Champagne Tony and Chi-Chi Aren’t Back, But …

Posted on May 1, 2011 by Charles Prokop

I’m really enjoying the PGA tour these days. I miss the mastery of Tiger, but some characters are starting to appear as players move into the vacuum.

Who can’t enjoy seeing a guy like Bubba Watson win? His homemade pass at the ball breaks all the rules of a golf swing, and the emotion he shows after a win reminds us all why we play.

And what about Tommy Gainey? He’s been knocking on the door with that two-gloved snake-killing attack, and I’m expecting him to put all four rounds together any week.

We’d all laugh at both these guys’ swings if we looked out of the grill and saw them on the tee. That is, we’d laugh if we couldn’t see where the ball went. If we saw where it went, we’d take our hamburger out to the course to see if they could do it again. Let’s hope they do.

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Ball and Stick Games

Posted on April 30, 2011 by Charles Prokop

What is it about ball and stick games that inspire writing? Baseball seems to stimulate the most writing, but golf comes in second. (At least it does based on my highly unscientific research in new and used bookstores).

Other than golf and baseball, the other major ball and stick games I’m aware of are hockey (I’ll equate a puck with a ball here), cricket, and croquet. I’m going to rule out polo, because the addition of horses seems to put polo in another realm.

Hockey has some literature, and Bryan Gruley’s Starvation Lake and its sequel The Hanging Tree are promising recent hockey-related contributions. But the hockey literature seems relatively sparse compared to golf and baseball.

Do cricket and croquet have their own literatures? I’ll plead ignorance on that point.

Golf seems to be the most elemental ball and stick game. Baseball and cricket include running, catching, and the interfering efforts of an opposing team. Hockey includes skating, physical contact, and the other team. Croquet is pretty pure ball and stick, but the opponent can mess with your ball.

But in golf, the ball just sits there, waiting to be hit. Nobody rolls or throws the ball at you, you don’t have to run around or beat it to somewhere, and your opponent can’t interfere with your swing or ball flight. You’re opponent doesn’t have to be present. In fact, your opponent doesn’t have to exist.

With no opposing team, balls hit out of the park and balls dribbled halfway to the pitcher’s mound are home runs. I can’t ice skate, but without an opponent I figure I could manage a goal in hockey. But even if I’m the only person on the golf course on a day of perfect weather, I’ll still screw up.

For good or ill, golf (and maybe baseball and cricket) have the largest inaction to action ratios of any games I can think of. The amount of time a player actually hits the ball is infinitesimal compared to the amount of time the game takes, so you have a lot of time to think.

But golf gives you the fewest excuses and the biggest opportunity to blame no one but yourself for the results.

So golf inspires solitary rumination and personal examination. Sounds kinda like writing, doesn’t it?

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The All Purpose Prescription

Posted on April 26, 2011 by Charles Prokop

After turning another nice mid-to-upper 70’s round into a low 80’s round with a few stupid shots, I decided to review the source of my stupidity. The most obvious flaw in my recent play has been poor execution of the second shot on par 5’s. That shot easily cost me 4 shots in my last round.

I often approach the shot with no real plan beyond “go for it” or “lay up.” If I go for it, it’s “hit it as far as I can.” If I lay up, it’s “just hit the fairway somewhere up there.” A vague target and a nonspecific distance.

When I lived in Florida I played some golf with a neurologist friend who had the secret to golf and life sewn up in a neat bundle. When you encountered troubles on the course or in life he would dispense his “all purpose prescription,” presented in the illustration below. (The neurologist’s name has obviously been changed to protect the guilty.)

I was always entertained when he dispensed the prescription to me, but “Do Better” has the same problems as my second shot on par 5’s. It’s a good plan, but it’s mighty vague. It needs some how to work.

Maybe I can make “Do Better” better by being more specific. It’s hard to commit to a shot that’s not well planned out, and being committed to a shot is universally mentioned as an important part of good golf. Next time I’ll approach those second shots as if they were second shots on par 4’s. Not just go for it but go for a particular spot on the green. Not just lay up, but visualize a pin in the fairway and hit to there.

Maybe even take Bob Rotella’s advice and not even hit driver off the tee if I know I won’t reach in two. There’s a par 5 at my home course where I risk out of bounds or in a hazard with my drive, and I’ve never reached in two. Why risk it off the tee?

So I’ll try to “Take dead aim”, as Harvey Penick says in his Little Red Book. Maybe that will make me “do better.”

