Whoa Nellie!

Here's Joey Rush....

Just wanted to see what this would look like. Of course, it's Joe Ruszas, the youth phenom of 1930s era Albany golfdom....

Pre-captioning the golf course pics

Hmmm, here's a little bad timing  - start a blog about golf and such as the temperatures hover near freezing and another four months (at least) await until the azaleas bloom in Augusta. We are nowhere near Augusta.  Fair enough. It will give me time for kid rants and waxing mundane on the verities of flog spelled backward. It's not like I have played the game more than 5-10 times a year since the kids have been around anyhow. 

But I do think about golf an inordinate amount and I relish the opportunity just to swing the club. Like I've said before, the range is my place to meditate, lose myself in the process. This expands even further when I can just grab a club and smack it around an open field. There is a satisfaction in this activity that runs to an almost mystical depth.

I have mentioned the book I wrote several years back about the history of the Albany Municipal Golf Course, and when I return to those abandoned holes carved between three valleys I get lost in the landscape and the overwhelming sense that there are forces pulling me there - the souls of long departed duffers, or perhaps the old pro himself, Jerry D.  It's weird to write this out because I'm not by any means a incense burning, quartz wearing 'there are spirits among us" kinda guy.  But the place does have a mystical sense about it, especially in winter when the tall fescue mounds together and catches the snow. It's very linksland-ish, barren and yet strangely I feel an overwhelming sense of calm when I'm there. This weekend, I will take some pictures that will not do justice to the place, but I'll post them anyway.

These bloody holidays...

What is it about the holidays that brings out the blood sport in my boys?
Last night, it was O wiping out against the edge of a marble top table - a gusher right down his neck and staining a perfectly good Christmas pullover from Grandma. Today, I get the news O was using my guitar to bludgeon his younger brother - a cut lip, more blood, yet no Christmas gift clothing soiled.
Ben is starting to cackle like George "The Animal" Steel......
The Lamkin Crossline regripping kit is mine! I will get what I want for Christmas!

The first Phil?

Hey, the two golf-related items on my Xmas wish list were no shows, but thanks to Joe I did get a cool self-published book about Craig Wood, a U.S. Open and Masters champ, as well as a native son of Lake Placid, New York. It's an odd little compendium, set in about 14 point type with loads of redundant pictures; written by J. Peter Martin, who also wrote Golf Courses of the Adirondacks, which (unlike this book) has a very cool layout and loads of good pics.

Wood was the Phil Mickelson of his day, it seems, perpetually a runner-up until his breakthroughs at the Masters and Open. He lost a 36-hole playoff in the PGA to Paul Runyan, and most notably, was the guy who held the clubhouse lead when Gene Sarazen hit "the shot heard round the world;" the double eagle at Augusta's 15th hole that all golf books say "put the Masters tournament on the map." Sarazen eventually tied Wood and went on to beat him in a playoff.

He's obviously the namesake of the Craig Wood Golf Course, up here. 

Joe did a little legal work for Wood back in the day (I can't remember the details) and he  has a book with Wood's autograph in it. He tells the story of meeting Wood at Keeler's or some such Albany eatery for a business lunch and scrambling to find a golf book at a Broadway bookseller that Wood could sign.  Book found, signed and now it sits above my TV console.

I will provide more Christmas details soon but the lunch hour is running low.

I will also remind myself here to write a little bit about Tom Creavy. Our Tom Creavy....Hey, cool, look what I just found.

Golf blogs anonymous

It would take a few weeks and a frontal lobotomy to read most of the copy in this guy's golf blog but the deeper you get, the more you realize his heart's in the right place. And, if you believe who he says he is, probably not a trifling figure in the sports world.

Another Natural Golfer, too - the conspiracy theorists of the golf world. Coming soon to a shortwave radio station near you.

I've only played once with a Natural Golfer, at a old, sheep-dipped muni in the Adirondacks, and it was a painful experience. He was such a nice guy, but so are most converts to obscure religious cults, recently indoctrinated. His attempts at the flummoxing Moe Norman drove him to self-pity, and by the back nine he was vacillating between the old himself and the Moe Norman-swing himself. It was obviously bad for his psyche, and I recall he worked with troubled children.

The whole thing is tempo, I guess. Natural or finger-grip (would we say Vardon, traditional?), it doesn't matter. I-Am-Mister-Teeeempoooo, waiting and waiting, with head behind the ball, and let the body release the club. It looks so easy on paper, doesn't it? How many range balls have we slicedtoppedshankedskulled to find it so gosh darn frustratin' in real life.

I was leafing through my year-end edition of Golf World last night and noting how "down" the players were in follow-through pictures - head down at impact, head down still as the wrists break. Yes, another swing thought to float through my brain. Stay down, dammit!

If I was to carry just five clubs, they would be my:

• Ping knock-off putter
• TA 845 Eight iron
• sand wedge
• old Ram three wood
• Bazooka Hybrid

I'm going to do this next year.

