Reflections on the Game Read online

  Contents

  Reflections on the Game

  Credits

  Reflections on the Game

  In 1975, I was fortunate to be honored as golf’s “Man of the Silver Era” by a group of writers I’d known and respected for much of my career. It was an emotional moment. And when it came time for me to accept the award, I spoke from the heart.

  “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what the game has done for me,” I said that night. “I look at the people I’ve met and the associations I’ve made through golf. I met my wife, Winnie, through golf. I can’t give enough to golf. If I had more, I’d give more. Everything I have, I owe to golf. When you honor me, that’s a falsehood. You’re honoring golf.”

  Many years have passed since that moment, but my thoughts haven’t changed. In fact, if anything, I feel more strongly today than ever before about the very special nature of the game. Every now and then, I like to share my thoughts about golf with people who care. So this seems like a good time to talk about the game I love; a game that is timeless, changeless, and ever changing.

  The most obvious change in golf over recent decades has been its exploding popularity. In 1950, 3.2 million Americans played the game. Now the total is 25 million, and women are just as enthusiastic as men about the sport. In 1950, there were fewer than five thousand golf courses in the United States. Now the total is thirteen thousand. In 1950, it was said that only rich people played golf, and country club courses outnumbered municipal greens by two-to-one. Now the United States has two thousand more public golf courses than private ones.

  Why has golf been so successful? In my opinion, it’s because the game has held on to the traditions that made it great. There’s a continuity in golf that one is hard-pressed to find elsewhere in modern America. Look at the ways that golf has remained unchanged.

  The natural beauty of golf courses is a good place to start. Being able to play in a beautiful setting is part of the essence of golf. When I’m on a course, I might be in the middle of one of the largest cities in the world with a six-lane superhighway nearby, but I have no sense of that. Instead, I’m in lovely surroundings, and that natural beauty is important to me. Years ago, golf courses were beautiful because they were built in stunning locations like Augusta and Pebble Beach. Now spectacular natural settings are hard to find, but course designers work wonders with the resources at their command.

  I helped design a course in Florida, where the first time I walked the site, twelve of eighteen holes were underwater. Now it’s the heart of a thriving residential community, and I think that’s pretty neat. The Palmer Course Design Company planned another course on solid rock on the side of Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado, where the difference in elevation between the high and low holes is four hundred feet. In Taiwan, we moved fifteen million cubic yards of earth, built a lake, and raised a valley floor three hundred feet to create thirty-six holes. In each instance, the result was a course that challenged golfers without any sacrifice in natural beauty. That’s the standard I set for the courses I design for my clients.

  And when it comes to my own holdings, I practice what I preach. If you look at the Latrobe Country Club, you’ll see that, since I bought it in 1971, we’ve landscaped it, and not just with flowers. We put in a full irrigation system so the course would be green everywhere; not just where the old sprinklers reached. In the 1920s and 30s, my father planted most of the trees that are on the course today. Unless a tree is completely dead, no one is going to cut it down on me. There’s a creek that runs through the course; and during the past few years, strip-mine drainage and pollution from a limestone quarry have tainted the water. It’s still usable for irrigation purposes, but it has an ugly look and I complained to the authorities about it. They’re working on it, and I expect that creek will be clean again soon.

  In short, over the years, the beauty of golf courses has remained unchanged. Domed stadiums have turned football from a game that was profoundly influenced by nature into one where it can be zero degrees outside and the weather doesn’t matter. Baseball has adopted artificial turf, which alters the way the game is played. Boxing paints beer-company logos on its ring canvases. But golf’s playing fields are still unspoiled and clean.

  The fundamentals of the sport have also remained unchanged. Baseball was once considered the traditional American game. But the people who ran our “national pastime” felt the need to jazz up their product. So baseball introduced designated hitters and a new strike zone. One year it told umpires to enforce the balk rule, and a year later it told them to forget about enforcement except when extreme violations occurred. Basketball introduced three-point shots. Tennis now has tie-breaker scoring. Specialization and platooning changed the way football is played.

  My view is, “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.” And golf isn’t broken. I like tradition. I’d hate to see golf do what other sports have done. I don’t want the game to change. In fact, I’ll go further and say that one very important reason for golf’s success over the years is that the basic game hasn’t changed.

  The only changes golf should encourage are those necessary to preserve the basic game. Let me explain. Golfers today are stronger than they were decades ago because conditioning techniques are more advanced. Serious golfers practice more than they did when I was young. There have been enormous advances in the technology of the game because manufacturers now understand the physics of club design and what happens when club meets ball. They’re able to redistribute weight with different metals and compounds so that clubs maintain their structural integrity and balance and, at the same time, have a larger “sweet spot” than before. In other words, a golfer today can mishit a ball by a fraction of an inch, and it will stay on the fairway and go almost as far as if it had been hit perfectly. Thirty years ago, the same shot might have been short and in the rough.

  Also, many of today’s golf instructors have gotten so proficient and understand the physics of the game so well that they’re able to teach every golfer the fundamentals of a classic swing.

