Aural Golf and John Kavanaugh

[ward peyronnin]

 

A ball fairly struck by my friend ( somewhat maligned but most assuredly gentlemanyly) John Kavanaugh today on the one shot number 7 at Victoria perfectly accepted the pitch of the frozen  green , veered from right to left and; quite frankly for these 54 year old eyes exceeded my capacity to perceive visually. However there was no doubt upon hearing the rattle of the ball striking the flagstick ,made perhaps more telling by the hard frozen surfaces over which those sound waves travelled back to us, that a hole in one was  just witnessed.

I therefore decided to solicit any audio golfing experiences this most experienced body of golfers would care to relate. The crisply struck iron striking the flagstick; the tight thwack of a flushly hit wood; hearing a ball strike the green when unsure whether it has really carried the hazard that produce the thrill otherwise lacking form a solely visual assessment. And does the potential variety of these once again, in the mind of the committed , differentiate golf as a infinitely expansive source of novel experience compared with other sporting venues available to the modern Man. 

Cheers Ward

PS Congratulatoins JakaB and your booze tasted particularly sweet this afternoon

[Bill_McBride]

Congratulations to Barney on a frozen hole in one - that sounds sort of like a frozen Margarita!

[Eric_Terhorst]

Ward,

mine were slightly different aural experiences.    At the 5th hole at Kingsley, a tough par 3, I push-sliced my tee shot right, into a bunker up away from the green at the top of a dune.  When I hit the shot  I thought it would be good, but I could not see the outcome, and went about the business of repairing the bunker for the next player.  A few seconds later I heard my playing companions whooping with delight as it went in the hole for a 2.  A nice sound to hear.

Similarly, on the 9th at Greywalls, a short but challenging par 4, I hit my second shot from the behind the fairway bunker left that obscures the view of the green.  I purposely hit it up to the right side, hoping it would somehow find the putting surface of that narrow green.  Again much to my delight and out of my sight, the ball rolled directly toward the hole and my playing companions exclaimed that it might go in.  It didn't, but the sound was sweet and it was a tap-in for birdie.

Good topic!  Congrats to John K!

[ward peyronnin]

Eric

At the 12TH? ON tAIN A SIMAILR EXPERIENCE.

An alps hole of sorts the caddies said they dubbed mae West my foursome partner laid me dead in the blue sky bunker situated dead in  the "cleavage" before the green between he Alps. I hit a mighty bunker shot to the blind green and was rewarded by my playing companions cheering my ball on towards the hole and leaving a very modest 5 footer for my partner. But the disembodied cheers with no visual cues was the best.

[Tim Bert]

Serves all you naysayers right.

The Golf Gods have spoken.  Barney MUST be reinstated.

You ignore them at your own peril. 

I guess you were right about being unable to fill JaKa's shoes when it comes to original thought.  Who didn't see this post coming from a mile away?  I almost posted it for you 30 minutes ago, but I decided to defer to he who has championed the cause.   

[Anthony Gray]

  How long will it take for this thread to be deleted?

  Is this an amazing story or what?


  Congrats JK where ever you are!!!!

  Anthony

[John Kirk]

It's an omen.

[JohnV]

Perhaps if we all got booted, we'd spend more time at the course and get an ace ourselves.

Congrats to JK II  ( I knew John Kirk before John Kavanaugh.)

[Mike_Cirba]

Congratulations, John Kavanaugh.   

No martyrdom and beatification is complete without a proven miracle. 

You're clearly on your way to minimally having your GCA number retired, or at least being asked back to the GCA old-timers game with a growing number or midwest and east coast former participants.   

I'd also venture to say that you definitely have a better chance at future redemption than either Shoeless Joe or Pete Rose 

Seriously, John...good on you.   

Merry Christmas.

[Bill_McBride]

Barney's been booted?  The horror.....who will supply the shock value?    Barney is like that part of you that can't say some things except he does.  We will miss that if he's gone.

But perhaps I'm missreading, let's hope so.

[ward peyronnin]

Bill
You are not . But the Gods have spoken in other ways as well

I am a neophyte but the gist of my understanding is that at the local casino last night our friend Barney cashed in a sizable($$$$$) pot ( which i hope doesn't jeopardize his amateur standing) so they are now smiling favorably on him in a fashion that one would want to cultivate in any prospective course including opening a new one. 

