Archive for the ‘Duffers Golf History’ Category

Golf on the Moon

Saturday, September 5th, 2009

 

Overlooking the 1867 yard Par 3 15th hole

Overlooking the 1867 yard Par 3 15th hole

Duffers will golf just about anywhere as long as the price is right. Fortunately for Alan Shepard, NASA picked up the green fees for perhaps the most exclusive public golf course in the solar system (we’re not sure what may exist in the rest of the galaxy). 

On January 21, 1971 Apollo 14 blasted-off to the moon for a little golf junket (ostensibly framed as a scientific expedition or, was it an exercise in Cold War chest thumping…). Optimistically, Shepard only took three balls with him (how could he expect to play a round of golf with only three balls?). 

True to duffer-form, Shepard, using a jury-rigged 6-iron, took a couple of mulligans on the first hole. Is there any surprise at that? First off, he gets to the course late, with no time to hit a few warm-up shots on the range and little to no warm-up; next, there was absolutely no pre-shot routine. On his third shot, Shepard connected with the ball and sent it into the lunar void ‘mile and miles and miles’ according to Shepard at the time. This was later appended by Shepard to a shot of between 200-400 yards. Not that bad for a duffer wielding a custom made 6-iron…although if he had connected with it, the ball could have traveled about one mile in the lunar gravity.  

The NASA logs didn’t reflect any hint of first tee fright.


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Mary Queen of Scots

Friday, August 7th, 2009
Mary at the 1st Tee

Mary at the 1st Tee

Mary Queen of Scots on the 1st Tee

Mary Queen of Scots was an avid arbiter of the game of golf in the 1560’s. A known golf junkie of the day she initiated several innovations to the game, including a focus on the mental aspects of the game which still resonates today.

While we have no known record of the good Mary’s golf score or official handicap (she surely must have been a duffer, if not in lineage, then in her play), Queen Mary did travel the links in style, followed by an entourage of cadets, sons of French noblemen, that she brought over from the mainland (that would be France), after the death of her first husband. 

Not having the advantage nor the convenience of either a golf cart (alas, another work left on the drawing board of the great genius Leonardo Da Vinci) nor a golf bag (which was to come in the 1880’s), these cadets, sporting finely pleated collars and heavy gowns of silk and velvet, followed Mary Queen of Scots as she strolled from hole to hole engaging in fine conversation and perhaps assisting the fair Queen with her club selection and yardage.

The Scots, of course, being neither bilingual nor accustomed to such a following, pronounced the French ‘cadet’ as ‘caddie’ and the name has stuck.

Interestingly enough, the term ‘fore’ comes from this era as well. Given the unkempt state of the links, the possibility of losing one’s ball was extremely high, so ‘fore-caddies’ were sent ahead to watch where the wayward ball might land. Prior to giving the ball a whack, the good golfer would shout to ensure that the fore-caddie was watching for the ball.

Unfortunately for Mary Queen of Scots, her love for the game led to her downfall. Her reputation, already having being sullied by a dalliance with the Earl of Bothwell, sealed her fate after being seen golfing shortly after her husband, Lord Darnley, was killed. The good Scots felt it inappropriate to be golfing when she should have been in mourning. As Scottish writer Lewine Mair, wrote, Mary’s golf career was ‘dramatically cut short when she failed to maintain that relationship between her head and her shoulders which all the games great teachers have deemed essential.’ So much for worrying about swing plane.


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Sigmund Freud

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009
Sigmund Freuds Couch

Sigmund Freud's Couch

Though Sigmund Freud is widely known in the field of psychoanalysis (though his ideas have been somewhat discredited these days), what is surprising to most people is the significant influence that golf had on the development of Freud’s thoughts on psychoanalysis and his work in general.

Born in Freiburg , Czechoslovakia in 1856, his family moved to Vienna four years later and entered the University of Vienna in 1873 as a medical student. Freud didn’t pick up on golf until about1896 when he was introduced to the game through a friend. His buddy convinced him to go on a golf junket to Scotland organized by a group of Freemasons. This left him to wonder about the people crawling about the heaths of Scotland looking for their golf balls. Not coincidentally, he first coined the term psychoanalysis in 1896. He did play several rounds while in Scotland and in 1897, becoming worried about his obsession with the game, begins self-analysis. He was particularly, interested in the manifestations of First Tee Fright but didn’t formally address this until later in his career in 1926 with the publication of his seminal work ‘Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety’.

Not an especially good golfer, Freud was never interested in the mechanical aspects of the game but focused rather on the mental aspects of golf. Interviewing hundreds of golfers while on the course, he later moved to the local watering holes after the game to better facilitate note taking and ultimately, moved the interviews back to his office and the comfort of his couch.

Gleaning deep insights into the golfer psyche, he started to publish his works on a regular basis. In 1905 he published ‘Three Essays on Sexuality, Jokes and Their Relation to Golf.’

In 1921, after analyzing the very deep relationships developed within  the golfing foursome and later how they relate to the beer cart girl, he publishes ‘Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego’, in which he applies a social context to psychoanalysis.

From here, of course, many others started to pick up on where Freud left off.


