The Lure of the Links Is as Strong as Ever : Golf, Despite Its Faults, Remains a Sport With an Appeal to Millions

We must gie it up, Alfred.

What, gie up gowff?

Nae, nae, mon. Gie up the meenistry.

--Punch, 1904

California golfers are blessed. Their season never ends. In the dead of winter, their fairways and greens are free of snow, their water hazards unfrozen. In much of the East and Midwest this morning, you can ski on fairways and skate on water hazards.

Golf is not a winter sport in much of the country, so the PGA, in its wisdom, starts its season every year on the West Coast. While many tennis players in other parts of the country have access to indoor courts, golfers must be content to watch their favorite game on television. This weekend, they are getting a special treat. They are seeing the lovely vistas of the Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades, surely one of the choicest pieces of real estate the professionals are privileged to play all year.

But it is doubtful that the pros in the Los Angeles Open, who later will get to play even prettier courses on the Monterey Peninsula in the Bing Crosby tournament, will enjoy their games and the charms of Riviera, Cypress Point and Pebble Beach nearly as much as would the most incompetent of amateurs.

To professionals, golf is a serious business, not a game to be enjoyed, and the course is an obstacle, not a haven from the exigencies of work and a refuge in which to refresh one’s spirit.

But, clearly, the work is more fun than, say, toiling in a bank or selling insurance--although sometimes it is hard to tell. The pros stand over shots in frowning concentration and become irritable at the slightest distraction. They demand absolute silence while they work, as if they’re patching a detached retina or unclogging an artery.

When Australia’s Bruce Crampton was asked why he never smiled on the course, he replied, “This is my office.”

It’s too bad the pros can’t enjoy themselves more at Riviera. Golf, often the most frustrating and humbling of games, can also be the most satisfying. It is a leisurely game, lacking in violence and brutality, that can be played in lovely settings of great natural beauty--amid groves of trees and green rolling hills, in scenic mountain valleys and on bluffs overlooking the sea. On a brisk autumn morning at the Greenbrier or other Eastern resorts, the air is fresh and the trees red, orange and gold. Every course is different. Each has its own character and there are no set dimensions.

Golf is a game enjoyed by presidents, kings and prime ministers, as well as plumbers, carpenters, salesmen, lawyers and other masochists. They rhapsodize over the game, although none may never hit a good shot or improve his score noticeably. They subject themselves to punishment sane humans wouldn’t undertake. Often, they must rise at dawn to get a tee time. Some never get to play a dry fairway. Bunkers, water hazards and rough are diabolically placed to frustrate them.

Not all golfers can improve their game as Walter O’Malley, the late owner of the Dodgers, did by building his own course and widening the fairways at exactly the area where his slice usually landed.

While a golfer plays against par or an opponent, the topography and the elements, his principal opponent is himself. “Golf is man’s battle against himself,” Herbert Warren Wind, the noted golf authority, once said.

Probably no sport requires as much patience or discipline. A stationary ball is struck from a stationary stance. Easy? Try it. The game looks easy, but it is probably the hardest to play consistently well.

You are alone on the course. Nobody else is responsible for your shot or your score. If you slice or shank the ball into the trees, or hook it into a bunker or water hazard, you’re stuck with the consequences. You play, as Sam Snead has often said, all your foul balls. No matter how bad the shot, there are no second chances.

Golfers are supposed to contend with the elements without complaint. Legend has it that when Cary Middlecoff complained once that the wind at Pebble Beach was so fierce he couldn’t stand still long enough to putt, the old pro there, Peter Hay, was said to have growled, “Who says you have to stand up to putt.”

To those who don’t play it for a living, golf offers release and relaxation.

It is a sociable game that has as a bonus the pleasures of competition. Probably more business deals are struck on the course than in an office, and a good salesman learns when to hit a bad shot.

The game appeals even to non-golfers. Asked why she enjoys watching golf more than other sports, my wife said, “It’s calmer.”

Although the pros may not smile often and sometimes are guilty of flipping a club into the air after a poor shot, neither do they scream and holler, either at their opponents or the officials.

Spectators can get close enough to the action to recognize the participants, who are colorfully attired and not hidden behind masks or under helmets. This appeals especially to amateur golfers, who spend millions of dollars every year to buy lessons, gimmicks, books, magazines and clubs and go to tournaments to study the pros’ swings, hoping to improve theirs. They don’t, usually.

Golf probably is the most honest of all professional games. The rules are harsh and demanding and followed assiduously by the pros, who penalize themselves if they break one. Officials seldom see an infraction. They interpret the rules, but they are not policemen. They don’t throw flags or blow whistles.

Once, in a national championship, Bobby Jones drove his ball into the woods. He went after it alone, and, in addressing the ball, he barely touched it. Nobody saw him. But he penalized himself a stroke. He lost the championship, by one stroke.

Praised for his honesty, Jones replied, “You might as well praise a man for not robbing a bank.”

In modern times, golf has been represented ably by Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, two of the world’s most popular and gentlemanly sportsmen. Tennis’ role models, meanwhile, have been Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe.

Golf also has avoided the cheating and drug scandals that have scarred the nation’s most popular sports, football, baseball and basketball. But whereas those sports have long been integrated, golf remains largely a white man’s game. Few blacks make a living off it, and there’s only one today, Calvin Peete, who seems to be really good at it.

Kids from the ghetto have no place to practice the expensive, country-club sport. No longer do the all-but-extinct caddy ranks produce the elite of the PGA. Most of today’s stars come out of college and country clubs, usually with substantial financial support.

Gambling abounds in the sport, even among the professionals. For many, the betting is the only reason to play the game and has made the sport a fertile ground for gamesmanship. A sample from Scotland: “If your adversary is badly bunkered, there is no rule against your standing over him and counting his strokes aloud.”

The game has flaws other than its elite status. The principal one is the amount of time it takes to play a round, a delinquency that can be blamed on the fellows playing at Riviera this week. Hackers who can’t break 100 copy the way the pros stalk a putt and fiddle around before making a shot. You can fly to New York in the time it takes to play 18 holes. Once upon a time, a player made a shot by feel. If he was told the hole was exactly 167 yards away, he wouldn’t have known what club to use. Today, he has to determine almost to the inch how long it is.

But what really irritates most critics of the game is the ability of a man who lacks youth, muscles, speed of foot and even good eyesight to excel. That and, perhaps, the fact that more liars play golf than fish. Golf is the only game I know in which a player yells fore, makes 6 and puts down 5.