"An Adventure of the Spirit"

[Peter Pallotta]

Well, since Tom H opened the door to discussing the spiritual aspect of the game, I might as well come clean too. The potential access to those higher powers is one of the main reasons I play golf. I think the game and its fields of play can help open the doors to (and help us open ourselves up to) a higher power that is a balance of forces; and that the game offers the possibility of bringing us into that balance. If I could personify golf, I'd say that It strives to bring us into balance, i.e. when we get too much into ying, it yanks us back into yang, and vice versa.  And the fields of play that are least cluttered and least prescribed best help the game bring us into that balance. I think that when we react strongly to a golf course, it's probably because it's pulling us in a direction that we don't want to go (for whatever reasons) or in a direction that we very much wish to go (for whatever reasons). I also think Par plays an important role in all of this.

Peter

[Richard Boult]

I'm with Tom and Peter regarding the spiritual side of the gaeme... Some more poems to get you in the 'spirit':

During one of the "Wandering Golfer" episodes, Gia interviewed one of Barnbougle Dunes first caddies, who shared a poem he'd written about the place.

As the sun sets slowly over the dune,
The company's good and my swing is in tune.

All around me is beauty like I've never seen,
It's on every tee bed and each fairway and green.

The lovely sea birds and wildlife abounds,
While the waves on the seashore make a mystical sound.

Am I in heaven? Are they Angel's tunes?
No, It's just the wind through the marram at Barnbougle Dunes.



And here's a poem by Paul Bertholy, a golf instructor and good friend of Moe Norman.

"Golf is happiness for
   Happiness is achievement.
The father of achievement is motivation
   The mother is encouragement.
The fine golf swing is truly achievement
   Man may lie, cheat, and steal for gain.
But, these will never gain the golf swing
   To gain the golf swing man must work.
Yet it is work without toil
   It is exercise without the boredom.
It is intoxication without the hangover
   It is stimulation without the pills.
It is failure yet its successes shine even more brightly
   It is frustration yet it nourishes patience.
It irritates yet its soothing is far greater
   It is futility yet it nurtures hope.
It is defeating yet it generates courage
   It is humbling yet it ennobles the human spirit.
It is dignity yet it rejects arrogance
   Its price is high yet its rewards are richer
Some say it's a boy's pastime yet it builds men
   It is a buffer for the stresses of today's living.
It cleanses the mind and rejuvenates the body
   It is these things and many more.
For those of us who know it and love it
   Golf is truly happiness."

[Tom Huckaby]

Guys, that is great, great stuff.  Many thanks.  Methinks we have some kindred spirits in this whole sprituality thing.

Not to overuse that word....

 

[Anthony Gray]

  I have always maintained that golf does hold a sacredness over other sports and thus appeals to the spirit.

  Anthony

[jkinney]

Tom,
Adventure of the Spirit was exactly my original point about NGLA being "alive," like a living, breathing entity.

Its a great term. One that all beginners should be fortunate to learn what is driving them to take to the Sport. "The "Bug" so-to-speak...

It is the lucky golfer indeed, who gifted with spiritual/sensory attunement, can find golfing ground that is "alive...like a living, breathing entity." NGLA is that place for me too, Tom.

 Doak said in his CONFIDENTIAL GUIDE, ".....for me no place can match the overpowering golf atmosphere that hits you when you pass through the gate at The National". But for me it's much more than that. I'm convinced there's an invisible shroud over and around the ground that repels all bad karma. I start to sense it driving down Sebonac Inlet Rd. as it turns the corner and opens up onto the Cape hole, and I know it for sure when my car passes through the Macdonald gate. Every time, without fail. And each year the feeling gets stronger.

I really do hope that all CGA members have a golfing ground where something like this happens to them.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Adventure of the Spirit was exactly my original point about NGLA being "alive," like a living, breathing entity.
Its a great term. One that all beginners should be fortunate to learn what is driving them to take to the Sport. "The "Bug" so-to-speak...-Tommy N

I enjoy watching youngsters play golf while they still know how to play, and before they realize that so much of what makes golf a potentially adventurous undertaking, has been built right out of it.

[Rich Goodale]

Using such generic words as "adventure of the spirit" is useful if and only if it is understood that the "spirit" of any human being has incredible complexity and uniqueness and also varies over both time and space, and that we all have different ideas as to what constitues an "adventure."