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Birth of the Golf Tee

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009
The newly patented golf tee - circa

The newly patented golf tee - circa 1899

Prior to the golf tee being invented, golf balls were set upon damp sand, pinched into a small mound to get them up off the ground. This method of teeing the ball was both inconsistent and tedious. There was no reliable way of teeing the ball exactly to the height that one required of it but more importantly, to the gentleman Duffer, the constant bending to form the little launch pad was physically taxing and messy, particularly while golfing during inclement weather.

Enter the golf tee, invented and first patented in 1899 by Dr. George Grant, a dentist, and then apparently, invented a second time in 1920 by Dr. William Lowell, another dentist of Maplewood , New Jersey . 

Necessity, being the Mother of Invention, these two Duffers both came at the game from the same leisurely perspective.

Unlike Dr. George Grant, who with the official patent in hand, dispensed numerous tees to friends and playing partners, but failed to market the newly minted tees to any degree, the good Dr Lowell, a keen entrepreneur, shrewdly persuaded the great Walter Hagen to use his tees during some barnstorming exhibitions. The second patent went out in 1925 but Dr Lowell cut a deal with the A. G. Spalding Company which purchased twenty-four dozen tees. The tees proved highly profitable initially but the competitive advantage soon disappeared as a flood of other brands hit the market soon after.


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The Big Three

Sunday, May 24th, 2009
The Big Three discussing the merits of the overlapping golf grip

The Big Three discussing the merits of the overlapping golf grip

In February, 1945, the Big Three, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin, met at Yalta in the Crimea . With the war moving to closure, the Big Three take a break from the rigors of constant negotiations and deliberations of closing out the war.

Here, the Big Three relax after a round of golf. Moving from a discussion of how to divvy up Berlin, they get into a heated debate about the merits of various golf grips.  Churchill, a poor putter, also laments about his problems with the yips (a problem, it seems, that stemmed from just after the Battle of Britain), and wonders aloud to Roosevelt about ‘just why doesn’t someone invent a long handled putter that you can stick into your belly to steady yourself’. Roosevelt expresses amazement at this and remarks that it would never fly by the Royal and Ancient Golf Club Rules Committee.

Stalin, a big proponent of the interlocking grip, chimes in with an outline of his plans to build a network of golf resorts in Siberia, a then little known golfing ‘paradise’.  His plans include free transportation for all tourists and the development of the Gulag School of Golf providing free instruction for all of the Russian people so ‘they can really learn the game’. He boasts that with his plans, Russians will occupy the top 100 spots of the PGA Tour.


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Leonardo da Vinci

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
Da Vinci - the first man to identify the swing plane

Da Vinci - the first man to define the swing plane

By all accounts, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) possessed one of the greatest minds of all time. He was, at the same time, an artist, inventor, architect, sculptor, scientist, engineer, mathematician, philosopher and,  golfer. 

Coming from an insignificant background and rising to universal acclaim his accomplishments were many and varied. Leonardo, the artist, transformed the direction of art. Leonardo’s Mona Lisa and The Last Supper are universally recognized as two of the greatest paintings ever produced. Leonardo, the inventor, made plans for a flying machine, a helicopter, parachute, the extendable ladder, the bicycle, adjustable monkey wrench…the list goes on. He was involved with botany, anatomy, geology and physics but perhaps, had his works survived, his greatest contribution could have been to golf. 

Little known today, Leonardo often cast his thoughts to golf. He was a keen observer of the game and from his observations of ball flight (which later influenced his thoughts on the design of the parachute and the helicopter) he invented the theory of the ‘swing plane’. In Milan, under the patronage of Ludovico, the ‘Moor’ of Sforza, Leonardo taught his patron the game of golf and perhaps could be called the first golf professional (although, arguably, Leonardo was being paid for his other works, and this was done in his ‘down’ time).

Leonardo’s patience wore thin with his patron one day, who, like duffers today just wanted to get out to whack balls. He exploded at the ‘Moor’, about his poor ‘practice habits‘ and his inability to understand the basic fundamentals of the game. ‘He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards a ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.’ It was shortly after this that Leonardo changed patrons. 

Though golf was just in its infancy, Leonardo’s works included preliminary drawings for the golf cart (which he later modified into a design for a tank) and an outline for a 12-hole golf course along the Arno River.


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Greatest Moments in Duffer History

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

Greatest Moments in Duffer History

Most of the greatest contributions to golf have been by Duffers. Duffers invented the game of golf and continue to contribute to its advancement…and, not to forget, Duffers keep the game alive today!

From the invention of the game itself; to the equipment and the rules and even the clothing we wear; to what golf courses look like and even what we do after playing a round of golf, Duffers have been at the forefront of it all.

One doesn’t need to dig very deeply to uncover the rich legacy left by Duffers of all shapes and sizes. From Duffers who are completely unheralded and unknown, to surprisingly, those Duffers of rich and royal heritage to men and women of faith and science but whose exploits on the links have been unheralded, the tapestry vibrant.

We bring you stories from the annuls of golf history and some of the greatest moments in Duffer history.


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