[TEPaul]

"I therefore decided to solicit any audio golfing experiences this most experienced body of golfers would care to relate. The crisply struck iron striking the flagstick; the tight thwack of a flushly hit wood; hearing a ball strike the green when unsure whether it has really carried the hazard that produce the thrill otherwise lacking form a solely visual assessment. And does the potential variety of these once again, in the mind of the committed , differentiate golf as a infinitely expansive source of novel experience compared with other sporting venues available to the modern Man. "


Ward:

In my opinon, some of the audial feedback of golf may not differentiate it from the audial feeback of other games, but MAN ALIVE, it does make a HUGE difference if you don't have it or can't hear it. Iffin' you don't believe me, try putting on earphones and music sometimes that's loud enough that you cannot hear the sound of the ball hitting the club anymore. You may not realize it for the first stroke or two but after a while you'll say to yourself: "My GOD what in the world has happened here?"

I totally guarantee it. Or else just try to imagine or even experience sometimes what it's really like to be totally deaf.

Now, look Ward, this is just a question and answer and experiment on audial feedback and deafness and such but here's hoping you never have to actually deal with real deafness but if you ever do please see me because my great Aunt, Katherine Drexel, got canonized as the fourth American saint in 2000. I'm no Catholic and I don't even buy into religion that much but to pass muster to get canonized as a Saint, one does have to go through the tradtional "Devil's Advocacy" process and that includes independent research from disinterested lay medical people for some medical opinion on so-called "Miracles". With Saint Drexel there were over 5,000 reported Miracles but the necessary two that passed the independent medical test both were about hearing loss returned. Even more bizarre to me was both of the people who experienced those hearing Miracles were in Rome in 2000 and I spoke to both of them without even shouting and they both heard me loud and clear! 

One of them heard me so well she actually told me I was full of shit and that in her opinion there was no way in hell, Catholic Hell or otherwise, that Merion's #3 should be considered a redan.

[Kirk Gill]

A friend of mine and I used to play a course called Lake Valley in Boulder, Colorado (Press Maxwell) in the late afternoon, at a low price for as many holes as you could get in. We'd play until it got too dark to see, and then we'd KEEP playing. We switched to nine-irons only after dark. You'd hit your shot, and in the perfect silence wait to hear it hit the ground. You could tell by the sound which direction to walk, and if it was in the fairway or rough, or on occasion, the green. That's probably my favorite golfing sound, that hollow thunk of a ball meeting green (as long as the green isn't too soft, which creates my least favorite golfing sound, a ball shplunking into muddy ground)

Playing in the dark was a fantastic experience. Didn't lose many balls, and scored a lot closer to our regular daylight scores than one might think.

I've never heard the sound that John Kavanaugh heard, of a nice hole-in-one. Cheers to that !

[Peter Pallotta]

Ward - which reminds me that John K is above all else (just about), a golfer.

Peter

TE - just saw your story about your great aunt Katherine now. Love it! Now, are you sure you couldn't have offered up even one testimonial on her behalf? 

[TEPaul]

"TE - just saw your story about your great aunt Katherine now. Love it! Now, are you sure you couldn't have offered up even one testimonial on her behalf?    "


Peter:

I'm not sure what you mean by a testimonal on her behalf. Can you explain the question?

I could probably tell you some cool stories about the women going all the way back to the late 19th century when some KKK jokers in Texas told her if she tried to integrate one of her churches in Texas they'd guarantee her they would burn it down. From the only newspaper accounts I read I don't believe they talked to her directly or she talked to them directly but it seems like everyone got the basic message and before they got the chance to torch her integrated church somehow "Fire and Brimstone" intervened and those jokers were killed by lightening.

I'm not kidding you Peter, I will show you those newspaper accounts but I gotta admit I put about as much stock in them as I do the newspaper accounts MacWood cited to support his question followed by his seeming interpretation that perhaps H.H. Barker or Macdonald/Whigam routed and designed Merion East.

[Bob_Huntley]

Tom,

I raised the point about hearing some years ago.

Do you know any deaf golfers and does the disability affect their game?

I can hear when I sclaff one and it is quite upsetting.

Bob

[Peter Pallotta]

TE - I was just wondering if the fact that you're alive and kicking after years of dissolute and raucous living might fall under the miracle category too     

Peter

[TEPaul]

Peter:

Again, I ain't a Catholic and I'm still struggling with some of my religious interpretations but I will admit to you I got all kinds of bent outta shape in Rome during that canonization of the old impressive biddy of a great aunt of mine over the fact the Pope and his fellow travelers didn't hesitate to ask all the poor members of the 500,000 particpants in St Peter's Square that day for money and I saw the wealth of the art of the Vatican the next day which outstrips the value of art in most of the rest of the world by maybe a factor or ten.

It was a bad and dark day for me and I won't soon forget it. I brow-beat the piss out of some of my Drexel relatives for the next few days and if you think I'm unpopular and akin to a bad smell on here from time to time or for whatever reason, you should have seen the way they treated me over there at that time of my own moral inquistion upon them.

Lucky for me, on the plane ride home I managed to single out the husband of one of my Drexel relatives who's some famous actress (who's name I can't remember right now) who kindly explained to me between about Rome and about the Seychelle Island the real meaning of the "City or God".

