros. I read a little Wodehouse and have the occasional opportunity to watch some recreational golf. That's about it.

Yes, you heard me correctly, I'm an occasional fan of recreational golf. The rarest of sports fans. You will want to take what I have to say on the subject with a grain of salt. I occupy a different golf universe than the rest of the world.

Take, for instance, the putt.

If you have ever watched professional golf, and I have seen a little bit here and there in the past, you will have formed a loose view on the eight foot putt. You might think of it as something that should be made, but isn't always. And though I was thinking we might agree to put it at a 75 percent shot, I looked it up:

Pros make it about half the time.

Because golf is an aspirational game I imagine most recreational golfers think the odds for them aren't much worse. Oh, pressed they might admit they don't hit that putt very often, but certainly it's very makeable.

They are wrong.

I am a fan of recreational golf. But even more importantly I am a dispassionate observer. I am even a little bit of a scholar of recreational golf.

I have done a loose study.

The eight foot putt is a less than one percent shot.

That's right. I'm not kidding. It is a less than one percent shot. I have now watched upwards of 200 eight foot shots and have only seen one person make it. And even then it might have been closer to seven feet. The golfer seemed pleased, but not as pleased as he should have been.

You might be wondering, where do I watch this recreational golf? Am I making an argument that recreational golfers are far more terrible than we commonly think they are? There is no way everyone sucks that bad at golf. I mean everyone sucks somewhat, but that bad?

No, you are right. Many of the golfers I see hit beautiful drive after beautiful drive. I have regularly watched gorgeous approach shots, dancing off a hill to a play in sweet and beautiful position. And while not common, it is no miracle either to see a recreational golfer send a ball out of a sand trap to within a few feet of the hole. 

The miracle is them converting the putt.

Why are recreational golfers, who can be, at least occasionally, excellent in all other aspects of the game, so universally poor at putting?

I have a theory. I like to write about it a few times every season.

The gimme.

After a recreational golfer inevitably misses their putt, they almost always take a gimme. They take a gimme on 98% success rate shots, and they take a gimme on 8% success rate shots.

I am not here today to speak to the ethics of this. Or the honesty. Or the integrity. Or the Gentlemanliness of it. I've done with that.

I'm here to talk about practice and experience.

Most of these recreational golfers I watch barely know what it's like to hit a golf ball into the hole in real play on a golf course. They have almost no experience of it. And so when they need to do it, they can't. They lack that strange, particular muscle memory, that true faith in the future that can be leaned into in a time of stress. They don't know what it feels like. Golf is a game of feel.

The recreational golfer has decided the short putt is too mundane and simple to acknowledge, too easy, and so, like all important things unacknowledged and unaddressed, it quietly owns them. And they fight their little cold war, the short putt and the golfer. The short putt owns reality, and the golfer gets the score.

At this point in my essay I have a beautiful summing up statement that wisely brings this altogether and reveals something profound about the human condition.

But it would be too simple for me so let's just call it done.

The eight foot putt

Pandemic or no pandemic it's golf season again. And with it comes all the thrills, tension, and dodgy personal integrity that I can see out at my local recreational country club golf course.

For our first episode of the season, my dear golf fans, we are going to hear the thrilling tale of the eight foot putt. For those of you who have ever wielded a 9-iron it will surely evoke all your vast memories of golfing pain. For those of us who have never much dabbled in the game it's a grander story of the human struggle with adversity.

The Eight Foot Putt

From where I am I can't see the drive, and I'm not paying attention as it comes down the hill. But I do know where it lands, and where our real story begins, in the light rough to the right of the fairway. Not a terrible lie for our easy par three hole. Our golfer need merely clear the sand trap to make their way onto the generous green.

But alas nothing is easy for anyone in golf.

Underestimating the richness of the rough, our golfer hits the ball square, but with the head of the club much slowed by the grasses, and the ball arcs nicely, but weakly, and dies in the sand. 

