The least thing upset him on the links. He missed short putts because of the uproar of butterflies in the adjoining meadows.
P.G. Wodehouse identified a problem with many golfers, good and bad. Colin Montgomerie has rabbit ears, and so does Tiger Woods. Which is really odd because Earl Woods always talked about how he taught his son to shut out all sounds. Berle is another.
Oh, you don’t know Berle. He is one of the regulars at my course. Berle is a talker. He goes non-stop. I was playing in his group one morning and we waited at the first tee box for the group ahead to play. Berle was telling us all kinds of tales as that group tried to play. Jabber, jabber, jabber. The foursome managed to tee off without too much damage.
Now, Berle loves to talk, but hates to listen. That same round, as he prepared to hit his drive on the second hole, the three of us carried on a discussion as he stepped to his ball. We then shut up. He backed away from the ball, and one of us finished a sentence. As he returned to his stance, we all got quiet. He backed away again. We continued the conversation until he again took his stance. He stood over the ball for a second or two, then backed off again.
“Look. I don’t ask much but when I’m about to hit I’d appreciate it if you guys quit talking. I’ve had to back away three times, now.” He was quite stern.
It pissed me off, but I kept up a friendly exterior. “Hell, Berle, if you’d hit the damn ball and quit worrying about us we’d be on the green by now. Nobody was talking when you got ready to hit.” He finally did, and we were all very quiet and patient the rest of the round. All of us know him, so nobody bothered to get upset when we hit and he carried on a monologue. But he didn’t say anything more about it, either.
Tiger has problems with cameras. Even when he takes a practice swing. I think it has more to do with endorsement money or photos being sold on the internet, myself.
Focus means a lot on the golf course. Maybe some can’t turn it on and off. Every sport requires it, and good athletes can ignore everything around them when they need to. On the golf course there are always sounds. But what is distracting is the sudden, unexpected noise or action seen out of the corner of your eye. I missed a putt last week because a mosquito decided lunch time began during my stroke and instinct made my body try to react and crush the little bastard just before I hit the ball. I made contact–with ball and mosquito at the same time.
Other sounds on the course are not only less distracting, but pleasureable. Karsten Soldheim named his putter “Ping” because of the sound it made when it struck the ball properly. One of my regular partners has a putter which makes the same sound. I tease him about the “ping-plop” sound he gets when he strokes the ball well. The plop is the ball falling into the hole. Any time I hear the ping, I expect to also hear a plop.
I like the sound of ball contact when I use my persimmon driver. It is the same as a baseball off a wood bat rather than aluminum. Even using a metal driver, you can hear a different sound when the ball is hit well. Iron shots no longer have the distinctive click, but that is because balls are made differently now. Again, there is a different sound when a ball is hit well, but it is no longer as noticeable.
Laughs, cheers, and groans are common sounds on a golf course, and they waft their way across yards of turf and settle around you. They are the essence of golf. They signify the good and the bad in a round. Last weekend we had them all, with long putts made, short putts missed, balls that took an odd bounce to end up in a bunker, and balls that took an odd bounce and ended up in the hole. We had a long approach shot that stopped next to the hole, then fell in before we got to the green, and we had a ball hang up in a mesquite tree. We had missed birdies and made eagles, three-putt bogies and no-putt birdies. Balls hit cart paths and water. Every one evoked a sound.
And we had the sounds of nature. Grackles and mockingbirds vie for food left in a cart, trying to drag away packs of cookies. Mosquitoes buzz. The wind rustles palm trees and the flags on the greens.
And there is friendly conversation about topics which range far and wide. I think golf is as much an aural experience as it is physical. Maybe more.
Maybe I shouldn’t be so tough on Tiger and Berle.