GOLF: Reflections by Virgil Finley

by Virgil Finley, Oklahoma City
Copyright, 1993

GOLF

Golf is the exhilaration of watching a well-struck ball accelerate in a heavenward arc, and imagining that you are riding on it as it zooms skyward.

Golf is an unquenchable thirst on a sun-parched fairway, and the cool oasis of a distant shimmering green.

It is the metallic click of cleats on concrete paths and the crunch of cleats in gravel-covered paths. It is swarms of gnats, biting flies, and vicious mosquitoes attacking at twilight.

Golf is the smell of freshly mowed fairways with the sun on your back and the dry scratchy feeling of dust on dried sweat.

It's the cool breeze of an approaching thunderstorm breaking the blistering heat of a mid-summer day.

Golf is the crackle and boom of lightning as it strikes a nearby grove of trees and jabs your heart with a chilling fear.

Golf is wind-driven ocean spray that has pounded the links since the beginning of time. Or a babbling brook whose smooth round rocks lie shaded in an oak tree's cool embrace.

It is the cold winter wind that numbs your hands, and the time you played in the snow.

It is a ritual of elaborate etiquette and mysterious rules with harsh and unfair penalties.

It is the unearthly vocabulary of a strange and mystical language. It speaks of birdies and bogies, mashies, niblicks, and fore.

Golf is frog-hair and baffing spoons, play clubs, irons, and metal woods.

Golf is the glint of sunlight on chrome club shafts and the silent movement of carts across a grassy plain.

It is tiredness, frustration, improving, failing to improve, and getting worse. And the one perfect shot that makes the whole day's trials seem worthwhile.

Golf is watching the stiff awkward swings (that work) of old men, and the earnest efforts of young boys taking whiffs at the ball.

It is the beautiful graceful swings of young men, and the shanking and duffing of women who hardly ever play.

Golf is pure black script on perfectly shaped spheres of cratered whiteness. And brightly colored short pencils (without erasers) sharpened in a multifaceted way.

It is bright red, blue, yellow and white pegs of wood which taste of paint when you chew on them, and scorecards with mysterious numbers and words.

Golf is a map of a tiny world within a world with its own lakes and roads and boundaries all its own.

Golf is the suspension of time and the challenge of executing shots. It is the difficulty of keeping an honest score, and a penetrating x-ray of the soul.

Golf is a diabolical and sinful constellation of pin placements, tee placements, tree placements, bunker placements, and bone-dry ball washers.

It is meeting and playing with strangers pleasant and strange. It is cursing, shouting "fore", apologizing and being apologized to.

It is thrown clubs, bent clubs, broken clubs, swearing, and the endless cycle of quitting the game forever.

Golf is escape and freedom. It is young boys swimming in a water hazard, retrieving balls and selling them at ten cents each.

It is a game of friendship and great natural beauty. And it is rudeness, slow play, taking lessons, and scraping mud from your cleats.

Golf is an unsolicited lesson on swing fundamentals from a nine year old boy. Or an old man's gentle admonition as you sit dejectedly staring at the ground that the true beauty of the game lies in its impossibility.

Golf is the flags of no country waving proudly above the cool perfection of the greens. And the hollow thump of the ball as it falls into the cup.

It is shimmering jewels of crystal dew reclining on emerald greens in the amber light of early morning .

Golf is losing a ball in a well-mowed open fairway or losing it two inches short of crossing a water hazard.

Or watching your ball disappear forever into a mound of brightly colored leaves on a frosty October morning.

Itís a snake that you see from the corner of your eye just as you're taking a shot. And its squirrels so tame you have to shoo them away.

Golf is colorful shirts (or no shirt at all), and the comfort of clean white tennis shorts.

It is the sting in your hands, and the sting in your soul as you mis-hit an approach on a cold November morning. And its the feeling of pure exhilaration as the ball rebounds off the clubs' sweet spot on the very next tee.

Golf is playing so far into the rough that you'd need a weed-eater and a chain saw to recover.

Golf is divots and divot-fixers and the responsibilities they bring. And water balls and range balls and balls with mischievous smiles.

Golf is picking up a seemingly abandoned ball as its burly owner approaches rapidly in a cart. And its having your ball run over by a bulldozer, while you are wondering about the rules.

Golf is farthest from the hole and tending the pin and properly marking your ball. Its having no standing when you're playing alone, and its really not playing at all.

Golf is practice, and tournaments, and trying to teach the game to others. Its "winter rules" and "holes made by burrowing animals", and "ground under repair".

Golf is the stateliness of venerable old St. Andrews, and its stoic, royal and ancient trustees of the rules. And its a Scot lad at the Open describing Trevino as a "wee mon who jiggles".

But officially, golf is playing a ball from the teeing ground into the hole by successive strokes in accordance with the Rules.