Par suddenly looks very misty and distant through the fog of golf.

But our golfer does not give up. Our golfer does not despair. The ball sits up in the sand. With enough focus this golfer can surely put a clean shot towards the hole.

The golfer plants, balances, focuses, steadies, and settles. The golfer practices, lines up, and backs away. The golfer becomes aware of the other three players in the group starting to get a little impatient. The golfer plants, focuses, practices, and swings!

It's a beauty! It lands ten feet onto the green. It bounces. It's straight. It rolls. Can this be it?

It heads to the hole, quick and pure, an unforgettable shot. It dives at the hole. Pure, yes, straight, yes, clean, yes, but alas too quick, too strong. Not unforgettable after all, except maybe late at night when the golfer thinks of what might have been. The ball bounces out of the hole it hit, and manages to roll surprisingly far. 

Eight feet to be precise.

Pregnant pause.

Doable.

An eight foot putt is very doable. Nothing too tricky on this green, straight and a little downhill. Surely a manageable bogey. Yes, bogey is a little bit of a dirty word in golf. But most golfers, your average golfers know, to bogey every hole, all 18, would be a not particularly terrible day for them. Par is a triumph. The bogey is meat and potatoes.

An eight foot putt.

Let's go get that damn bogey!

The golfer lines it up. The golfer takes a few swings. The golfer plants. And the golfer hits it square.

It's right on line!



It's perfect.




But oh, the golfer forgot about the downhill lie.



And about the sunny day with the dry afternoon greens.

Yes.

It's too fast again.

It's the sand trap shot all over again. It hits the lip of the cup, bounces at a neat, aye perfect, right angle, and it rolls eight feet. 

Once again exactly eight feet.

It's an eight foot putt.

Long pause, but really just one breath long as well.

The golfer walks over, holding the hurt feeling inside, stoic, unmoved, at least on the surface. The golfer bends and scoops up the ball in one hand. An eight foot putt? That's a gimme. Double bogey.


We'll win it back on the next hole.

Caddy

The other day I looked out at the golf course and saw a young man caddying for another young man of the same general age.

I suppose if it was the movies the young guy golfing with the caddy who was his own age would have signified that he was an insufferable son of privilege, cold to the feelings of others, who never had to work a day in his life and considered servitude his divine birthright. Meanwhile the caddy himself would be a real person, just making a buck, if he could, almost certainly for some worthy pull-himself-up-by-the-bootstraps purpose. They'd probably have gone to the same high school together and resented each other the whole time there. By the end of the movie the tables will turn and the virtuous young caddy will triumph over the young trumpian.

And it's not a bad take on the whole thing, although perhaps unreasonably optimistic in today's America, what with tables turning and everything. 

And I do try to take an optimistic view.

Here are all the options the young man had to get his clubs around the course, but did not avail himself of:

1. In a bag over his shoulder, enjoying the fitness and strength of his youth.

2. Wheeled about in a nice 3-wheelie bag that offers extreme ease and maneuverability.

3. On the back of a little two-seated electric cart that's probably super fun to drive about on the hilly course. 


And here are all the good reasons to go around with a caddy:

1. Because he's a professional golfer.





So, in the spirit of looking on the positive side, I guess that explains it.


I saw a professional golfer today.





They sure are getting young though. 

And really bad at golf.

For birds, crickets and most of all, golfers

I know, dear readers, that while I have been home in my convalescence I have written a lot of posts about soccer. A lot of soccer.

Can I see a show of hands as to how many of you are soccer fans?

Two?

Oh. That's like 40 percent of my readership! I was thinking it would be so much less. In fact I predicated this whole post on no one even bothering to raise their hand, at which point I would say:

Don't worry! Today's post will not be about soccer!




It's about golf.

How many among you are golfers or golf fans? Don't be afraid to let yourself be known. I'm super welcoming here.



I just hear crickets.

