laconic Paul, with his salt-and-pepper beard, once a barrister, as some of the finest people I’ve ever met. Kim, who once managed supermarkets, taught me how to light a golfer’s cigar in the wind. A small but necessary talent. But this country is cursed by weather. Absolutely cursed. And if it is true that golf was invented in this country, then it is also true that it was never intended to be more than a test of endurance and a lesson in humility. Try hitting drivers into 145-yard par-3s and
not reaching
the green! Maybe humility is golf’s greatest lesson. And maybe this is why I never cared for Tiger Woods orraised Jack to emulate him. Instead, I held Ireland’s Padraig Harrington up for Jack when he was a little boy. There was something marvelously humble about the way Harrington walked with that slight limp. We followed him for years, and then like magic he won the Open at Carnoustie right after Jack and I went there and played on those brutal winter days. And as he stood on the 18th green and was presented with the Claret Jug and named the Champion Golfer of the Year, the first words from his mouth were “I was never meant for anything like this.” So, if Tiger Woods is the greatest practitioner of the game and yet he has failed to learn the game’s greatest lesson—humility—then what does this say about him as a man?
Not sure.
Right now humility is not Jack’s problem. He lost another team challenge match yesterday, failing to finish in the top five to play the tournament this weekend. He took two triple bogeys in the final round and finished last. It happens, I wrote to him. It can happen to anyone. I told him to just hang in there. His time will come. This is the spring of his freshman year. I don’t expect him to really come into his own until he’s a senior. He started late in the game. And he doesn’t come from the golf pedigree with parents who could hire coaches to help him with his swing. In the world of golf, Jack is definitely from the wrong side of the tracks. He worked at a gas station to pay for his clubs. In fact, he was scrubbing the floor of the men’s room at that gas station the night before he played his State Championship match. And I always tried to make him see that this was a point of honor. He was not a country-club golfer. I told him about Lee Trevino, who grew up with one club and used it to hit stones because he couldn’t afford a golf ball. “We’re the kinds of guys that the country clubs are trying to keep out,” I always told him. “You’ll be a renegade golfer.”
Over here the game belongs to everyone, including the renegades. There is no country-club golf for the locals. That is reserved for the guys who can afford to fly here to play. For example. A round at Kingsbarns is £150, or approximately $250. But if you are a residentof St. Andrews, you pay £170 a year, and you get to play all seven courses of the Links Trust, including the Old Course, as many times as you like. You could play the Old Course twice a day every day of the week, except Sunday, when it is closed. Golf belongs to everyone here, no matter his station in life. Somehow, when the game was hijacked to America and Japan, it was transformed into a game for the elite. Like the fellow I was out with from Germany the other afternoon. Handsome, arrogant, dressed to the hilt. He listened to none of his caddie’s advice, though Brian, who used to be a chef in Paris, delivered this advice with the greatest respect, as if he were talking to someone on the PGA Tour instead of someone who should have been banned from ever swinging a golf club in public. He made one horrendous shot after another, and each time his ball disappeared into the rough, he turned and glared at his caddie and me, even though he knew I was only a shadow, as if we were to blame. After a few hours of the man’s abuse, Brian whispered to me: “That’s why those boys lost the war. Twice.”
Somewhere in the dunes on the right side
not reaching
the green! Maybe humility is golf’s greatest lesson. And maybe this is why I never cared for Tiger Woods orraised Jack to emulate him. Instead, I held Ireland’s Padraig Harrington up for Jack when he was a little boy. There was something marvelously humble about the way Harrington walked with that slight limp. We followed him for years, and then like magic he won the Open at Carnoustie right after Jack and I went there and played on those brutal winter days. And as he stood on the 18th green and was presented with the Claret Jug and named the Champion Golfer of the Year, the first words from his mouth were “I was never meant for anything like this.” So, if Tiger Woods is the greatest practitioner of the game and yet he has failed to learn the game’s greatest lesson—humility—then what does this say about him as a man?
Not sure.
Right now humility is not Jack’s problem. He lost another team challenge match yesterday, failing to finish in the top five to play the tournament this weekend. He took two triple bogeys in the final round and finished last. It happens, I wrote to him. It can happen to anyone. I told him to just hang in there. His time will come. This is the spring of his freshman year. I don’t expect him to really come into his own until he’s a senior. He started late in the game. And he doesn’t come from the golf pedigree with parents who could hire coaches to help him with his swing. In the world of golf, Jack is definitely from the wrong side of the tracks. He worked at a gas station to pay for his clubs. In fact, he was scrubbing the floor of the men’s room at that gas station the night before he played his State Championship match. And I always tried to make him see that this was a point of honor. He was not a country-club golfer. I told him about Lee Trevino, who grew up with one club and used it to hit stones because he couldn’t afford a golf ball. “We’re the kinds of guys that the country clubs are trying to keep out,” I always told him. “You’ll be a renegade golfer.”
Over here the game belongs to everyone, including the renegades. There is no country-club golf for the locals. That is reserved for the guys who can afford to fly here to play. For example. A round at Kingsbarns is £150, or approximately $250. But if you are a residentof St. Andrews, you pay £170 a year, and you get to play all seven courses of the Links Trust, including the Old Course, as many times as you like. You could play the Old Course twice a day every day of the week, except Sunday, when it is closed. Golf belongs to everyone here, no matter his station in life. Somehow, when the game was hijacked to America and Japan, it was transformed into a game for the elite. Like the fellow I was out with from Germany the other afternoon. Handsome, arrogant, dressed to the hilt. He listened to none of his caddie’s advice, though Brian, who used to be a chef in Paris, delivered this advice with the greatest respect, as if he were talking to someone on the PGA Tour instead of someone who should have been banned from ever swinging a golf club in public. He made one horrendous shot after another, and each time his ball disappeared into the rough, he turned and glared at his caddie and me, even though he knew I was only a shadow, as if we were to blame. After a few hours of the man’s abuse, Brian whispered to me: “That’s why those boys lost the war. Twice.”
Somewhere in the dunes on the right side
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