Winter golf weather

I am by most accounts a law-abiding citizen; conscientious and respectful of private property.
This, however, did not prevent me Saturday from driving over to our local private golf course on a balmy 40 degree day, unloading from the trunk my trusty (or not so) Tommy Armour five iron and strolling out for a little winter golf. I "played" five holes, seeing only one other soul, who gave me a friendly wave with his club, that I returned in camaraderie. As you might imagine, I am not a member of this (or any other) private club.
There is a charming simplicity in this misdemeanor; one club in hand, a pocketful of shag balls, the December sun slanting shadows across the fairways. To accomodate those foolhardy members who venture out when the ground is frozen and bare, the club reverses the holes, placing flags on the tee boxes, so you, in effect, play the course backwards.
With no snow and the adjoining woods a tangle of dead, dun bramble, it's also prime ballhawking weather. I found a Nike with the word "Mojo" and played that up the 14th, hitting two crisp shots with my knockdown swing. I want to start playing with just four or five clubs in hand (in all weather) just to see how it affects the scoring. It's a challenge to chip with a five iron; in effect rolling it up to the "greens" across the dormant grass.
Snow and sub-zero came the following day and today it again is bitter cold. Tomorrow they say it will reach 40 with a breeze, so there may be hope yet. When the millenium turned a few years back, I played this same course on December 31 and again on Jan. 1 - perhaps the only golfer in upstate NY that can say he played consecutive days in two millenia. That was with my father, who has been a member there for near 50 years...
It's a memory I will cherish, because it wasn't about his bad play, bad attitude or the scoring. It was just about being out on a golf course in December with my father, and watching a ball flighting across the cloudless winter sky. There is something special about this game, especially when it is stripped to its barest elements.

A generational thing

Ach! The home computer is so sloooow. I'm up early again; by force of habit, I guess. 6:30 and I'm ready to go. Hey, there's snow on the ground! Not much but it's there. Maybe this will be a white Christmas after all....

I was reading a great book on Charles Schulz with Owie last night, which, when I figure out how to do it, will add to my book list on this page. Jacket design by Chip Kidd, who if you're into design, you've probably already heard of and if you're not, I would highly recommend as worth checking. He did a lot of the James Ellroy covers and in fact, The Cold Six Thousand, which sits virtually unread on me bedside because Ellroy is just a little too intense for bed time reading.  There. I feel like this weird compulsion to link, which I have to stop.

Aaaaanyway, the book is The Art of Charles M. Schulz, and reading it with my little doppleganger Owen reminded me of my own childhood obsession with Charles Brown. There are instances in your childhood that burn as tiny torches inside you. You carry them along as reminders of what you were and how it shaped what you've become.

I was sitting in our back room reading some Peanuts anthology taken out of the library or perhaps a book from the Scholastic Reader club. Age? Probably around 10.  I remember reading a certain panel and just starting to cry because he lost again. In a small child's universal kind of way, Charlie Brown lost again, and I saw myself as him. I went weeping into the living room where my mom was lying on the couch, and rested my head on her shoulder, the way Owen does with me these days.

She was flustered to explain why the comic shouldn't make me cry, but I could tell then that she saw something a little deeper. How, I would always be the one who would cry at comic book losers. How I knew that I was a Charlie Brown, too. Or at least I saw myself that way. I just have the scene pictured in my mind's eye. I'm kneeling on the carpeted floor. She's holding my head saying soft things in my ear. The book is still in my hands.

The day after tomorrow is January 19. It would have been my mom's 72nd birthday. I'll do the usual ritual.

Things to do this winter

1. Learn to skate (I say this every winter...)

2. Go to an IMAX film (Must drive two hours + to get to the nearest one)

3. Get Owen signed up for soccer in the spring (We are perpetually late signer-uppers)

4. Post the "shoebox of pictures" on this blog (I need dedicated time alone with a scanner and a burner)

5. Continue training for the Delmar Dash in April (Five miles doesn't seem that long, but perhaps it's not a good distance for my first effort, especially with upstate NY "spring" weather) See below.

6. Re-grip the clubs (It will improve my game. It will.)

7. Repaint the trim in the upstairs bathroom (oooh, yes, I do need that orbital sander, Santa!)

8. 7,000 words on 1937, Albany Muni, new club pro, Depression, gambling, politics. (Where is my perspective??) Submit to Shivas Irons Journal?? (What will make this unique, themeatic, and, um, interesting?)

Zee boring update

Back at work after a blissfull mid-week day off. Well, maybe not blissfull, but at least all the holiday shopping's done. There will be copy-editing hell for the morning, (according to the pile of dreck on my chair) but that's not so bad. So many nice folks moving on as we hit the fall semester break - farewell to my Chinese buffet buddy John Fowler, who's off to London. Retirement for John "I look like a whale in this picture" Kucij, who is another genuinely nice individual.

Today I will order my free "lunch for five" from Panera... Whoopee.

Should I be excited about the return of the Albany Patroons?

Disobeying "the Man" to hit golf balls

Boys at the playground yesterday. December rarely allows playground weather, and yet, there we were with the small flakes flying around. We had the place to ourselves, naturally. I took the opportunity to pull out my nine iron, shag bag, and drub several shots - an embarrassing display, especially since I always make such a big deal out of "the last swings of the year..." We walked away from the playground and followed the perimeter of the fields for a bit. Ben immediately jumped in a large mud puddle, soaking his pants. He never complained.

"Are your feet wet, now?"

"No"

"Now?"

"No. Nuffing."

Someone else had been illegally using this field for their own private range. There were telltale divot patterns and the remains of a shattered Magna, a yellow Top Flite that I launched into the woods.

I'm looking for that community of golfers who does this. There are old men and boys who disobey signs and hop fences just to find a place to practice in peace. They dump balls, practice swing, mutter to themselves, top a few, remind themselves, clip , clip, clip - like a standing meditation. They carry their bags in the trunk well into December. They've owned a shag bag and filled it so full it doesn't zip up. They ballhawk with a borderline obsession.

I would like to talk to you. I would like to meet this fella, who surely had some doubts along the way.