This is amazing. I am delighted that members of the insect class have taken an interest in clerkmanifesto. It is an especially delightful surprise considering that I primarily write... for the birds.

Actually, what's even more surprising is that all these crickets reading my blog like golf.

Cool. Cute. Can't you just picture them with their little clubs?


One reason that we have nothing to say regarding soccer is that there were no games today. So instead I tended to health stuff, found a fairly wonderful youtube channel (believe me, not an easy thing to do) called Philosophy Tube, and looked out the window.

Out the window sometimes there is golf. 

I see the green. And I see the golfers try to sink their ten foot plus putts. No one ever makes them. This season I have seen a few hundred of these putts. Zero people have made them. Not only do I find this astonishing, but it also seemed like at some point it might be a useful thing to tell you about it here. So when people lined up their putt I'd get a little nervous. What if someone makes it and this amazing fact has to be qualified?

But no one has. And here I am.

They line up their shot. They take a couple of practice swings. They go for it. It falls short. It rolls past. It curls right. It cuts left. 

They look a little sad, these golfers, a little disappointed. I can't see much detail from where I am, but they look like they feel they should have made it.

It looks like they should have made it.

But out of hundreds of golfers I have seen, in a random sampling, not a single golfer was any better than them.

I wish they knew that.

Your daily golf quote

I'm not sure if the main golf hole I watch is a par three or a par four. I don't see the start of it, just the ball introducing itself by bouncing down the hill, hitting either the fairway, the rough to the side, or, surprisingly rarely, that bunker full of sand, but it's never the green. I have never seen the ball appear and make the green all at once. People only appear after the ball. Then they hit the ball onto the green from sort of nearby. Then they miss the putt. Occasionally they miss another putt.

This is golfer after golfer after golfer. I have a sneaking suspicion that I have never seen a golfer make par on this hole.

There all these golfers are out on the driving range, hitting one ball after another on into the night. There these same golfers are playing their round on a beautiful day, or in the rain, or in the wind, or as lightning tries to strike them dead.

Good for them. Many of these golfers are intrepid. I admire that.

But.

If practice made perfect there would be a lot of better golfers.

Practice

On an exquisite Spring Sunday morning, with the fluffy clouds full but dancing around the cheerful sun and sharing space harmoniously with the clear blue sky, I gazed out upon a bright green golf course, almost entirely recovered now from a wild Winter. No one was playing golf. However, crowded into a little area a hole over from me, all the golfers were assiduously practicing on the driving range.

"Hey," I wanted to yell, "The course is wide open. Why don't a couple of you try playing."

But they were too far away. Which is probably for the best.

So I looked to that brilliant sky. A couple Turkey Vultures rode the thermals in great, slow circles. They tottered unevenly in the air, just sort of practicing their flying, testing it all out. When they feel like they're good enough then they'll fly for real. It'll really be something to see. Just you wait.

So, all right, if that's the way it's going to be, I can play along. This isn't my real blog post for the day. I just thought I'd work on my sentences for a change, maybe practice some adverbs like 'harmoniously' and 'unevenly'. This is the kind of committed groundwork that will make it so that when, tomorrow, I write a real blog post it will be... 

about the same as it ever is.

Amateur golf season

Golf season has started up again here. And because I have a regular view on amateur golfers I find myself idly watching them on occasion. In fact, I have become pretty familiar with their behaviors. I use them to advance my study of human nature. Golf is good for that. And I have come across one interesting quality these amateur golfers widely share that differs strikingly from professional golfers.

I mean, besides how good they are.

It is this: most amateur golfers, when they miss their putt, which they do roughly 95 percent of the time, act as if the one to seven foot putt remaining to them (if they've managed that) is somehow so easy as to be beneath their dignity. They mainly just pick the ball up and take the last shot as a gimme. The odd thing is that if it's less than a foot they usually tap it in. I read this as: if they can reliably hit the ball in they do, but if they can't, but feel like they should be able to, they pretend that they are that good, too good to be tested, functionally as good as the professional golfers, who, curiously enough, almost always can make those short putts, but nevertheless go to the trouble of playing by the rules and doing so.

