Followed the way one follows a play–with an eye for drama and the interplay of the characters–sports can pay dividends even to people who hadn’t been watching when something happened. John Daly’s victory in the Professional Golfers’ Association Championship earlier this month existed, for me, the way few sporting events have this summer–though I hadn’t seen him hit a single stroke. Other people were talking about him so much and with such delight–golfers and nongolfers, sports fans and sports dabblers–that the photos in the newspapers came to life like some image of Paul Bunyan and his blue ox Babe. There was Daly, his club curled back over his shoulder as if he were some Neanderthal Goofy in a Walt Disney short, a late entry into the tournament and, I was told, a long hitter capable of reaching 600-yard par fives in two shots. A small legend grew up around him, based on details both colorful and fanciful. His motto, it was said, was “grip it ‘n’ rip it,” in reference to his driver, and it was also said that his swing was so fast and furious it couldn’t be captured in slow motion (not true, as it turns out). Yet here he was, part Cinderella, part Paul Bunyan, winning the fourth and final grand-slam event of the golf season in a cakewalk. It was an entry into big-league sports that matched–and in some ways even topped–Wilson Alvarez’s no-hitter in his debut with the White Sox.
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The problem with paying such intent attention to sports, however, is that it can easily work to the disadvantage of the weekend athlete. The same way Daly displayed himself to be a courageous, rash, and–on this occasion–blessed golfer, most of us display much less flattering aspects of ourselves on the field of play. For instance, a friend of mine was recently told during a company softball game that he ran the bases “like a sportswriter.” I’m not quite sure what that means, and it may even have been meant as a compliment, but it sent him into a funk of self-analysis for days. My game of choice during the workweek is racquetball, a sport where function is greatly stressed over form, where what one does is far more important than how elegantly one does it. Yet I went off on vacation this week and really devoted myself to golf for the first time this summer, and in the process of playing poorly for most of the week I discovered some things about myself that weren’t so pleasing to know. What’s worse, everyone around me came to know them too.
I do not have the time to be a serious golfer; sometimes I don’t have the time to be even a weekend golfer. (Sometimes, in my line of work, you get the bear, and sometimes the bear gets you; lately the woods in my region have been full of grizzlies.) Thus, I’ve developed the unfortunate attitude that golf is simply a reflection of my state of mind at any given time. I’ve stepped onto the course for the first time in months and played quite well–for me, shooting in the 80s. On those occasions, the world is right, the trees are beautiful, the birds are singing, and golf is simply the excuse one uses for moving through the landscape. At other times, however, my grip feels wrong, my stance is wrong, there is no rhythm to my swing, I have no sense for the greens, and I can look up on the seventh hole to find, with a start, that the leaves on the trees are green, thus proving the adage that golf is a good walk ruined.
At the end of the round, I felt as if I had held myself together to avoid a near-total mental collapse. If that is not quite what I go on vacation intending to experience, it is, nevertheless, one of the small joys a not-quite-weekend golfer can take pride in.
