Launch conditions

May 24, 2007

Dear Julie,

Spying a long, thin box next to the wastebasket in the kitchen, DC asked if I'd gotten a new golf club. I don't even try to hide them anymore.

To a golfer, getting a new club is akin to placing your hands on the Holy Grail. This club, a golfer truly believes, could be the answer. It could bring new confidence to my swing and shave strokes off my score. Yet another new club could dispense with two or three more strokes. Before you know it all your clubs are new and you theoretically should be able to shoot 0.

Of course, new clubs never really keep the bogey man away.

Of course, there's always the hope that his club could be different.

My new driver has been custom fit to my ball launch conditions. If that sounds like space-age technology, it is. A computerized ball launch monitor analyzed my swing to determine the speed of my club head, the speed of the balls I hit, the launch angle, the spin rate of the balls and other variables only a golf pro would understand. Jason, the golf pro/analyst, prescribed a stiffer club shaft and bigger club head for me. It's difficult to argue with the logic of someone with a readout.

The real boon is that now I am confident this is the best driver for me to play with. Confidence, I am convinced, is more of a Holy Grail than new clubs are. The Grail is believing in yourself. To not believe in yourself is to live in fear of just about everything, including hitting a golf ball.

Many of us golfers have a blind spot in our swings, a place where we lose track of what we're trying to do and basically hope for the best. Often this blind spot coincides with the moment the club strikes the ball. The moment of truth. To be blind to the truth about ourselves is no way to live or hit a golf ball.

DC does not pretend to understand why golf played with new golf clubs is any different or better than golf played with old clubs. Maybe it really isn't. Indeed, a few people still play golf with the equipment of yore: Woods made of wood, balls stuffed with feathers. They yearn for the simpler game before launch monitors.

I explain to her that technological advances make golf clubs nearly obsolete every few years. There are other attractions. George Lopez, the comedian, points out that one clubmaker enjoyed success when it introduced a driver that comes with a wrench used to adjust small weights. What guy can resist a golf club that has its own wrench?

Nobody I know, least of all DC, shares my belief that golf could be a path to enlightenment. Redemption, heroism, all are possible on a golf course. Each round is a Grail quest for the sublime experience when body, mind and intention intersect perfectly to create exactly what you want.

The feeling is powerful. It is an inkling that resonates beyond the golf course. Maybe it's what Joseph Campbell means in "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" of becoming capable of perceiving the workings of both the human and divine worlds.

There are times when playing golf feels as though you have mastered a magical force. Golf also provides many opportunities to handle disappointments and befuddlement.

Buddhists say the Boddhisatvas are here to help the rest of us find the real Holy Grail, enlightenment. In "Caddyshack," Carl Spackler (Bill Murray) tells a story about caddying for the Dalai Lama. "So I said, 'Hey, Lama, how about something, you know, a little extra -- for the effort?' He said, 'There will be no reward; but on your deathbed, you will have gained total consciousness.' So I got that going for me, which is nice."

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is managing editor of the Southeast Missourian.