Bettors, Buddhas, & Perfectionists

ALTHOUGH EVERY GOLFER is locked in a game against himself, golfers have been traditionally divided into the two distinct families of those whose pleasure is match play and those who prefer medal play. The former, according to a conventional distinction, have their delight in beating their opponent, while the latter prefer to defeat the course. In truth, however, some of the best match players of the past (when head-to-head play was of greater importance than medal play) chose to ignore their opponent’s game. They believed this saved them from focusing their attention on the changing fortunes of their opponent, which could steal their concentration. A lot of fine match players contend the contrary, that to not observe an opponent’s shot, and play accordingly, is a sure way to lose a match. John Ball was a classic match player of yesteryear. Ball’s play made it clear why few responded to his father’s challenge, “Me and my son will play any two!” Born in 1861 at Hoylake, near Liverpool, Ball, when only fifteen, finished sixth in a British Open. Ball went on to win one British Open and eight British Amateurs, the seventh at Prestwick on the thirty-seventh hole and the eighth at Westward Ho! on the thirty-eighth. At Westward Ho! Ball was continually jeered as the representative of the upper classes by crowds committed to the victory of his working-class opponent, Abe Mitchell. The outstanding American amateur, Robert Hunter, caught up with Ball at Hoylake for a match in 1912 just after Ball’s Westward Ho! victory. In the two rounds they played together, Ball continually asked Hunter for halves, or a tie on the hole, when his shots lay twice as far from the cup as Hunter’s. In one case, Ball even asked for a half when Hunter was on the green and he, Ball, was in a sand trap next to the green. Hunter denied Ball’s requests, but won no holes by his denials. On the sixteenth, a par three, Ball lay twenty yards from the cup and Hunter a mere eight feet. Nevertheless, Ball asked for the fifth and last time for a half. “Will you give me a half?” “But you can’t ask for half here, ” I answered, “I have a putt for a two. “ “Well, I also have a putt for a two. And, remember, you promised me a half whenever I asked it. Will you give it?” “But this is absurd, and I refuse it. “ “Then you are not a man of your word.” “No, I am not a man of my word.” “You’ll be sorry. “ And he proceeded to hole the long winding putt. After that I could not, of course, hole mine, and for the fifth time in thirty-six holes Johnny had done what seemed quite impossible. He was delighted, and left the club that evening in a glorious good humor. If there are special characteristics that make a good match player or not, the match player’s primary pleasures are in the shots that let him win. Some match players are notorious gamesmen who try to unsettle, disturb, and confuse their opponents. For instance, they show up for the match just in the nick of time. They try to confuse their opponent about the club they used or how hard they hit their shot. They seek to induce fear in their opponent or unsettle him. They play “their man,” not the course. In the old days when stymies were allowed (where the ball blocks the opponent’s path to the cup and which were permitted in the game’s official rules until approximately 1950), they would take as much pleasure in putting a good stymie on their opponent as any other shot they would hit in the match. Yet there is in the family of match players a different type of player, one who enjoys the match for the sake of the match. In fact, he takes so much pleasure in the rivalry of a good match that, even at the risk of losing it, he grants his opponent extra time to look for a lost ball, refuses to call a technical foul on his opponent, and even cheers for his opponent’s good shots. The preferred form of contemporary play, however, is medal play. It belongs to this more polite and sensitive present time when nicknames and gamesmanship are on the wane. Nevertheless, at points the pleasures of medal play are identical to match play. On his way to a tournament victory, the medal player may find himself battling head-to-head with only one or two other rivals. Playoffs invariably reduce themselves to a form of match play. Players often remember tournaments not in terms of scores, but in terms of losing to or beating an opponent. Rivalries like that of Sarazen versus Hogan, or Hogan versus Snead, Nicklaus versus Palmer, or Watson versus Nicklaus, characterize decades of the game’s best play. If some players need a rival to play well, others need to bet in order to enjoy golf. Betting alone brings the game to life for them. Every shot, hole, or round becomes an occasion to bet. For serious bettors, the pleasure of each shotone’s own or one’s opponent’sdepends on its relation to a bet. A fine shot may be disregarded, since it doesn’t influence the outcome of the bet; conversely, a bad shot can be the source of a great deal of delight if it assures a handsome payoff. Golf bets reach bizarre and outrageous proportions. According to Golfer’s Miscellany, John Ball, the Hoylake golfer just