In a tautological sense, every golfing experience--from standing on the 11th tee at the Old Course as the sun breaks through the clouds to the 18" third putt at Podunk Muni which hits a spike mark and spins out--is an adventure of the spirit.  Also, for most of us on this site (loveable wingnuts that we are) the adventures are usually very rich and the spirit usually willing to appreciate this richness.  But his is hardly unique to golf.  I find trying to imbue in my children the concept of "responsibility" to be an amazingly challenging and occasionally euphoric adventure.  My spirit is as stimulated by walking through an unfamiliar gallery and seeing a painting that says something to me as it is when laughing with a fellow golfer over a beer or three in even the most basic of clubhouses.

Somehow, I think this discussion could be made richer by focusing on those very special moments when golf has seemed to be almost something bigger than life itself, or even a microcosm of life--what Joyce and others have called an epiphany.  That's the easy part.  The hard part is in trying to articulate how and why.  Here's an attempt:

Watching my opponent search for and then find the fall-line on a treacherous downhill sidehill putt on the18th and then him stroking his ball so that it stopped exactly there and then trickled down into the hole for a 3.  Him then telling me what a "fall-line" was and then my finding mine, on a similar putt and having it also trickle into the hole.  Forging a friendship soon afterwards in the grill room.  Never forgetting that moment.

Rich

[Tom_Doak]

I am not going to attempt poetry ... but I will throw in one of my favorite quotes, from George Thomas:

"No matter how skilfully one may lay out the holes and diversify them, nevertheless one must get the thrill of nature.  ... The puny strivings of the architect do not quench our thirst for the ultimate."

Most great golf architecture is sort of primal.  You've got to hit your ball over that bunker (or sand dune!), make it stay up on that plateau, and ultimately you've got to hole out.  I think Yannick is on the right track.

[TEPaul]

TomD:

You just said you think Yannick is on the right track, so I reread his post. He talks a lot about emotion so that's what you must mean when you say he's on the right track.

I think you're right---eg emotion.

Frankly, in that so-called Crane/Behr debate the value of emotion is basically what Behr took Crane to task for ultimately---eg that Crane strove to reduce the game to scientific analysis through appliction of mathematical formulae. When Crane actually admitted in print that he was really disappointed to see TOC, a course he liked so much, come in so low in his scientific/mathematical rankings, Behr shot back at him with---"Does this man not know or trust his own mind?"

When I think back right now on perhaps some of the most emotional golf I've ever played or think of a time when my emotions were working overtime on a course more than any other time, I go back to that week in 1999 when I played the little Mallow course in Mallow, Ireland every day at daybreak.

But since the course wasn't really any great shakes architecturally, I wonder what was it then about that time and that place that provoked my emotions more than ever before? The course had a ton of slope to it as it was along the side of a gentle mountain but I realize now the thing that completely created the emotion for me was how fast it was through the green. I'd never seen anything like that, not even close, and it was totally transfixing to me. I remember going back for about seven straight days and saying to myself---if I hit it over there where in the world will the ball finally stop? Totally transfixing.

So to me right now that's what does it for me---to watch the ball scoot along the ground this way and that way. And I mean really run, maybe up to 100 yards or more in some spots. I think I now realize that all the golf I've played, all the shots I've hit over the years were basically all in the air. It's a beautiful thing to hit a beautiful aerial shot but how different is it really whether you're in America, Ireland or wherever---ie it pretty much flies through the air basically the same way no matter where you are!

But the GROUND, and that ball scooting here and there along the ground even at the end of a nice aerial shot-----THAT, I think is where my emotions really start to check in! Maybe for me THAT is the true connection between GOLF and NATURE! And, at least for me, that's very emotion provoking!

THAT is my best Adventure of the Spirit---little super dry, super fast Mallow! I never experienced anything like that before or since.

[Bradley Anderson]

So to me right now that's what does it for me---to watch the ball scoot along the ground this way and that way. And I mean really run, maybe up to 100 yards or more in some spots. I think I now realize that all the golf I've played, all the shots I've hit over the years were basically all in the air. It's a beautiful thing to hit a beautiful aerial shot but how different is it really whether you're in America, Ireland or wherever---ie it pretty much flies through the air basically the same way no matter where you are!

