Antidote for the Narcissism of the Times: Lorne Rubenstein’s Touring Prose

Although I harbour no especial malice towards the big, bad book chain, and out of necessity sometimes frequent the outlet nearest to my house, like many, there is something about a second hand bookstore that speaks to me, that reinvigorates my spirit even upon the wintriest days of my discontent. The cramped building, the wooden tray of 2-for-$5 books on the sidewalk, the musty odor, the badly footstep-worn and eternally salt-stained carpet, the thin film of dust that tickles your nostrils and sticks to your fingers as you venture down the less frequented aisles, the cracked spines, the dim basement where the truly obscure volumes waste away in their never to be reread faiths, the miscellaneous titles that make you wonder why anyone would dedicate years of their life to such a subject, and the cranky clerk who stares quizzically above his perched spectacles at the customers from behind the paper-laden counter upon which even more books are piled. You know the type of place I’m describing. 

As with our golf scene, on the whole, Ottawa’s roster of used book stores is nothing about which to write home; however, the Book Bazaar, located on Bank Street a few doors down from Sabito’s, the city’s best sandwich shop, stands toe to toe with any other one of its size in the country. Eclectic, varied, overstuffed, and replete with a wonderful selection of Canadiana and critical studies, in particular, it is very much a happy place of mine. In fact, the only feeling that compares to the one that I get upon walking through its front door, fully ready and willing to leave behind an hour’s wage, at least, is that of walking to an empty first tee, afternoon sun resting mellow in the sky, with nothing more important than the chase of a little white ball to occupy my worries until the dying of the light. 

With an eye towards a longer project, a few days ago I descended into the basement of the Book Bazaar to see if they had any of Lorne’s books. Upon passing by their surprisingly big section dedicated to volumes about fishing (I, for one, never knew that fishing had such a rich literature), I spotted Touring Prose: Writings on Golf by Lorne Rubenstein (Random House, 1992) and bought it.

Touring Prose is a collection of Lorne’s earlier writings, which are primarily taken from his time writing for The Globe and Mail, for whom he penned a regular column for a few decades, as well as from other monthlies, including Golf Magazine, SCOREGolf, and Golf Monthly. The collection’s joys are relentless; and Lorne’s insights are astute, compassionate, and ahead of their time. For example, he highlighted the lack of minority members belonging to Canadian golf clubs in the mid-1980s, and decried that architects weren’t building tees suitable for women at this time, too. 

Being primarily interested in golf courses, I, of course, immediately sought out the first and second sections, in which some of his profiles of notable architects—both old and new—and “travel writings” are collected. Ranging from Stanley Thompson, to Thomas McBroom, to RTJ Sr, to the National Golf Club of Canada, to Prestwick, to a golf course in Côte d’Ivoire, the range is vast, the descriptions are lively, and the observations are prognostic. In effect, his commentary could be written today, and they would still apply seamlessly. Lorne favours fun, invigorating golf, believes that the best architecture harkens back to the Caledonian origins of the game, and champions the need for shorter, less fussy, less expensive, and less time-consuming golf courses, especially near urban centres like Toronto, where he was born and learned the game. Sound familiar? 

What enchants me most about Lorne’s golf course focused writings, however, is the manner in which he relates what makes the places that he is lucky enough to visit so special, so meaningful to him. Moreover, his gratefulness to be able to experience such cathedrals of the game shines through. After all, beyond being merely literal playing fields for this most riveting and ever-changing of games, golf courses are vehicles to something deeper, which accounts for why there is such a varied, lasting, and passionate scholarship about them. For some, they are vehicles towards a deeper appreciation of history, of the background of its architect and the period in which they worked. For others, they are vehicles towards grasping the social, economical, and technological factors that manifested themselves in their designs. Some view them primarily as vehicles towards friendship between playing partners, or as vehicles towards competition, both against themselves and against others. It can be a whole host of things, and a mix of many, too. 

In other words, we become attached and emotionally invested to golf’s playing fields in a way that, say, footballers rarely, if ever, do to the pitch, or baseball players to the diamond. For Lorne, who has an M.A. in Psychology, golf courses affect him on a spiritual level, first and foremost, eliciting those simple and elemental, yet forceful and necessary feelings that are the fleeting rewards in the long string of menial days filled with humble toil that form adult life. Those brief instances that may seem mundane and unimportant to others, but are special in their own, often inexplicable ways to us, and only to us. And it’s difficult, in turn, not to smile along when he writes about them.

He relates the wondrous joy that he gets when he drives in the National and sees the 12th glistening in its morning-robe of undisturbed, unbothered dew. “My pulse quickens,” he states, “I come alive to the day.” Chronicling the day that he spent at the then newly opened Loxahatchee Club, in Florida, he recalls “when the sun was quite low, the contours took on many shades of green that can make a course such a delight to see, never mind to play.” And he notes that Prestwick’s blind holes “offer a timeless pleasure lost in North America.” 

Golf lives in his blood, and he has an affinity for those in whom it does, too. Moe Norman, George Knudson, Pete and Alice Dye, Seve, Stanley Thompson, Gil Blechman who lost a fortune so that the National could remain faithful to his vision, and Mark Graves who rescued Donald Ross’ Sagamore from its deathbed, are merely a few of the golf-smitten crew of men and women whom he writes about with charming affinity in this collection. They dearly love the game as forcefully as he does, and are attached to it much as he is: mystically, spiritually, in a way that is often difficult to pinpoint using the English language. Eighteen holes of golf is, after all, “our journey”, as Lorne reminds us, quoting Michael Murphy’s Golf in the Kingdom.

It is also refreshing to read the manner in which Lorne relates those simple pleasures that the game affords him. If, as Martin Amis claimed, style is personality, then Lorne’s is there, fully fleshed, in his prose: clear, concise, intuitive, never frivolous, although still affecting and spiritual. Writing about the hidden side of Nick Faldo, Lorne elicits the phrase that “still waters run deep,” and that is likely the most apt description of his writing style. 

Standing for the first time on the 16th tee at Cypress Point, unable to quell whatever it is that overcomes you as you take in the crashing surf and the rolling cliff at the end of which the mist-enveloped green is perched, by nature, some —including myself—are prone to chat, to immediately verbalize what we are seeing, hearing, and feeling; while others are more apt to step away from the group, turn around, gaze at the endless blue stretching until the horizon, and take a moment to let it all wash over them, quietly, solitarily. And I assume that Lorne is of this latter disposition. I assume this, because we’ve never played together, nor even met.

To be reminded of the simple pleasures of the game, the camaraderie that it builds between its players and stewards, is, of course, highly important at this moment in time, as we hopelessly watch the male professional golf world splinter because of ego, decade-old gripes, and blood money. Yet Lorne’s approach, his simple, humble style in which he is present but never puts his own importance at the forefront of the scene that he is relating to his audience, is also a prescient antidote to the wave of social-media fueled narcissism sweeping across “golf course writing” or golf-course-related “content creators”. Reading a handful of Lorne’s books, extolling the quiet, humane and spiritual virtues of the game, would serve well those who spend the entirety of their round at Cabot, or at Sweetens Cove, or at Tree Farm, with their phone in their hand, making sure that the 3 stripes on their fleeces are visible in every one of their thousand selfies and two hundred swing videos.