On the plus side I feel that assuming the short putt shaves five to ten strokes off of all these amateur golfer's scores.

On the minus side I feel it contributes to making all these amateur golfers remain surprisingly bad at putting.

Also, it's cheating.

I'm watching.


 

The golf ball at end of season

From up in my aerie, watching golf, I have found the people playing interesting enough, but I like the golf balls on their own the best.

It is late in the season, surely the last week or two for golf in Minnesota. The ever industrious grounds crew can no longer keep the leaves off the course, though they try. Pale brown golds pool up in the sand traps, and herds of scatter-brained leaves tumble together down the fairways and then back again.

Not too many golfers come through on a blustery Sunday. It's peaceful. And then a small white ball comes bounding down the greens. I don't even know why I see it among all the bright scudding leaves, the birds and the squirrels. But I do. Dispossessed of its initial impetus the little ball is, to me, on some journey of his own volition. The ball has its own life and purpose. It bounces into something more like a roll, climbs a little hill, then drops into the sand trap where it is lost in a pile of leaves. Will it ever be found again? 

Two more balls come looking for it. One rolls quietly and sweetly down the middle of the fairway, almost to the green. It looks left and right, but sees nothing. Another ball bounds off to the rough grass before the trees. It thinks "Wait, what just happened?" And then the search party is over and everything is quiet.

I look away. It is time for my wife and I to walk and get a coffee. I want to know how the story ends, but I fear that if I keep watching my little dream will be broken. People will enter into it and break the spell. Let the balls then lie there forever. 

The Grape retrospective

Traditionally on clerkmanifesto we celebrate my friend's, Grape's, birthday on this day, October 23rd. I best like to celebrate it with a story from our past. But I've been doing this for a long time, so a lot of the key stories have been covered. Let us review:

1. Grape saves my life.

2. Grape almost kills me.

3. We dissect a rattlesnake.

4. We swim with a hundred sharks.

5. We hide in a tent in the John Muir Wilderness while it never stops raining and eat peanut butter, drink whiskey, and read just enough of Rimbaud's Season in Hell so that we can say we did.

6. We eat far too much Peyote, see a spectral apparition (some of us do), and then sit around alone in the suburbs, all our spirituality thwarted.

I still blame the spectral apparition for that.


Fortunately there are a few stories left to work with, but since I have been writing about golf so much these days I have decided I will tell you about the Summer of Mini-Golf.

It might not be a very good story, but it was a very fun Summer. Maybe mostly because it was during a not very happy time in my life.

I was living at my parents' home, kind of paralyzed there with self hatred and despair, lost, when Grape came back for Summer Vacation from College.

"Let's go miniature golfing." He said.

So we did. Constantly. I think there was a nice course near where he was staying. We golfed. Not only are we very competitive, but we tend to think a lot of games can be improved. In our many hours out on the links (Hah!) we were no longer satisfied with 54 or 108 holes of "normal" mini golf. What about timed holes? What about playing a hole pool style? What about designated paths through the holes that gave them pars that would more suitably be set at 15 or 16. We played speed golf, kick golf, hit the other guy's golf ball golf, and closest to the hole golf. I like to think we got pretty good at it.

Of course the trick with stuff like that is that even though it seems absurd, one has to take it seriously. We quite liked to compete. We quite liked to win. We took it very seriously.

I'm just saying I have not much golfed, but out on those mini golf courses, I learned that all that fresh air can be ennobling, and diverting, and spiritual, and fun. Even if mainly we were running around hooting or lying on our bellies or something.

It might have been another year or two before I found my way out of the dead end I thought I'd be in forever, but I think Grape and all that golfing helped.

Which brings me back to item number one in the list of previous memoirs: Grape saves my life, which I think a wide assortment of these old stories tend to be about, even if just a little. Even the one where he almost killed me (and himself). 

