Golf Stuff

There were times during the last year when I kind of lost passion for golf.  I played, but I often felt like I was going through the motions as opposed to my previous enthusiasm and love of the game.  I don't know what happened but about the first of June, my passion for the game returned.  I have been watching the Golf Channel alot. I watched most of the televised US Open. I have been reading golf equipment catalogues. I have been to our local golf store (Uinta Golf now owned by the Edwin Watts Company) at least five times in the last three weeks.  A couple of those times the Lovely Sharon was with me as she bought a new bag and got her clubs regripped.  I demo'd several new drivers at Hidden Valley Country Club and ended up buying a new Callaway Razer X driver. 

I played nine holes with the Lovely Sharon and our good pal Terry G Wednesday of last week. I played men's golf Thursday, I hit balls Friday, the Lovely Sharon and I walked 18 holes early Sunday and then watched the US Open,  and I played 9 holes yesterday.  I am playing Thursday at Hidden Valley, Friday at Victory Ranch Club (a Reese Jones designed course), I am playing with buddies in the Hill Field Amateur on Saturday and on Sunday, the Lovely Sharon and I are playing couples golf at Hidden Valley with good friends Jean and John.

Whew, for a man with absolutely no golfing talent thats a lot of golf and I am loving it. When I am passsionate about golf, my life seems to be better than when I am in a spell when the passion has evaporated.  I have actually brought my golf bag into the Bud Cave twice in recent days just to look through it, removing the odd item that didn't need to be there like broken tees and broken pencils and golf balls that had seen better days.  I found a pencil  in my bag from the Cypress Point Club and it caused me to think back with great fondness of the seven rounds that I was lucky enough to play there.  My favorite course on the planet. 

I read a book entitled Four Days in July about Tom Watson's 2009 British Open where he lost the Championship in a playoff to Stewart Cink causing many a grown man (including me) to shed a tear.

I emailed Jim Dodson today.  Jim is one of my favorite authors.  He is friends with Arnold Palmer and many others in the golfing world.  I have never met JIm in person but he and I have emailed each other a number of times over the last several years talking about golf, books, and kids.  I absolutely love the way Jim writes and what he writes about.  He lives in Southern Pines, NC (near Pinehurst).  He writes a Sunday column in the Southern Pines Pilot (http://www.thepilot.com/) and he is the editor of a monthly called Pinesraw (http://www.pinestrawmag.com/).  Jim's most recent book is American Triumvirate.  Here is recent review:

Most of golf history has been dominated by threesomes, from Englishman Harry Vardon, J.H. Taylor, and James Braid at the turn of the last century; through Walter Hagen, Gene Sarazen and Bobby Jones in the 1920's; to Sam Snead, Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan in the mid-twentieth century; and on to Arnold Palmer, Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus in the 1960's and 1970's.  Dodson, author of  Ben Hogan: An American LIfe (2004), focuses here on those midcentury titans, all born in 1912, and rescued a  Depression and war-ravaged professional golf tour and launched the game's modern age.  Alternating between the accounts of the careers of the three very different men - the quiet, pious Nelson; the out-going, free-and-easy Snead; and the demon haunted, practice-obsessed Hogan, the author effectively recreates an era when professional golfers competed for paultry sums, carpooled across the country, and were forced to play on many courses that bore little in common with the well-manicured clubs of today.  The triumphs of Snead, Hogan and Nelson changed all of that, and the competition among the three gave postwar golf the headline-appeal it needed, setting the table for the game to be launched  into the televsion era on the broad shoulders of Arnold Palmer.  Dodson makes the most of the rich history he recounts with first-rate narrative skill, developing the surprisingly complex characters of his three protagonists  with the care of a fine historical novelist.  Absorbing reading for anyone who follows professional golf. - Bill Ott, Booklist, Feb. 2012

Jim's website is http://www.jamesdodsonauthor.com/

For my golfing friends, have a wonderful summer on the links.  For my non-golfing friends, have fun doing what you love to do.