But the GROUND, and that ball scooting here and there along the ground even at the end of a nice aerial shot-----THAT, I think is where my emotions really start to check in! Maybe for me THAT is the true connection between GOLF and NATURE! And, at least for me, that's very emotion provoking!

THAT is my best Adventure of the Spirit---little super dry, super fast Mallow! I never experienced anything like that before or since.

The most obvious, but easiest thing to overlook about the game is that it is played with a ball, and that a ball does more than fly - it bounces and rolls. Mine even does some splashing. 

[Jim_Kennedy]

Over on the "Butterfield & Sand Hollow" thread there are a few photos of the courses at Sand Hollow.
Looks like a great spot for an A of the S. 

[Mac Plumart]

Bump...

I miss Tom Paul.  I love the way he thinks about the game.  This thread is a pretty darn good example of that.

[Colin Macqueen]

Gentlemen,

Now this is a thread that appeals to my sense of the romantic as well as the religious...golf is a religion no?!
Reply #19 by Kirk Gill and #25 by Peter Pallotta are gems. I so agree with what they say. I know it intellectually but still have not mastered the art and still "strive(s) to bring myself (us) into balance" when I play. I've bought the game "with my heart and soul" and do find the "simple hitting of a ball with a stick ... a thrill-ride of its own" but far more often than not I become downcast at my own ability, not in an angry sense but a somewhat forlorn one! A tragic golfing tragic is me.
But it is an "Adventure of the Spirit" for me as, on an adventure, you should see and recognise new things and come to terms with them. I see my character being mirrored and I have to reflect on the wee failures on the course just as in life and deal with them accordingly! And I don't always succeed. What a rambling response this was! Not a patch on the musings in this original thread or on any of the ones below.

A few that I have enjoyed recently are these if anyone is interested. The original disciples of this forum may know of them but I am not so sure that recent members will.

Darwinism - I (The Course Your Soul Loves Best)  http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,1814.35.html

The purpose of GCA is...Behr
http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,1726.0.html

Books by Max Behr??
http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,1739.0.html

Max Behr Golf Architect
http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,1285.0.html

Writer's Block - Behr philosophy
http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,1392.70.html

Cheers Colin

[Michael Goldstein]

Awesome, thanks Mac.

[Kris Shreiner]

Mac and friends,

Thanks for bringing this thread up again. Note the quality of both Tom P. and Tom D's insights. That quality is what makes this site, when it is on top form, without peer!

Cheers,
Kris

[JNC Lyon]

Need some time to do a full reading, but Tommy Naccarato, Rich Goodale, and Tom Paul?  This is a THREAD!

[archie_struthers]

 

Wow Paul Bertholy, thats a blast from the past!


The advent of cart golf certainly took some of the charm from playing. It's just not the same experience. Walking down the slope on five at Portrush to the fairway was almost a religious experience.

Sir Richard Branson is  a modern day version of what was described earlier. 

Surfers here at the Jersey shore certainly understand what we golfers do, maybe more so !

[Kirk Gill]

Liked seeing Tom's name up there on this thread.

Liked reading his topic, and the responses.

Liked my own response (especially "nattering nabobs of negativity." I had to google that and found that it was something that Spiro Agnew said in a speech that William Safire wrote. Where the HELL did I pull that from?)

It might be pure "beard pulling," but I sure enjoy this kinda stuff.

[Mac Plumart]

Kirk...

Nothing wrong with beard pulling in my book.  Figuring out why you feel someway or what makes you feel a certain way could be the key to finding golf courses you love and, therefore, the key to enjoying yourself.

For me epic moments on a golf course have been had at:

8 at Ballyneal;
15 at Dismal River;
7 at Sand Hills;
13 at Pac Dunes;
16 at Bandon Dunes;
14 at North Berwick;
16 at Askernish.

See any correlation?  I do!!  Can't wait to play these again and/or find others like it.  St. Enodoc looks right up my alley!!!

[Peter Pallotta]

The theologian Paul Tillich wrote once that the question isn't whether we're still part of the old creation -- we all are; the question is whether or not we also participate in the new creation, at the level of "being" participating in "the ground of all being".  It's the same with golf courses and gca I guess (on a less important scale, to say the least). The question isn't so much whether any given golf course is a decent field of play -- most are, and a select few are much more than that; the question is whether they also transcend the form, whether they can engender in the golfer a sense of freedom and transcendence.  

