Be the Pine, Be the Ball

Although not the first to write haiku, Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) became its greatest master. He earned this distinction not only through the structure and subject matter of his work, but also through the reflection of Zen Buddhist influence in his haiku. Basho brought the highly focused attention to detail that is central to Zen practice – and evident in another Japanese cultural statement, the tea ceremony – to his poetry. And just as his poems communicated his own heightened state of awareness, they inspired those who read or heard them to seek similar enlightenment through intense contemplation of the images he presented. As Basho wrote: “To learn about the pine tree you must become one with the pine and drop your self-centered view.” Considering this statement is, in fact, one of the starting points for this book. For it is an antecedent of one of the most enigmatic directives in golf – Be the ball. This phrase is attributed to a 1980 sports comedy film, Caddyshack, which focuses on the characters at the fictitious, upscale Bushwood Country Club. In one of the opening scenes, caddy Danny Noonan is on the course with Ty Webb, a talented golfer and the son of one of Bushwood’s co-founders. Danny is trying to gain Ty’s favor, who, he hopes, will intercede on his behalf with Judge Elihu Smails, also one of the club’s founders and the director of the caddy scholarship program. Throughout the round, Danny seeks advice from Ty on life and his future. At one point they are standing in a fairway as Ty prepares to hit his approach shot over a lake to the green. He says to Danny: “Let me give you a little advice. There is a force in the universe that makes things happen – and all you have to do is get in touch with it. Stop thinking … let things happen…and be the ball. Find your center. Hear nothing. Feel nothing.” Ty then proceeds to tie a blindfold over his eyes, takes a swing at the ball, and knocks a wedge about two feet from the hole. Danny is amazed at what he has witnessed. Ty then encourages him to give it a try himself. As Danny stands blindfolded over the ball, the following dialogue occurs: Ty: “Just relax. Find your center. Picture the shot. Turn off all the sound. Just let it happen. Just be the ball. Be the ball. Be the ball.” Ty pauses as Danny readies the shot. “You’re not being the ball, Danny.” Danny: “It’s kind of hard when you keep talking like that.” Ty (in a whisper): “OK. I’m not talking anymore. Be the ball. Be the ball. Be the ball.” Danny takes a swing – and dumps the ball into the lake. “Be the ball” is one of the entries that can be found through an internet search for “golf quotes.” That request will generate 19.4 million responses in half a second. A somewhat more refined search for quotes on the mental aspects of the game will yield 1.3 million hits. The number of quotes is staggering to consider. But among the themes that can be identified within them are a few that strongly connect Basho and Ty Webb, haiku and golf. These are the power of visualization, the importance of playing within one’s own abilities, and understanding golf as a mind/body exercise. The key to these perspectives, though, is another. Indeed, it is the heart of the matter whether one aims to “become one with the pine” or to “be the ball.” This is the cultivation of a “quiet mind,” that is, the ability to focus on the moment and the immediate target and to free one’s mind from the distractions of multiple (and often competing) swing thoughts, memories of bad shots, the behavior and judgment of playing partners, and images of all the places on the hole where you do not want the ball to go. It is to give oneself to the task at hand, namely, to be in that moment and to resolve to accept – and to learn from – the outcomes of the effort, no matter what they may be. Long before the golf gurus of television’s Golf Channel, sports psychologists, and a canon of writings on the inner game of golf appeared, teachers and masters of the game understood these elements. “For this game you need, above all things, a tranquil frame of mind.” The words of England’s Harry Vardon, a six-time winner of The Open Championship with a temperament and a swing that made him the greatest player of his time in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. “Success in this game depends less on strength of body than strength of mind and character.” Spoken by Arnold Palmer, perhaps golf’s most beloved player whose influence and admirers transcended the game. “Golf is a game that is played on a five-inch course – the distance between your ears.” So explained Bobby Jones, the game’s greatest amateur player, who completed golf’s first Grand Slam in 1930 winning both the U.S. and British Amateur and Open championships. He emphasized this point with another observation: “You swing the best when you have the fewest things to think about.” Jack Nicklaus, eighteen times a winner of professional golf’s Major championships, and about whom Jones admiringly said “He plays a game with which I am not familiar,” understood exactly what Jones meant about focus. “There is no room for negative thoughts. The busier you keep yourself with the particulars of shot assessment and execution, the less chance your mind has to dwell on the emotional.” And, then, the perspective of Nick Faldo, the most dominant British player since Vardon and the winner of six Majors among forty professional tour victories worldwide: “Visualization is the most powerful thing we have.” There is no evidence or admission that any of these players reached this remarkable consensus on the mental game through Zen training, haiku reading, or psycho-therapy. Rather, through self-assessment and experience, they appreciated the enormous demands of a game wherein success largely depends upon the ability to play with a “quiet mind” and to exorcise confusion and negativity from the task or shot at hand. What Sam Snead surely had in mind when he said that “Of all the hazards, fear is the worst.” For to accomplish such awareness is to accept one’s limitations and, in fact, to achieve a certain liberation from them. It is to embrace Bob Rotella’s famous declaration that “golf is not a game of perfect.” It is to be focused on the moment and engaged in a process of continuous improvement – therefore building both confidence and sanguinity. Through focus and precision, visualization and imagination, we can begin to appreciate the connections between haiku and golf. Clearly, Basho and the other haiku masters were not thinking about their short games when they opened a pathway to enlightenment through their writings. But the intrinsic qualities of haiku translated to the inner game of golf – because the poets were thinking about life. And golf, as Bobby Jones observed “is the closest game to the game of life – you get bad breaks from good shots; you get good breaks from bad shots; but you have to play the ball where it lies.” And, all along the way, the entire “walk down the fairway of life,” as Ben Hogan counseled, “you must smell the roses – for you only get to play one round.”