In the north of Scotland in June there is enough light to play golf until 10:30 at night. One evening at about that time I was walking off the course at Forres with two good friends, looking for the path through the woods that would take us back to Newbold House, when I noticed a ball on the edge of the fairway. “Wait a minute,” I said, “let me hit this ball.” I teed it up and pulled out my driver. Now driving, as my friends know well, is my nemesis, the glaring weakness in an otherwise respectable game. But I took a free swing at the ball and it shot off the clubface like a rocket, rising gradually into the gathering darkness, holding an impossibly straight line before disappearing over a hilltop about 230 yards away. Here I had been playing with Vin and Jerry every night for a week and they’d never seen me hit a driver remotely as well. I heard one of them say “Wow,” and I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony of the driver finally working now that our week was over. 
    “Let me hit one,” said Vin, as he bent to put a tee into the turf. Vin’s a good player, so it was no surprise to see him hit a good shot, but it stunned the three of us to watch his ball follow precisely the same flight pattern as mine. Now Jerry had to hit a ball, not due to any macho, competitive impulse, but to satisfy our shared curiosity, unspoken yet unmistakable, as to where his ball might go. Moments later, as we watched Jerry’s ball somehow mimic the exact direction, trajectory and distance of those Vin and I had hit, the three of us exchanged high-fives and shared a deep laugh. It was a moment of pure joy, of reveling in the beauty of a perfect golf shot executed in triplicate, and of wonder at the mystery of coincidence.
     Mystery is, in fact, what brought the three of us to Scotland, and it’s what keeps bringing me back. I have known players who think the magic of golf is external, to be found hidden somewhere on the links, like a leprechaun under a rock. But I learned at Fairway To Heaven that the magic is internal. A player with open eyes and an open heart will gain innumerable insights into his true nature through golf, and in that way he is given the opportunity to change. That is the magic, the mystery, and the beauty of the game. 

   No matter how much I improve, golf just doesn’t get any easier. The 2009 season was one of my best, as I finished the year with a handicap index of 10. But getting there was hell.
    I battled the yips for the first three months of the season. The yips is a condition in which you find yourself unable to make short putts; very short putts. It’s a dreadful spiral that starts with a fear of missing putts, causing you to putt defensively until soon, without knowing it, you’re turning your head at impact to watch the ball roll toward the hole. This head movement inevitably causes the ball to veer off your intended line and miss the target, thus compounding the original problem.
   The good news is that when the Club Championship came around in August, I had overcome the yips and was playing some of the best golf of my life. The details of how I did it don't really matter. Suffice it to say I had accepted the fact that I was going to miss a lot of putts as I worked through the yips, yet I resolved to putt with confidence anyway. Confidence is such a critical element of good putting that even false confidence can be useful.

    I haven't hit a golf ball in three months and it's still winter, looking like it will be quite a while before we're back out on the course at my club in the Hudson Valley. At Christmas I gave a full set of clubs, bag and all, to the First Tee program in New Mexico; I hope some kid who otherwise wouldn't get a chance to play has some fun with them.
    I bought new irons a month ago with a store credit I had from last fall, when another set I tried didn't work out and had to be returned. The shaft in that set was wrong for the quick tempo of my swing and, rather than get them changed, I took a loss on the clubs. But the new set from my old standby outfit, MacGregor, looks great, feels great and inspires unreasonable hope.
    A few days ago I sent one of my putters, my gamer, to the Scotty Cameron Custom Shop to be refinished and to get a sight dot added. It was totally unnecessary, as the head was in good shape already, but these are the things we do to pass a long winter. Some of my pals are in Florida or South Carolina this month, but they're retired and I'm not; so they keep their games in shape, while I fiddle with equipment and wait, impatiently, for the return of the red-winged blackbirds.

    I made a hole-in-one today at my home course. First time I've done that. A moment of beauty, to watch a perfectly struck 8-iron fly high and straight at the hole, 140 yards away. The ball landed just two inches right of the hole and jumped in. I was playing with my brother and two friends. Beautiful and surprising to see the ball disappear after landing just beside the flagstick. I knew when I hit it that it was struck perfectly, it felt pure, like nothing at all. Then we watched it fly, holding its line, dead on the flagstick all the way, never moving left nor right at all. We knew as it began to fall that it would land close, but to see it hit the green, spin leftward and disappear... well, it was a moment breathtaking in its perfection.

   On the Friday night before the semifinal round of the Club Championship,  I read again some of my favorite parts of the novel The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield. Many golfers have enjoyed the book, which is vastly superior to the disappointing, sentimental film of the same name produced by Robert Redford.
   The movie bears little resemblance to the novel, which is a retelling of the Bhagavad Gita, a sacred text of Hindu mythology. The book closely parallels the theme and structure of the original Sanskrit poem. The key to the novel is chapter 21, in which the mystical caddie Bagger Vance reveals his true nature to Rannulph Junah, who's facing a crisis of confidence during his epic golf match against the great Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen.
    At a moment when Junah, physically exhausted and emotionally defeated,  is ready to quit in despair, Bagger tells him that loneliness is the great burden of competitive golf, capable of crushing the human spirit. The caddie then explains that he, Bagger, is an incarnation of the single, universal Self that all people share. "You are never alone," he tells Junah. "I stand by your side always."