In Golf, Humiliations Are The Essence Of

A Professional Is Someone Who Can Do His Best Work When He Doesn't Feel Like It.

America Is A Country In Which I See The Most Persistant Idealism And The Blandest Of Cynicism And The Race Is On Between Its Vitality And Its Decadence.

More Than Anything Else, Though, To Anyone Who Would Write About It, Golf Offers A Four-hour Drama In Two Acts, Which Becomes Memorable Even In The Tape-recorded Reminiscenses Of Old Champs, And Which - In The Hands Of Someone Like Herb Wind - Can Become A Piece Of War Correspondence As Artfully Controlled As Alan Morehead's Account Of Gallipoli.

When That Happens [the Demise Of Golf], Old Men Will Furtively Beckon To Their Sons And, Like Fugitives From The Guillotine Recalling The Elegant Orgies At The Court Of Louis Xv, Will Recite The Glories Of Portmarnock And Merion, Of The Road Hole At St. Andrews, The Sixth At Seminole, The Eighteenth At Pebble Beach. They Will Take Out This Volume From Its Secret Hiding Place And They Will Say: "there Is No Question, Son, That These Were Unholy Places In An Evil Age. Unfortunately, I Had A Whale Of A Time."

I Hasten To Say To Snobs From The Surrey Pine-and-sand Country That No Invention Since The Corn Plaster Or The Electric Toothbrush Has Brought Greater Balm To The Extremities Of The Senior Golfer Than The Golfmobile, A Word That Will Have To Do For Want Of A Better.