  When I was young, if a player shot seventy, it was, “Hey, leave him alone.” But most players on the tour today work to make their swings technically perfect because their instructors know how it’s done.

  The benefits of a classic swing can be overrated. I never had one. If I had, would my game have been better? Who knows. Sam Snead and Gene Littler had classic swings. But I can remember, when Jack Nicklaus turned pro, some experts said he’d never make it because his elbow moved away from his body on his backswing. And Jack has done reasonably well over the years with his “flying elbow.”

  Still, more golfers today than in the past have something close to a classic swing. Pick up a newspaper and you might read that Nick Faldo is going down to see his instructor. Now it’s obvious that, after winning two Masters and three British Open championships, Nick Faldo knows how to play golf. But despite his success, he spends several weeks a year with a teacher, working on every nuance of his swing. Where is his thumb positioned on the club? Is he taking his club back too fast? Is the club over an inch too much this way or that?

  Yet even though golfers today receive more technical instruction than in the past, par is still par. They play with equipment far superior to what was used decades ago, but improved clubs and balls are still only props for the game. And that’s part of the appeal of golf. To counteract advances in technology and instruction, the game has changed to the extent necessary to minimize change. Because so many strong young golfers are hitting the ball farther now than before, old courses have been lengthened where possible and new ones are built longer. In response to innovative clubs that allow more accurate shots, fairways have been narrowed. T
oday’s balls are aerodynamically superior to the ones I used as a boy; but the USGA is constantly on guard to see that manufacturers don’t cross over the fine line that protects the integrity of the game and safeguards the challenge of par. And believe me, that’s not an easy task.

  The mental demands of the sport have also remained unchanged. No matter what anyone does to the clubs, no matter how courses are designed, the need to control your emotions on a golf course is constant. Golf demands total concentration. I can go out and play four brilliant holes, score four birdies in a row. And on the fifth hole, the very same Arnold Palmer using the very same clubs will take a double-bogey. Why? Because I lost my concentration.

  Also, more than any other sport, golf requires maturity and judgment. Boris Becker won the most coveted title in tennis, the men’s Wimbledon crown, when he was seventeen years old. Tracy Austin was the U.S. Open women’s champion at age eighteen. Magic Johnson led the Los Angeles Lakers to the NBA championship three years after he graduated from high school. Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali each held boxing’s undisputed heavyweight championship at age twenty-two. Many Olympic gold-medal winners are in their teens.

  All of these young men and women are remarkably gifted athletes. But golf has always required far more than physical prowess. There are very few twenty-year-old PGA Tour champions. A young golfer might be stronger and capable of hitting the ball farther than an old one. But in golf, the six inches between the ears is the distance that matters most. And the ability to cope with pressure is more important in golf that in any other sport. You can’t swing freely if your muscles are tense. You can’t putt if your muscles are tense. Yet when a golfer is under pressure, the tension is there. That never changes.

  The passion of golfers for the game has also been constant. Golfers go through stages. When they start, their first goal might be to break one hundred. They’ll work like a dog to get there. Then they do it; it’s a tremendous achievement. And the next thing you hear is, “I want to break ninety.” That might take years. They take lessons; they practice. And the day they break ninety, it’s as though they’ve reached Heaven. After that, it’s eighty. And they have to work very hard to break eighty. A golfer might get to eighty-two or eighty-three, and grow fearful that his tombstone will read, “He couldn’t break eighty.”

  But whether a golfer is playing poorly or well; whether he’s shooting ninety-nine or seventy; if he takes the game seriously, the challenge is always there. A golfer can’t dictate what his opponents shoot. He can’t wave his arms or tackle a playing partner who’s getting ready to putt. But he can always reach within himself to bring out the best in his battle against the laws of physics and par.

  I’ve heard it said that golfers on the pro tour today don’t excite galleries the way we did thirty years ago. I guess one reason for that is, there are so many good golfers out there now that no one player can win enough tournaments to become dominant. In my younger days, there were a handful of top contenders. People could pick a favorite, and, as often as not, one of us would win. That meant we were able to attract the attention necessary for fans to get to know us and build a following.

  Let’s take the Masters as an example. Over the past seven years, the Masters has been won by Larry Mize, Sandy Lyle, Nick Faldo twice, Ian Woosnam, Fred Couples, and Bernhard Langer. Now compare that to the first seven years of the 1960’s when Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, and I won seven out of seven Masters titles.

  I personally think that someone will come along in the next decade and start winning tournaments in bunches the way a few of us did thirty years ago. That’s the nature of competitive sports. Every now and then, an athlete who’s simply better than the rest arrives on the scene. Take basketball as an example. Wilt Chamberlain led the NBA in scoring for seven years in a row, and during his career scored eight thousand more points than anyone who played before him. A lot of people thought those records would never be broken. But then Kareem Abdul-Jabbar scored seven thousand more points than Wilt. And in an era when the level of competition in the NBA is higher than ever, Michael Jordan has won seven consecutive scoring titles.