Kik - ha, ha; yeah, I was wondering where/how you dug up that one!

Peter

[JNC Lyon]

Kirk...

Nothing wrong with beard pulling in my book.  Figuring out why you feel someway or what makes you feel a certain way could be the key to finding golf courses you love and, therefore, the key to enjoying yourself.

For me epic moments on a golf course have been had at:

8 at Ballyneal;
15 at Dismal River;
7 at Sand Hills;
13 at Pac Dunes;
16 at Bandon Dunes;
14 at North Berwick;
16 at Askernish.

See any correlation?  I do!!  Can't wait to play these again and/or find others like it.  St. Enodoc looks right up my alley!!!

Mac's list includes three of my favorite holes anywhere.  14 at North Berwick is the definition of "adventure" for me: a short par four with a blind second shot to a green hard by the Firth of Forth, across the way from the island upon which "Treasure Island" is based.  Not only that, but North Berwick's 14th is my favorite hole on my favorite links course in Scotland, which I got to play with my Dad.  There probably isn't one single hole that has more meaning to me.

8 at Ballyneal: well that's one of my favorite holes on my favorite golf course.  A tremendous uphill par five, twisting between hauntingly beautiful bunkers to an undulating green that is just my kind of crazy.  Favorite memory?  Making eagle during an emergency twilight nine with a couple of GCA pals.  I fired a 37 without ever using a sand wedge.  I don't know if I've ever had more fun playing golf.

And of course, Dismal's 15th.  I made quite a few memories there this past summer, and I know I'll make many more during the future.  The drive down the Tucker Ranch Road alone is worth the trip.  So many great features out there, but that massive sand blowout at the 15th is truly unique, a marvel.  And I could sit on that tee all day trying to get the draw just right.

Of course, I can't confine "adventure of the spirit" to the world's most renowned courses.  Even Tom Paul frequently waxed poetic about the virtues of Fernandina Beach municipal (architect: Tommy Birdsongs, if I remember correctly).  A lot of the fun in the game is trying to find the truly hidden gems that you think are great, even if few else do.  I'm think places like Byrncliff or Terry Hills in Upstate New York, which have a lot to offer for the truly adventuresome.  Or how about a twilight round at Galen Hall, or a last-minute trip a little-known Ross course called Tumblebrook (it had some wicked greens), or a Flynn nine-holer in Monroe, New York that is a blast to play because it still hasn't installed a sprinkler system.  For me, the world's finest courses, as well as the world's simplest courses, offer that spirit that we are searching for.  If you read my post closely though, you'll see that the quality of the golf course is not the only element necessary for capturing that spirit.

[Mac Plumart]

Sorry that I can't let this thread die...but this gets to the heart of what excites me about playing golf.  This adventure of the spirit concept.  I'll play golf anywhere and everywhere.  I love it.  But when you can play golf on a course that ignites the adventure of the spirit, it is magical.

I don't think I can put what I am thinking into words perfectly, but maybe a view images can help.  These are golf and non-golf images that I hope highlight that feeling I am looking for.

[Peter Pallotta]

Thanks Mac. That 6th picture/place does the trick for me. Don't know where or what it is.

Peter

[Colin Macqueen]

Mac,

Extreme Sports meets Extreme Golf and becomes an Adventure of the Spirit that's Mac Plumart for sure! That wasn't quite the way I envisioned this thread but vive la difference!

That last picture with yellow gorse is Balcomie, Crail n'est ce pas? Less than 80 kilometres from where I lived in Scotland. Now that was an adventure and the weather on the first two holes extreme.
The accompanying photo of the racing yacht looks as though it was from the Gold Coast and that is less than 80 kilometres from where I now live 45 years later.

Haunting indeed. Yer getting spooky Mac, yer getting spooky!

Cheers Colin

[Mac Plumart]

Peter...the 6th picture is the 13th hole at Pac Dunes.  It is truly an amazing golf hole...tee through the green.

Colin...indeed Crail Balcomie.  That round with you was one of my all-time favorites.  Side ways stinging rain for two holes in wind that was howling like mad.  Then sunny and wonderful, but still windy.  Welcome to Scotland.  Right?