Greetings, dear reader. What follows has sat in my drafts for several weeks now, partly because I had forgotten about it, but partly because I felt awkward about publishing it. It isn’t my normal style, but I enjoyed writing it, so here it is at last (as if you’d been sat there waiting for it!). This is a dissection of a poem - Rudyard Kipling’s “If” - that means a lot to me (see here if you can be bothered), analysed from the point of view of a lousy but beguiled golfer - me. My contributions are in italics; Kipling’s eternal message in bold…
If you can keep your head still when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you or the weather, or a distant noise, or the bad lie their ball found, yet again.
If you can trust yourself did you ever try golf, Rudyard? I can barely trust myself to complete the job when a lag putt ends up within six inches...there is no gimme yet to be granted where the receiver didn’t breathe a sigh of relief...when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too and when they make you hole out from “within the grip”, and it takes you not one more putt but two, you don’t really need to make allowances, for they were right all along to have doubts. But you will never forget, or forgive, that feeling of shame, and injustice...;
If you can wait this one would have driven you nuts, Rudyard. How long can it take to position the ball with the marker pen line dead on the hole, just in time to have eight practise strokes and then drag it left, hitting it as if it were likely to hit back? Get on with it...and not be tired by waiting good luck!,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated I guess this would mean don’t win too often, for that isn’t going to sit well with anyone. Once is probably enough, and don’t forget to buy the drinks if you do win, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good Very funny! Alistair Cooke described a video of him hitting a ball as akin to watching a man try and take off a sweater whilst falling out of a tree, but my swing is a good deal less graceful than his. If you play golf, either the dress code or your swing, or more likely a combination of the two, pretty much guarantee you won’t “look too good”. So relax., nor talk too wise I don’t think it matters how bright or accomplished you are when you are not on the course; I’ve heard no more than half a dozen people talk any sense whilst golfing, and when they did, there was a recurrent theme, along the lines of “this game is crazed, why get involved? Walk away, while you still can”. So again, nothing to fear here.
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master this is getting ridiculous, Rudyard. Why, in the face of all the evidence, would anyone continue to play this miserable, punishing, wonderful “game” if they didn’t dream of getting it right one day? So the first bit’s ok. But to “not make dreams your master”? Every golfer who ever caught this most pernicious of bugs is made a fool of by their dreams, every single time they play. Not just once, either. Golf makes you dream of success and then hammers you into the ground, and when you next have a free afternoon, guess where the car takes you? Back to the tee, and to those laughable, tragically improbable dreams of yours;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim Now we’re getting to the nitty-gritty, Mr Kipling. I’m not sure where to start. You obviously need to think about what you are doing, but having a few hundred thoughts jostling about as you lurch into the downswing doesn’t seem to work too well. Maybe a single swing thought is better, but how to select just one from the endless pile? And, more importantly, one of these swing thoughts might one day work - at least temporarily - for your specific breed of hopeful, violent lunge, but how to then remember what it was you thought, or felt? Impossible, I’d say.
For in that rare moment, when the ball sails high on line, you will instantly forget which single thought brought you to this isolated “triumph” (I’ll come on to that), where you dare to “trust yourself” (always a bad move), and enjoy looking, or imagining that you look, almost “too good” (not the case, and it is likely the other players may drift into a state where they “give way to hating” at the sight of your ball inexplicably lying near the flag (not near enough for a gimme, though), so the fact that you can’t or don’t remember “the secret” but instead only have this fleeting glimpse of a well-behaved ball is good news for your friendships, at least). In the flash of your ball against the sky, hanging for once above the flapping silk of the flag, you will have found and lost the one thought that could have helped, longterm;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same; This is frankly laughable. This worthy advice might be good for a few thousand years of philosophy, and perhaps for any other walk of life, but in golf, I am not sure it is realistic. Triumph is such an occasional visitor to these shores, and, given the scarcity value, I’m not sure anyone this side of the Dalai Lama (Caddyshack reference time: “big hitter, the Lama - long”) will be able to stay calm when they discover that the opposite of all those spectacular disasters - this elusive, near mythical “triumph” - is actually a thing. And, depending on whether you play in a regular group with the Lama or with marginally less enlightened beings, to “treat those two imposters just the same” seems a pushy demand. For, most of the time, the routine of the same old disasters is met with varying degrees of self-hatred, spiced up by some choice Anglo-Saxon. We all approach it differently - you can sometimes hear Tiger’s language float across from the far side of the Atlantic, but if you know someone who seems to just shrug, they’re probably playing a more introverted version of self-directed abuse. I could go on, but there’s a reasonable chance most golfers will only face this challenge - of equanimity in the face of “triumph” - when the leap year strikes or a blue moon rises, so perhaps let’s move on.
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools Not sure what to say here, but it’s worth perhaps considering that all golfers are fools, by definition,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools Ah, tools. I’m glad you mentioned them. Tools, and bad workmen. Hands up who doesn’t suspect their 18 month old driver is not only “worn-out”, but has joined forces with the dark side, and now plots to force you to the Pro Shop, where that latest red-faced driver and the contactless terminal are waiting patiently for you. I’m sure I’ve seen imagery around red faces somewhere before. And it’s only £500...:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings Not sure we’ll be calling this a “heap”, but I definitely remember winning anywhere up to about twenty pounds in shop vouchers, second rate balls, and skins game receipts over these long, hard decades.
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss The above “heap” may not be much, but I for one am not backing myself in pitching for anything. Sorry. Texas Wedge challenge instead?,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings I wonder if you did play, after all. For these eight words could describe 99% of golf, 99% of the time. What other phrase could so poetically describe the work we golfers go through - not just every time we tee it up, but perhaps with every single shot (except the aforementioned “triumph”, so perhaps every single shot bar the handful of exceptions over a lifetime that prove the rule)? This, here, is golf.
And never breathe a word about your loss Very funny, again! Is there to be dead silence in the nineteenth, then? We’ll need something else to moan about in that case. Maybe the sandwiches have gone up by five pence;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the will which says to them: ‘hold on!’ This couplet is beautiful. Replace “hold” with “carry” in each line, and I think you have distilled golf into two lines even more accurately than the eight words further up (“And lose, and start again…”).
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a man, my son!
I considered butchering this final verse, too, but it feels sacrilegious to attempt it. I’ve loved your poem, Mr Kipling, for as long as I’ve loved this game, and I know the history of you writing it for your son, and the blend of triumph and disaster you saw in your life, so I daren’t carry on, out of respect for this work of art that still inspires and educates all these years later.
But after finishing this foolish, whimsical effort, a google search tells me you did play golf after all - partnering a certain A. Conan-Doyle in at least one match - and were presumably keen on the game, given that during one long winter in Vermont you are thought to have invented “snow golf”, painting a few gutties red so you could play on the white blanket outside while you waited for spring to come. These days they actually make the normal balls in red, and they go so far - often in the wrong direction - that I tend to select the red ones in order that I can better see them in the heather, or sometimes on the beach...
I think you’d have made the best of golfers, perhaps an exceedingly good one. I also think you would have been, with the possible exception of the Lama, the most understanding of foursomes partners. So how about it, in a parallel universe? Fancy a game? We could challenge the Lama, and old Conan-Doyle, and perhaps he’ll invite us to play in the snow at his old gaff, as in the photo above. I’ll take the odds…
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Bravo! it's wonderful to look at 'if' from a slightly different angle