I considered that for a few hours between the Seychelles and NYC and around final approach into JFK airport, I thanked him very much for his explanation and consideration of my questions and concerns but that I thought that both he and the entire Catholic religion was totally full of shit in this way and if they were serious on this business of helping people they should just consider contributing their wealth to the cause as Katherine Drexel asked them to in the 19th century on her particular cause and interest.

History can factually tell us the young Katherine's request of the Catholic Church back in the late 19th century was turned down and that the Pope of that time informed her that even though her Catholic Church was not particularly interested in considering her request and her cause (the plight of blacks and Indians in the 19th century in America) that they were aware that she was personally worth about 25 million dollars at that time and that she should feel free to contribute it to her particular interest.

And so she did and something over a century later she became the fourth American Saint.

I am told that some people become Saints for odd reasons and some become Saints for some of the political reasons of their sponsors and supporters while others become Saints for the reason some say is that they are "Living Saints"; in other words because of what they do during their lives it is both obvious and inevitable that they will reach Sainthood. I'm told Mother Teresa was in that category and that Katherine Drexel was too.

I'm not sure---all I know is that I took on her own religion for my own probably semi-baked reasons 45 years after she died, I questioned it, thoroughly railed against it and I can only suspect and probably never really understand why. But I do know I feel incredibly proud, now at this time (20 years ago I did not even know who she was), to be even distantly related to someone like I've both heard and think she might have been.

[Peter Pallotta]

Tom - thanks for that answer

I am a Catholic, but a pretty lousy one (and getting worse, I think). I know a little bit about the church's political machinations over the years, which were often of the very worst kind. But for what it's worth, I think the 'sainthood' idea -- at its best -- has been about creating symbols for the remarkable capacity of the human spirit to rise above time and place and circumstance and to do real and lasting good in the world. Which is to say, from what I can tell about your great Aunt, you can be very proud. 

And now I'll return to my thoughts about golf course architecture, or go to sleep, whichever comes first. 

Peter

[TEPaul]

Peter:

Sorry about my post #19---it was probably too much and probably somewhat overarching on my part. Maybe even less than five years ago I wouldn't have considered saying such things (and I guess I didn't even realize them). But now I may be at the time of a life where I'm getting maudlin or blatantly sentimenal or something and starting to look at some kind of accounting. Not that long ago I was pretty cocky and sure. I don't know how old you are, Pal, but take my advice, try not to look over your shoulder as long as you possibly can, because there will come the time when even if you don't you know damn good and well there is something there about to tap you on it. But even if it does reflection is kinda cool too! 

Damn that Morrissett/Dewar, where is Kavanaugh when he'd truly needed?   

[mike_malone]

 A player hit a wedge that struck the very top of one of those plastic tops of a pin used for laser finders; it made a terrible racket and the ball bounced some 10-15 feet in the air and landed in the back of the green. It was the craziest sound I ever heard on a golf course from a struck shot.

[Rich Goodale]

My hearing is probably about average for a 62-year old, which means it is crap.  That being said, I now and have always judged the quality of my golf shots by he feel (or, more properly, the lack thereof) throughout my arms.  I also know from a previous life that one can hear as clearly through the cheek bone as through the ears.  If and when I become completely deaf, I do not doubt that I will be able to enjoy "aural" golf.

As for John, welcome to the club.

As for Ward.  Good to see you and let me know if and when you learn anything new regarding Archie Simpson and Vincennes.  Oh yeah, Stuart and Donna say hi!

Rich

[Tom Huckaby]

I believe David Cronan gives us the best example of the effects of hearing in golf - many thanks for that, David!

I can also attest to the theory that it's tough to play while hearing-impaired, at least for those of us not used to it..  some friends and I did a little experiment in that a few years ago (wore earmuffs) and man it was comical how bad we all played.  Now why is it that that effect happens?

As for John Kavanaugh, yes, welcome to the club.  But I think he was in it already, wasn't he?

TH

[Dan Kelly]

And now I'll return to my thoughts about golf course architecture, or go to sleep, whichever comes first. 

PP --

I hope it was sleep. There are plenty of perfectly good daylight hours that a lousy, worsening Catholic can devote to golf-course architecture.

This I know for sure!

DK

[Doug Sobieski]

Do you know any deaf golfers and does the disability affect their game?

Kevin Hall is a deaf golfer at a fairly high level. He played at Ohio State (winning the Big 10 Championship) and has played several PGA Tour events, and may have even had status on the Nationwide Tour recently (I'm not quite sure). Not only is he deaf, but he is also African-American. I always pull for him at Q School because I think he could be (and is) a great role model for a lot of people.

He was given an exemption into The Memorial a few years ago. Nice kid.