[Mark_Rowlinson]

Sean Arble's Which Course is This thread reminds me that his first quote goes on:

Is golf a game at all, or a form of self-denial, or masochism?  Remember that CE Jung went one better than Freud and discovered a whole rich vein of sexual symbolism in the game.

Give an old man something to chuckle about by discussing this amongst yourselves, will you?

[Sean_A]

Mark

A Round... is a terrific book.  I started rereading it a week or so ago.  Dickinson is very amusing.  It is a shame that only eighteen courses are featured.  

I am not certain this is unfortunate, but Dickinson does not go into further detail about sexual symbolism and golf.

Ciao

Sean

[BCrosby]

I bought Patrick (?) Dickinson's book at a yard sale about a year ago. It gathered dust on my shelf for several months. When I finally picked it up I was amazed.

A wonderful and egregiously under-appreciated book. At least in the US.

Did Dickinson ever write anything else on golf? Was he otherwise well-known in the UK?

It needs to be reissued.

Bob  

[Kirk Gill]

Remember that CE Jung went one better than Freud and discovered a whole rich vein of sexual symbolism in the game.

Well, there's the obvious stuff. The stick, club, what have you. The balls. The hole. Putting it IN the hole. The freshly manicured area surrounding the hole. The drive. The approach (I'm getting out of order here). Undulations. Anything that is "severely undulating" just HAS to have a sexual connotation. There's the desire, the NEED, to put it in the hole, repeatedly. And, of course, there's asking your wife for permission before you do it.

I'm sure that there's some more subtle, psychological stuff out there, but this is a start.......

[TEPaul]

I thought you were asking about architecture--and if so Bel-Air's #12, the "Mae West" hole is a good old symbol.

[Jordan Wall]

The only two words that should be included in a sentence involving sex and golf:

Natalie Gulbis

 

[paul westland]

The Anasazi would interpret the golf exercise as return to the womb via sipapu, the opening from which we as humans,(golfers), emerged from the third world or underworld.  Greens would be the Kiva, or ceremonial vessel where sipapu is accessed. Scholars bunker at St Andrews is so named for it's proximity to the dorms and........  

[Steve_ Shaffer]

Mae West bunkers? Where are they?

[Craig_Rokke]

Thankfully, I see little in the way of sexual symbolism in golf. I do prefer, however, to clean my ball with a golf towel rather than pump away with a ball washer.

[JNC Lyon]

Steve:

 The Mae West hole WAS at Bel Air Country Club, originally the twelfth hole.  It did not involve bunkers but rather mounds, two enormous ones in fact.  The idea was to drive close to the wall of the canyon so that you could have a view of the green for the second shot through the, er, cleavage.  The infamous hole was destroyed by Dick Wilson.  Some of the history buffs on here can fill in the details.

[Steve_ Shaffer]

JNC

Thanks for the info.

The architectural question is: Are Mae West mounds better than chocolate drop mounds?

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Bob,
What did you pay for the Dickensen book?

[Evan_Green]

I remember seeing an aerial of hole built by Desmond Muirhead in Florida in the shape of a mermaid.

[Sean_A]

Bob,
What did you pay for the Dickensen book?

Naccers

You should be able to pich up a decent copy of A Round of Golf Courses for about £15-£20.

Ciao

Sean

[BCrosby]

Tommy -

I bought the Dickinson (only because it was about golf, but having never heard of Dickinson), two P.G. Wodehouse and a big, thick biography of Mozart for $5 at the yard sale.

All turned out to be great books.

Bob

[Mark_Rowlinson]

Bob,  Patric (sic) Dickinson was principally a poet, and for many years was the BBC's poetry editor, a post he filled with distinction.  His daughter, Ginny, married the man who was best man at my wedding.  I still see them occasionally and stayed with Patric's widow, Sheila, in their lovely house in Rye only a matter of months before her death.  But I also worked with Patric professionally, making a number of programmes for the BBC and he was a superb programme maker, always selecting the most stimulating poetry, linking it beautifully and making the programme the exact length required with no jiggery-pokery.  I think I have copies of pretty well all his own original published poetry, but he also produced volumes of translations of classical poets and scholarly editions of other poets.  Perhaps best of all I like the Christmas cards he sent, writing a poem specially and having it engraved himself.  Sheila continued the tradition after his death.

As a golfer he was a Cambridge blue, but he got the yips, threw the clubs in the loft and never took them out again.  

In my copy of A Round I have a letter from him written in March 1990 in which he advises me that A & C Black had reissued A Round in paperback, so there might be some of those still around.  

[JNC Lyon]

Steve, to answer your question, the Mae West mounds were much better, as not only are they highly original, but they were large enough to create a blind shot from behind one of them, thus dictating the strategy of the hole.  Chocolate drop mounds are far less unique (although still charming) and they rarely add to the strategy of the hole as much as the Mae West mounds did at the twelfth at Bel Air.

[BCrosby]

Mark -

Fascinating. Responses like yours are what make GCA the special place it is. Dickinson's bright intelligence shines through every sentence of A Round. That he only wrote one book on the game is a shame. Had he written more, I suspect Dickinson would have something like Darwin's status today.

I am obliged to tell you a much less interesting story about I came to own my copy of the book.

An old widow down the street from us died a year or so ago. She lived in a beautiful house that I had always wanted to visit. My wife heard that her heirs were holding an unadvertised estate sale for friends and neighbors and that this might be my only chance to get a look inside the house. So we went to the sale.

It turned out that the interior of the house was nothing special, but in a dark den an entire wall was stuffed with books on offer. From among some volumes on naval warfare, one volume seemed misplaced. I pulled it down. It was a first edition of O.B. Keeler's "A Boy's Life..." More amazing was that on the fly leaf was a long inscription in pencil from O.B. to the deceased widow. I quietly tucked the book under my arm. In the next few moments I also found "A Round" (picking it only because it was a golf book I didn't know by an author I had never heard of) and several other volumes on different topics.

A woman at the front door was collecting payment for sale items. I showed her my stack of books and she let out a gasp. She was the daughter of the deceased widow and she had been looking for the O. B Keeler book. It turns out that O.B. was the widow's uncle and that the families had been very close. Embarrassed, she said she could not sell me the Keeler book, but that I could have all the others I had chosen for $5.

So that's how I came to own my copy of A Round. (I have asked myself how the widow (or her husband) came to own it originally.  It has not been published in the US. Might Dickinson have known the Keeler family and sent them a copy?)

At any rate, next time I am in England, save me a hour or so one evening. I'll buy the beer if you will answer my questions about Dickinson.

Bob  

P.S. Dickinson, Robert Louis Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling are the only  poets of recognized standing who played golf, at least that I know of. But Dickinson was unique. He was the only poet who (i) was a good golfer and (ii) wrote about the game in any detail.

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