Graceful Motion

The long shot rises and flies, drawing the eye upward to follow it. Its length adds to the duration the player spends in pleasurable, suspenseful, and anticipatory observation of his own creation. He sees its flight, towering in height or boring along on a lower trajectory, traversing a hazard, and landing on the green. In its flight the shot exceeds the time and space that measure it. I wrote a poem following a flawless hole-in-one I made several years ago on the sixteenth hole of my home course. My 160-yard eight iron flew the path of mind’s eye. Only 25 yards out It found its arching way As it adjusted itself ever so slightly Into the slightest, rising fade. From there on, Its flight was pure and undaunted. The flag, its polar star, The cup, its magnet, The ball held its course. Until, with neither bounce, nor roll, Neither hitting the pin, nor cutting the lip of the cup, It entered the hole clean. As if delivered by magic swing And angelic intelligence. Shots that fly high seem to belong, with all the prejudice of our eye’s preference for skyward motion, to a higher and more sublime order of graceful motion. During the shot’s flight, the golfer leaves behind the common world of unclear thought, ambiguous emotions, constricted feelings, confused gestures, broken strides, half-formed steps, ungainly motions, and thick and sticky matter. The single good shot forms the primary unit of ecstatic delight in the garden of golf’s pleasures. “To have achieved the greatest ambition … possible for a golfer to aspire to, is in itself suf icient… to prevent… any clear, distinct thoughts… As regards my feelings on that last green at Muirfield, I can only say that I was dazed and unable to speak. ” Harry Vardonon winning his first British Open in 1896, My Golf Life 4 Magic Streaks GOLF PRODUCES ANOTHER SORT of ecstasythat of the streak. It is not unique to golf, nor is it as pure as the ecstasy of the wondrous shot. Because of its longer duration, it is comprised of far more mixed pleasures, and is more dependent on the thought and personality of the individual player. The ecstasy of the streak is often variously expressed as “being on a run,” “having it going,” “being high,” “being out of one’s mind,” “being lucky,” “being blessed,” or “having the gods smile on one.” Even a good player cannot predict the onset of a streak or merit its continuation and the rewards it brings. The streak, at least at its outset, seems a matter of chance, whose Latin root, cadere, means to fall, as if to fall out of the sky. The streak of winning, in turn, is experienced as continuing good luck, whose origin is the German word for happiness and good fortune, Glück. The unexpected, subjective, and exalted state of the streak was expressed by Greg Norman after winning the 1993 British Open at Sandwich: “I hit every drive perfect. I hit every iron shot perfect… I am not a person who boasts, but I’m just in awe of myself forthe way I hit the golf ball today.” Of course, the streak takes different forms. For one player, it could simply be three or four good shots in a row; for a second, a succession of saving putts or chips producing good scores despite poor drives or second shots; for a third player, it could be an uninterrupted run of decent scores, like breaking 40 three or four nines in a row; and for a fourth player, it could be not missing a putt inside eight feet for two rounds. For the great Babe Zaharias, it was one of the fifteen straight tournament victories during 1946-1947. For Gene Sarazen it was to play the last 28 holes of the 1932 U.S. Open at Fresh Meadow in less than 100. Five-time British Open Champion J. H. Taylor’s pitching was perfect in the 1894 Open. It was said that the only hazards he faced were the guide flags. For Walter Travis, it was phenomenal putting that gave him victory, the first American victory, in the 1904 British Open. His magic touch seemed inseparable from the Schenectady putter borrowed on the tournament’s eve. His run of putting was so phenomenal that in the course of one round, a fan, sensing that Travis was again on, began to bet anyone in the gallery in increasing amounts that Travis would sink the putt before him, be it 25 or even 35 feet. It didn’t matter. By the final stages of the match, Travis’s supporter had no one in the gallery to bet against, as his friends were broke and refused to bet any more against the hot American’s putter. In a piece called “The Mother of All Streaks,” Don Jenkins wrote of Byron Nelson’s play: Most grown-ups of the golf persuasion are aware of the grandest streak in the history of the game. I speak of 1945, when Byron won 11 tournaments in a row and 18 for the year. What most grown-ups of the golf persuasion do not realize, however, is that Nelson’s streak started in 1944 and ran through much of 1946… In ‘44, Nelson won eight of those 22 events, four in a row at one point, and was either first, second, or third in 17 out of the 22. His worst finish in ‘44 was tied for sixth at Oakland. Horrors… And what of 1946? Well, after all of the aforementioned, the constant pressure of trying to live up to everyone’s expectations was burning a hole in what had always been a weak and unruly stomach anyhow. He went ahead and competed sporadically through the rest of ‘46, entering twenty-one tournaments in all. Guess what. He won six of them and even tied for the U.S. Open at Canterbury in Cleveland but lost by a slim one stroke to Lloyd Mangrum in what became a grueling 36-hole playof . The arithmetic for this amazing three-year period shows that Byron won 32 of the 72 tournaments he entered. That’s very nearly half of them, folks. The arithmetic also shows that he was either first, second, or third in 57 out of the 72. Naturally, the ecstasy of the streak need not require the legendary golf of a Nelson. Rather, it is the palpable perception by the player that he has somehow been raised beyondperhaps extraordinarily beyondhis normal game. The streak can be a continuous run of good judgments or a succession of near-effortless decisions in shot and club selection. The sensation of a streak often involves the player’s sense of body. Like any runner on a high, the golfer feels his body light, rhythmic, natural, and in the flow. The ecstasy contains an even fuller sensation of security and well-being for the player, who senses that he has been taken up by good fortune and is guided by a special charm or power. He feels he “has got it.” His game is no longer his game. It is as if it has entered upon another season of play and into a different kingdom of the game: the difficult becomes easy; the impossible, possible. He need only see the shot and he hits it; he need only swing at the shot and it goes where it should go. No matter what trouble he gets into with his shot, he recovers and wins. He feels himself blessed, chosen to win. Whatever the explanation, a streak is an exalted condition. When on a streak, the player feels as if he is not quite mortal, as if he is elevated beyond the doubts, hesitations, fears, and failures that normally haunt him. There is a surprising lightness to things. A new and immediate relationship seems to exist between him, his arms, swing, and the shot. Even the more skeptical player can’t explain away entirely his streak as merely a kind of mathematical necessity. He may argue rationally that the average of his gameor of anythingis invariably composed, not of average rounds, but by streaks beyond and below the average. However, this rationality pales before the powerful subjective experience of having been taken out of the world of the ordinary. And, of course, he faces the bafflement that all statisticians face in explaining why this streak is occurring now rather than at some other time. Even the player who is reluctant to explain much by reference to good luck will find himself confessing his good fortune when caught up in a streak. After all, how does one explain the uncommon with the common? Explanations by opposites are rarely satisfying, at least to acute minds. Throughout the history of golf, great and wondrous streaks have occurred. One tries and fails to explain them by the