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Skins With Buddha Update

Posted on April 23, 2011 by Charles Prokop

My effort to maintain a zen-like state while playing with the Stooges has been delayed. When I arrived for the skins game I learned that this was the final game for the Cotton Baron before his return to Lubbock for the summer, and the wind began to blow (gusts to around 35) in his honor. I decided to roll with the punches and let myself become immersed in tough golf in the wind and heckling the Baron. I’ll return to my zen quest in a future round.

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Does Buddha Play Skins?

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Charles Prokop

After my last post I went to the bookshelf and pulled down Zen Golf by Joseph Parent to see if he had any comments relevant to the subject. As you would expect, a large part of the book is devoted to the issue of staying in the present. Zen means “action with awareness”, according to Parent.

So if you stay in the moment, I guess you can play with the Stooges and Buddha simultaneously. The trick is stepping into your golf at the moment you need to as you begin to size up your shot, enter your routine, etc. And stay with the Stooges, enjoying the fun, as you drift along the course between shots.

Easy to say, but if good golf is played in a state “free of tension and chatter … concentrated on one thing”, as Parent notes that Harvey Penick said, it can be hard to stay in that state when Stoogeball is full of chatter (fun chatter, mind you) and your concentration is sliding back and forth between the fun and your next shot.

I’ll give it a try in my skins game today. Skins encourages staying in the moment, with each hole its own tournament, and I’m expecting a good crowd of stooges. I’ll just try to slice cut divide the time into smaller increments and see if Buddha will hang around as I swing, even if he isn’t riding in the cart with me.

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Would You Rather Play With The Stooges Or Buddha?

Posted on April 19, 2011 by Charles Prokop

I’ve never decided which type of round of golf I enjoy the most. Much of my golf is played with my regular group and the chatter often reminds me of hilarious rounds at Ponkaquogue Municipal Golf Links and Deli with Cementhead, Thud, and Chunkin’ Charlie. If you don’t know the crew at Ponky, I highly recommend Missing Links by Rick Reilly to you. After that you can go on to Shanks For Nothing.

I typically play with The Chipping Lizard, Gallon, and The Cowboys, and the golf itself is frequently only a part of the fun. Instead, golf is the stage for running gags, good-natured ridicule, and side bets. These rounds are often the most fun I have in any given week.

Today I had a different type of round. Most of the regulars couldn’t make it and one of The Cowboys and I were paired with two other guys in the tournament. We all knew each other and got along well, but the conversation was much more sedate and there were no side bets. Golf took center stage and I really enjoyed myself, albeit in a totally different way.

I shoot about the same score in both types of rounds. Today I turned an easy 76 or 77 into an 80 with a few stupid shots and a three putt from two feet on one pin placement that needed a windmill and clown’s mouth for truth in advertising. That’s consistent with my average for the last few months.

When I think back over my years of golf, I remember two categories of things. First, I remember my playing partners. They form a rogue’s gallery of my best friends over the years. Second, I remember the feel of a golf course when everything is right. It’s a Zen-like feel when I’m absorbed by the golf and the course. When that well struck shot rises against the darkening evening sky I can be the only person on earth, and that’s fine.

What I don’t remember for long are my scores. I suspect that’s a good thing, because my score probably won’t be what keeps me playing golf when I’m that 90 year old shuffling across the green. (Don’t worry – I’ll wear spikeless shoes.)

I wonder what type of rounds other people prefer. If you could have your choice between a game with a group you love to kid around with or a round where you are really into your own game and the course, which would it be?

I hope I’ll keep playing, and loving, both.

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In The Rough With Kevin Na

Posted on April 15, 2011 by Charles Prokop

As most everyone knows by now, Kevin Na made a 16, 12 over par, at the Valero Texas Open yesterday. I live not too far from the TPC San Antonio course where the tournament is played, and understand how this could happen if you get in the wrong place around here.

My house and the TPC are located in the beginnings of the Texas Hill Country, in the area of the Balcones Escarpment just north of San Antonio. The undisturbed land is rocky and covered primarily by live oak and juniper. They call the juniper Mountain Cedar around here, and it grows to a large tree if left alone.

This picture is a reasonable facsimile of what Na would have confronted from the woods along the fairway. I took this picture on my property at the foot of my driveway. I’ve left the vegetation undisturbed for privacy, as they left it undisturbed for environmental reasons at the TPC. You can imagine the difficulty of extricating yourself from this. An unplayable drop of two club lengths wouldn’t help much.