I suppose, at its best, that's what friendship does.

So happy birthday Grape. Thanks for life.

Golf, from far away

Watching so much amateur golf at a distance I often wonder why the players don't get more upset when they mess up their shots, which, allowing for statistical outliers, they do exclusively. I know if I were playing I would be throwing almost constant tantrums, albeit quietly, with occasional bitter remarks and a few bizarre, self-inflicted injuries. 

Then today I saw a man with a ball on the rough. It looked like an easy chip to the green. He was quite close and had to have been at least a little happy with the approach that had left him there. He just had to pop the ball up a little and softly place it on the green. Alas, it did not go to plan. He failed to get under the ball and so sent it on a short line drive tearing on past the hole. I don't even know where the ball ended up as it scudded too far away for me to see. The golfer stood there for a second and then hurled his iron high into the air. I watched it sail above him, peacefully flipping end over end. He watched it too. I realized a little bit before him that the club would be landing on him if he didn't move, but he caught on in time, though he was forced to take an undignified skip to vacate its landing area.

And finally I fully recognized myself; oh, that is what agony looks like from a distance.

Golf is a peaceful game, but like everything else down here, only from the clouds.

You have to put the ball in the hole

I've been watching recreational golfers again, or maybe they're amateur golfers. I guess it depends whether they're having any fun or not. I saw a woman with a four foot putt to make. She took five tries to get it in. But try is the operative word here. She tried with the first shot and missed. Then the next shot was a lazy gimme, just a de facto knocking the ball in, only it didn't, go in, I mean. So she did another one of those "putts" casually and one-handed and it didn't go in again. In fact it was speeding past the hole so she sort of stopped it as it was going by and scraped it into the hole. Except she somehow missed that too, largely from a surfeit of casualness. So then finally she dragged the ball crudely and forcefully to the hole with her putter and got the ball somehow stuffed into it like she was drowning a bag of kittens.

I'm just saying it was horrible what I witnessed. I should have turned away.

I assume she counted those five putts as two; one for the missed putt and then the gimme. In watching amateur golf I generally feel that most people take any putt at about one foot or less to be a done deal no matter what happens. But I also feel that if that's how it is they shouldn't hit the ball in the hole. Just pick it up! If they want the satisfaction of completing the great 380 yard journey with their ball to the hole then they have to finish properly, with respect, and with all their shots counting. If a mere six inch putt is beneath you, fine, prove it. Pick up your ball there. I've got better things to do than watch you fudge things around unscrupulously on the green.

Although I often can't quite think of what any of those things are.

Why I love golf

Recently I have come to understand that I love golf. This is quite a surprise to me. It perhaps has something to do with my recent pastime of watching a lot of amateur golf, although as some person pointed out on this very Internet (yes, this one right here!), it's more recreational golf than amateur golf that I'm seeing. Although on the other hand, it doesn't look like recreating. Everyone looks so serious. And sure, it looks terribly easy in some ways, but mostly it looks almost insanely difficult. I have seen these recreational golfers jump up and down in rage and frustration, which one probably gets less of watching professional golf.

But it's not really watching golf though that I love. I just love golf.  And it of course begs the question:

Why do I love golf?

My answer I consider to be traditional in tone, possibly Wodehousian.

I love golf because I don't play it.

Amateur golf

I have been watching a lot of amateur golf lately. No, not professional golf, just... people... playing golf.

They all take it very seriously. None of them are very good. I have probably seen 50 different golfers and I am still waiting to see someone sink a putt that is more than six feet from the hole.

But I guess that's just it, people aren't very good at stuff. Stuff is hard.

Because I am rather in a hurry and have to finish my blog post I was tempted to conclude this missive with:

What does it matter though. Hit it again. Eventually the thing will get to the hole.

But really what I think is:

Just hit it a little harder for god's sake!

No, no, not that hard!