“Hogan just loved practice. He wasn’t practicing to get better; he woke up in the morning and could think of nothing better than just trying to hit great golf shots.”
Geoff Ogilvy
A few free minutes on the walk home, listening to Michael Murphy as the guest on an episode of The Firepit Collective’s “Need a 4th?!” podcast. As usual, Murphy - author of the seminal text on golf’s mystical side, “Golf in the Kingdom”, is excellent, as evergreen and relevant at ninety-two as his now fifty year old masterpiece. His appearance is a particular delight as I have just finished re-reading that book, probably two decades after I first stumbled across it.
Among many great lines from the show, the above quote from Ogilvy catches my ear, and festers in my consciousness for a few days. And then, at the weekend, an hour of discretionary time appears, and I am able to head to the range and hit a few balls, just for the sake of it.
One after another, I carefully take my stance, and try to use my breath to settle over that mischievous sphere, and then the swing is through in a flash, and I look up to catch a range of results as they fly across the field ahead. A few dragged left, the odd slappy cut. One or two thin and an occasional block.
But in between, and with nothing perceptibly different to help predict them, there appear these little marvels, where the ball is pinched precisely from the mat. Some effortless transfer of energy comes from the union of urethane and sweet spot, and when this magic occurs I think of my old golf teacher, whose sparse and enigmatic style of delivery seems to connect him somehow to Murphy.
Since our mornings together in the dusty nets of his studio, I have drifted so far away from practice that I barely know how to begin again, but in those days it would be hard to drag me away from hitting balls. If the pitch and putt was busy, or closed, I’d instead be found playing from one set of rugby posts to the other, or chipping endlessly around the garden in the eternal bliss of a childhood golfing summer.
It is hard at this distance to imagine how I let this simple joy drift from my life, but drift it somehow did, until I came to regard practice as boring, or tedious. I’d find ever more silly excuses to not hit balls - time, energy, clinging to some idea of not wanting to further ingrain bad habits - but in the meantime occasional forays on to the course would bring the least predictable results, and I would feel an abject terror standing on the first tee, with no idea which flavour of failure would manifest next.
And yet here I am, slowly sweeping seven-irons from the ground as if I’d never stopped practicing. In my ears are headphones, and the rhythmic hum of a gong bath clears my mind for each swing. Later it occurs to me that if the people in the bays behind me knew what music I was playing, they’d probably assume I had a screw loose, but then again, if the pavement came right by this range, and passing strangers caught a glimpse of a dozen of us out here working on our games, they’d reach the same conclusion of us all.
Each person’s particular frown at the ball, with our own tell-tale waggles and shuffles, and some forlorn look of hope before the stroke, usually followed by perplexed frustration. The game itself seems punishing enough, but here we are further inflicting misery on ourselves without the calming majesty of the stroll between shots for company. We must seem deranged to the non-golfer, and at this rate sooner or later we probably will be, but here, today, for the first time in decades, it feels sublime to be dispatching these balls out into the glorious July sun.
Somehow, in hearing that Hogan - dourest of the great champions - found such a simple joy in practice, a switch has flicked in me, and I can hardly wait to pull another ball from the pile, and stare with all the focus I have at those rear dimples while the rest of the world goes hammering by. I feel strangely centered, haunted by the ghost of my childhood self, and, excused from haste for another few minutes, there’s some sacred vibe that matches these gongs in my ears and the coming and going of my breath.
And then, the last ball is by far the best one, if I must differentiate between them. I hardly feel it spring off the face, so sweet is the connection, and it soars effortlessly right about the target all the way, with a faint touch of draw, clattering into the yardage marker as I watch in amusement. This shot, this swing…it seems to have come through me rather than having been a conscious execution.
In the same way as the words sometimes flow when I get out of my own way, this finale unfolds as if I am merely a conduit, tapping in to that same higher source that pours out of “Golf in the Kingdom”, and that helped Ogilvy stay in the moment to win the ‘06 U.S. Open, while all around him other players lost their minds.
And suddenly, after so many years of not practicing, there it is. I am once again that boy who couldn’t wait for school lessons to end, or for the sun to rise at the weekend. I am Seve on the farmland or the beach, a home-made three iron in his hand; or Faldo, shoveling aside the snow so he could just hit a few more, always searching. I am Hogan, post-accident, committed to just hitting great golf shots whenever he can, and letting the score take care of itself.
Long ago, golf stopped being only a game for me, and became a lens through which to see the world and come to know myself. And I let it all slip away somehow, neglected it for an age; too many years in the wilderness. But shuffling away from this practice session, I am changed just a little, and this is how it should be with a spiritual pursuit.
As Ogilvy walked off that final green on the West at Winged Foot - a hole appropriately named “Revelations”, he simply said to the reporters "I love this game", and while no one was waiting for me with a microphone as I left the range yesterday, you’d have seen the same message writ large in my eyes. So you’ll probably find me back on the mat now, and you’ll know it is me for I smile at not only the good ones, but at them all. For the chance to hit each shot is a rare blessing, and this is my own private spiritual practice…
One of the things I miss most during my forced hiatus from the game is my ability to go over to a local chipping green and hit pitch shots for the odd hour or two a couple of times per week. Taking 10 balls and my X (64 degree) wedge out of the trunk, and wandering over to an open spot behind a bunker. The Mickelson flop -- hoping there's no one on the opposite side of the green in case my execution of the shot is not quite as good as his;. Playing it back and trying to hit a low spinning shot with this extremely lofted club. Ten tries? Pick them up and do it again. Maybe lets get in the bunker and hit some shots to a short-sided pin. Thump. That's the sound that Paul Azinger always talks about on tv ("oh, you could hear how good he hit that one"). Thump. Trying to channel my inner Gary Player -- who once wrote that his bunker practice wouldn't be complete until he had holed 10 shots from the sand... try that some time (but you'd better budget for an entire afternoon of doing so)!