The next picture is what Na’s lie is likely to have looked like. Notice the rocks in addition to the tree problems. I play with one group around here that lets everyone carry a 15th club as a “rock club” so you can choose not to destroy a good club if you get too far into trouble.

A reasonable course of action for us normal folks is to pick up and take our maximum equitable stroke control score on the hole when we get trapped like this. Of course, Na didn’t have this option.

I can only sympathize with him, and wonder how many clubs he had to replace after this experience.

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What I (Re)Learned Today

Posted on April 13, 2011 by Charles Prokop

After a truly awful front nine score of 44 characterized by an inability to hit any kind of shot, I announced to my playing partners that I was going to shoot 38 (two over) on the back. If your regular group is anything like mine, you know the reaction that got.

I promptly hit my drive on #10 out of bounds, leading to a double bogey and more insulting helpful suggestions from my group.

From there I shot one under to finish with a 37 on the back. So what happened?

I didn’t consciously do anything about my swing, like reminding myself about tempo or a flying elbow. I changed what I was thinking.

For the first ten holes I was berating myself about how poorly I was playing. The G-rated version of my thoughts goes something like “you doofus, what’s wrong with you, that was a really awful shot.” For the final eight holes my thoughts were “I need to hit my drive down the right side,” or “just get this shot near the green from under this tree and I’ll have a par putt after a chip or pitch.” I was concentrating on what to do next, not what I had done.

Maybe someday I’ll remember to look ahead rather than back. The hole is in front of me, not back on the tee.

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A Scream with Shivas Irons

Posted on April 9, 2011 by Charles Prokop

Whenever I hear people say things like “golf can teach you a lot about life” my eyes start to glaze over and I have to stifle a scream. I suspect that true devotees could say a lot of the same worshipful things about gardening, croquet, or Disney figurine collecting. So although I think there are a lot of good to be said for Golf in the Kingdom, when I read lines like “Golf is the new yoga of the supermind” I start to wonder if we haven’t hit it a little too far into the weeds.

My psychological training probably drives part of my reaction. I always thought humanistic psychology (Be here now, stay in touch with your feelings, etc. at an overly simplistic level) had some value, but got needlessly tangled up in abstraction. I sometimes felt like I was drowning in feathers when I read it, and when I tried to strip it down I often wondered exactly what was there.

Michael Murphy, the author of Golf in the Kingdom and The Kingdom of Shivas Irons, is one of the cofounders of Esalen Institute, a premier humanistic center. The books blend his interests in golf and the human potential movement.

Through the character of Shivas Irons, Murphy explores golf, human potential, and mysticism. The Kingdom of Shivas Irons is the only golf book I know with a bibliography ranging from golf classics by Bernard Darwin and Bobby Jones to books on life after death.

Commit to the shot, forget the shot that you just hit into the bunker, be the ball (with apologies to Chevy Chase in Caddyshack). That’s the problem with humanistic psych. When you start to talk about it, you risk getting overly serious or silly.

On the other hand, we all know how hard it can be to be in touch with the course and our bodies, let the swing flow naturally, and have the world narrow to just us, the ball, and the shot in front of us. That’s when we play the best, that’s when we’re in the zone, that’s the “Be here now” of humanistic psychology.

If we could live in the moment, stay immersed in the here and now, accept life as it is and just deal with what life throws our way we presumably could live more effectively.

Kind of play it as it lies. Maybe golf can say a lot about life. I know I hit it into the weeds nearly every day.

Pardon me while I go into my closet and scream. Shivas Irons claims it helps with finding true gravity, you know.

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Should I use the moccasin or the rattler on this shot?

Posted on April 6, 2011 by Charles Prokop

I was watching the Golf Channel and looking forward to the Masters when that commercial for the new Adams fairway woods came on. You know, the one advertising the clubs with the spring-like effect with Tom Watson and Ryan Moore as spokesmen.

The clubs sound like a great idea, but as a player who trusts my 3 wood about as much as I trust a water moccasin in my bag, I might reword what Ryan Moore says.

Moore ends his testimonial by saying something like “once you hit this club you’ll never want to hit another fairway wood.” I’ve hit a lot of fairway woods that made me feel like I never wanted to hit another one. In fact, I went for years hitting a 3 iron instead.

I somehow don’t think that’s how they mean it.

I have finally learned how to hit my 3 wood. It seems to have something to do with relaxing my shoulders, but that’s hard to do when I’m holding a water moccasin by the tail.

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