mentioned, wagered in 1907 that he could play his course in a dense fog in under 90, in two and one-quarter hours, and not lose a ball, all of which he accomplished. The greatest cross-country match in America (again according to Golfer’s Miscellany)occurred in 1929 in South Carolina. Two brothers played a match that covered 36 miles, took 13 hours, resulted in the loss of 22 balls, and the use of eight caddies and official cars. One brother shot 780, the other 825. Other mad bets have led to games played through cities and across all sorts of different terrains. They have involved the use of a single club, a baseball bat, a club or a pool stick. Some have required drinking on every hole. They have pitted golfers against archers, javelin throwers, and even fishermen. Additionally, freak matches have required players to wear suits of heavy armor, dropping balls out of airplanes and helicopters, and playing in the middle of the night or blindfolded. Driven by sterner gods, the greatest pleasure for some golfers lies in perfecting their game. This can be a fatal disease in young players, who presume perfection to be an actual possibility. The disease, which can involve prolonged cases of sulking and pouting, manifests itself in youth with swearing, throwing clubs, and walking off the course in reaction to any bad, or even less-thandesired, shot. The young Bobby Jones was a club thrower. He threw clubs, in the words of Herbert Warren Wind, “at helpless elm trees.” Young Gene Sarazen also had a bad temper. After a round of bad putting, Sarazen, the assistant professional, put the putter (which he had borrowed from a member), in a vice and sawed it to pieces. Sarazen was fortunate to not have lost his job. Surely, golf provides ample material for a book featuring horrible displays of golf temper, with chapters such as “tournaments quit,” “clubs thrown,” and “awful vows and curses made.” Golfers have thrown clubs into trees, broken them over their knees, thrown them in lakes and ravines, and literally tried to punish and humiliate clubs by dragging them behind their cars or, taking my Uncle Dale’s less destructive approach, of putting them in a cellar and not letting them out for weeks at a time. Don Olsen wrote me: My friend was caddying for professional Marty Furgol in a proamateur. This was back in 1948 or 1949. On the third hole, Furgol faded an iron shot into a greenside bunker and in anger, Furgol flung his club out into the rough. “Go get the club, caddie,” Furgol said. My friend, the caddie, replied to Furgol, “Go get it yourself. You threw the fucking thing. ” (My friend was a tough-looking, ex-Golden Glove boxer. Furgol did as he was told.) Perfectionists and false perfectionists, those bad players who pretend that they should have hit well shots they really could never hit well, account for many of the longest club throwers. They forever focus on how lacking their game is. A single mis-hit shot can send true perfectionists scurrying off to the practice range for hours. Like the religious brother or sister devoted to perfecting their souls, these golf aspirants magnify the smallest flaws into damning sins. In contrast to those who lose their tempers are players intent on maintaining their composure no matter what occurs These unflappable Buddhas strive to be indifferent to the pains and pleasures of their transitory fortunes on the links. They make it a point to restrain their emotions. Players like Ben Hogan and his contemporary Byron Nelson both found perfection in the mechanical repetition of a swing and were known as the game’s ice men. “Hogan,” Mark McCormack wrote about his 1953 British Open win, “was the nearest thing Britain had seen to the perfect golfing machine.” Before the First World War, Walter Travis was “the ice man” of American golf. Travis started the game at the age of thirty-five. He approached it as a science to be learned and a craft to be mastered. Eight years later, in 1904, he was the first American ever to win the British Amateur. Jerry Travis, a boy of seventeen who was to meet Walter in head-to-head play in an invitational tournament in the same year, described “the old man” of American golf as a “master mechanic [who functioned] with the precision of a Swiss watch.” Jerry attributed his third hole playoff win over Waltera victory dubbed “the kid over the old man”to practice, luck, and a loaned Schenectady putter (identical to the type of loaned putter the elder Travis had credited with his British Amateur victory). Jerry believed his victory was due to old Walter’s rare let-down near the end of the match, presuming victory was already his. Once pressure appears, the player’s pleasures are altered. Nerves transform all human experience. Even the greatest players, who have adjusted to the rigors of tournament play, play with tension. Herbert Warren Wind wrote: The men who are used to playing under fire have long ago harnessed their nervousness. They seldom lose because of a jumpy feeling in their stomach, and contradictory as it seems at first, they worry about not being worried, about becoming phlegmatic and missing that little tingle that keeps a player sharp and dangerous.