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."

    The course on which I struggled through so many angry rounds as a youngster was called The Hills. My father was on the club's board of governors and I caddied there throughout high school. I grew up on the short, tight course and knew it like I knew my own backyard.
    I stopped playing golf when I went away to college and didn't take up the game again until after I quit drinking at the age of 43. By then, my father had died and I was living upstate in the Hudson Valley, but I still had family who were members of The Hills and occasionally I'd be invited to play as a guest.
    On my first trip back I was really excited. It had been so long since I’d played the course, and my game was so much better than it had been when I was a teenager, that I was full of hopeful anticipation.
    As it turned out, I played terribly and behaved badly. Not that I threw clubs or broke tree limbs, but I got angry and depressed, making me poor company for my brother and sisters, who had been looking forward to a pleasant afternoon.

    There was a time when I was a kid that the anger got so bad I had to quit playing golf. In my early teens I was not a good player but my father had signed me up for a series of lessons with the club pro to set me off in the right direction, so I knew the fundamentals of the golf swing. What I lacked most was patience.
    I was one of those brats who threw clubs and cursed loudly, trying to convince my friends and and anybody else watching that I expected more of myself because I was capable of more. I blamed the universe for my poor play and I blamed luck but most of all, even at that young age, I blamed myself.
    Sometimes I would throw a club and stomp off after it, shouting something like, "Jesus, I suck!" My friends thought this behavior very funny, especially the self-directed profanity, but I didn't.
    Not infrequently when the game was going badly, I'd slam my bag to the ground and walk into the woods, find a sizable downed branch or limb, and beat it against a tree trunk until it broke into small pieces. I wasn't showing off; I would do this while playing alone.