Tuesday
Jan272009
R.I.P John Updike
Nice work by the USGA communications staff for posting the lone golf-driven obituary of the legendary writer, with a quote from David Fay and text of his 1994 address at the USGA Centennial dinner.
At USGAMuseum.com they've posted a list of his contributions to various anthologies and Updike's USGA centennial essay "The Spirit of the Game."
Tuesday, January 27, 2009 at 07:10 PM
Reader Comments (8)
I'd love to find that story he wrote in the mid-'90s for the New Yorker about the golfer who was nettled by highly omniscient caddie.
For years I made it a point to read his story about Ted Williams' final game at least once a year. He was 27 when he wrote it. As the writer Peter Andrews pointed out, Updike saw something that day that no one else in the great sports fraternity took pains to notice.
Here it is. I prefer to read his words in an old paperback, but this will do today:
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/articles/hub_fans_bid_kid_adieu_article.shtml
http://www.newyorker.com/
[W]e might ask ourselves if our own happiness would be significantly diminished if our own courses had less than four different well mowed teeing areas, each framed by flower beds, and if the yardage figures were not inscribed on the sprinkler heads, and if the greens were a shade less smooth than pool tables, and if players without a medical certificate were forbidden to ride golf carts, and if metal woods were banned? Would American golf fall into irremediable melancholy if manufacturers ceased coming up with new lines of ever more ingeniously weighted and shafted clubs, with which pro shops can churn their clientele into an annual lather of technology-based hope? Would American golf, in short, be less happy if a bit less money were to wash through the grand old game? . . .
We have come a long way in American golf, but has it been a journey without a price? Amid the million-dollar tournaments and the $5 million clubhouses, might we be losing the unassuming simplicity of the game itself? This out-of-doors simplicity, surely, lies at the heart of golfing bliss, as we are reminded by our logo of two New England boys out for a walk on a drizzly September day. All it takes for a golfer to attain his happiness is a fence rail to throw his coat on, and a target somewhere over the rise.
But he said those words in 1994. And as we all now know, the USGA didn't listen. R.I.P. Mr. Updike.
being lucky enough to have stumbled upon "Golf Dreams" some years ago, i had it in my collection, and along with some old whiskey and a good cigar, it was available to me last night.
i was reminded from his preface, that he read Wodehouse as his initial inspiration, and goes on to mention Murphy as a more contemporary find.
for me, he was one who would hit the nail on the preverbial head time and again, using the precise same words i would, if i had the talent, of course.
i am not familiar with much of the other works he produced, but on golf topics, he got it right.
anyone not familiar with Updike on golf certainly should at least glance at some of it and i trust you will find something in it that rings out.
frankD
I had the pleasure of playing with him at Myopia Hunt one time. He was a charming host and spirited competitor, and as you might expect he had an original way of expressing himself. I remember him looking over a lengthy putt on one green and saying, half to himself, "I'm going to need my strong personality for this one." I still have the scorecard from the day; it's the only one from a casual round that I ever asked someone to formally attest.