  But getting back to golf, my view is that winning and stirring passions have a lot to do with attitude. And that’s one area where golf—at least golf on the pro tour—has changed. In 1954, the year I turned pro, the total prize money on the PGA Tour for the entire year was $600,819. I had to win to make a good living. Now, fast-forward to 1992. In a single year, Fred Couples won $1,344,188. Twenty-two golfers had more than $600,000 in official tour earnings. In fact, one player won $609,273 in 1992 without winning a single tournament.

  I’ve said many times that I’d rather win one tournament in my entire life than make the cut every week. I still feel that way. I haven’t won in a while, but I’m still trying. And believe me; I’m still out there to win; not just to make a “good” showing. But sometimes I think, with all the money at stake, there are guys on the tour today who play it safe rather than go for the win. They’re content to finish eighth or ninth, pick up their paycheck, and move on to the next tournament. These are very skilled golfers; and most of them are very nice men. But the money has taken away their hunger, and they aren’t following the road that leads to becoming a hero.

  So golf to me is the physical act of playing; it’s the mental challenge of playing. But more important than any of the things I’ve talked about so far, it’s the moral code of the game. That moral code embodies the spirit of golf. It’s at the heart of our tradition. It hasn’t changed over the years. And it’s what separates golf from all other sports.

  Golfers are on the honor system. We play by the rules, and we enforce them against ourselves. That’s the essence of our sport, and every serious golfer knows it.

  Overall, the moral standards of society have declined in recent years, but the morality of golf hasn’t changed. Some people say that’s because golf attracts people of high integrity to begin with. And maybe it does. But I think it’s more a case of the game and the people who play it demanding integrity from all who participate. We won’t tolerate anything less. The game generates a respect, and those of us who play it take pride in enforcing the rules ourselves.

  I can’t imagine a major league baseball player telling the umpire, “You missed the call; he tagged me; I was out.” Or an NFL running back saying, “There’s no touchdown; I stepped out of bounds.” But golfers at every level of the game do that all the time. We even monitor our own equipment and call penalties on ourselves if we discover an extra club in our golf bag.

  I remember one incident when Jay Hebert was in the woods. No one else but his caddy was with him. Jay came out and said, “Add a stroke; my ball moved.” Jay’s caddy hadn’t seen the ball move. But Jay had, and that was the end of it. Even though thousands of dollars were involved, the integrity of the game was paramount in Jay’s mind.

  As a golfer, I like the fact that I’m playing with people who feel the same way about the rules as I do. All true golfers pride themselves on their integrity. That’s the essence of golf.

  The etiquette of golf, with its emphasis on good manners, has also remained unchanged. Like golf, tennis was once considered a “gentleman’s” sport with roots in the upper class. Like golf, tennis has spread to the masses. But players in today’s showcase tennis tournaments often throw their rackets, berate linesmen, and make obscene gestures to fans. And all that happens is, the umpire says, “Keep playing.” Basketball players trash-talk. Hockey players fight with regularity. Other sports condone this type of behavior because they think it broadens their fan base. And sure, maybe if Greg Norman and Curtis Strange got into a fistfight on the final hole of the U.S. Open, more people would turn on the television the next time they were paired together. But it wouldn’t be golf. And I have to feel that the public appreciates the etiquette of golf, because spectators who pay thirty dollars to attend a tournament understand that their ticket doesn’t give them the right to boo and jeer. And although people look at other profession
al athletes and say they’ve become spoiled and make too much money, I rarely hear that complaint about professional golfers.

  I get upset when someone doesn’t behave properly on a golf course. And that’s true whether the offender is a touring pro at a major tournament or a fourteen-year-old playing on a municipal course. Respect for the codes of conduct of the game goes to the heart of golf. In that regard, there’s no doubt in my mind that the USGA has been a special blessing. From time to time, someone suggests that the touring pros should make their own rules or do this or do that separate from the USGA. But I think that would be a disaster. The presence and authority of the USGA reinforces adherence to the rules and etiquette of golf at all levels of the game.

  Indeed, part of the very special nature of golf is that total strangers of vastly different ability and background can meet on a golf course and play competitively thanks to the rules of play, equipment standards, and handicapping procedures established by the USGA. I can go to a golf course in a city I’ve never been to before, meet a corporate executive from New York or a truckdriver from Dallas, and we can enjoy the competitive camaraderie of a round of golf. I can’t go out and play basketball competitively with Shaquille O’Neal or football with Joe Montana or tennis with Jim Courier. And if I were thirty years old again, I still couldn’t. There’s no way to level those playing fields. But anyone can play golf with me. And in the end, that’s the true magic of the game—what it means to the everyday golfer.

  Golf is fun, and it brings out the best in people. When you take a golf club and swing it perfectly and your hands finish high where they’re supposed to be, your body has completed a wonderful harmonic motion and there’s a tremendous sense of physical achievement. You don’t have to see the ball to know you’ve hit a good shot. When you play by the rules, defy mental demons, overcome every challenge, and enjoy a walk in the country at the same time—that’s being alive.