Hey, let’s talk Ryder Cup.
Ah, let’s not. Instead, let’s cleanse ourselves of the noise and contentiousness and obscenities to re-visit that most enchanting of all words. Duende.
By miles it’s my favorite word – and Twice a Prince was closer to Secretariat in the 1973 Belmont than my second-favorite word (which would be “dormie”) is to duende. Look it up, should you not believe me, but duende is an Andalusian word that in Spanish and Portuguese folklore refers to a ghost or goblin. George Frazier, the late and great newspaper/magazine writer with a sharp wit and stinging power of observation, made it his word in his Boston Globe and Boston Herald columns of the 1960s.
To Frazier, duende meant that there is a sort of magical aura involved to make someone, or something, irresistibly attractive. Or in his own words, as they appeared in Charles Fountain’s superb book (“Another Man’s Poison: The Life and Writing of Columnist George Frazier,”) the stylish Frazier said of this great word: “Duende is so difficult to define . . . Yet when it is there, it is unmistakable, inspiring our awe, quickening our memory.”
He was blood, George Frazier was (my mother’s cousin), so when it comes to duende there is not an impartial bone in my body. Thus, with such a kinship to the word, it’s only natural that duende would be used to describe people and ideals and aspects to golf, which has dominated my life.
To wit:
As a player, Tiger Woods was saturated in duende, but there’s not a drop of it present where it involves him as a possible Ryder Cup captain.
When it comes to team golf, the foursomes format oozes with duende, but four-ball hasn’t a whiff. Singles never has and never will have duende.
JFK playing golf at Hyannisport on Cape Cod was pure duende and the Bush lads, 41 and 43, playing at Cape Arundel in Maine is of a similar vein. But as golf-playing presidents, all the others in the last 64 years couldn’t find duende with the best range-finder known to mankind.
If you suspect that Hyannisport GC and Cape Arundel are at the root of such duende, give yourself a gold star. You’re catching on. Those courses are drenched in duende.
Oddly the same cannot be said for some courses in the U.S. Open rota. Pebble Beach (next in 2027) and Winged Foot (2028) both have it, but somehow Oakmont (next in 2033) is devoid of it, perhaps because it is so fixated on flexing its muscle and doesn’t have time for inspiration. Pinehurst No. 2 and Shinnecock don’t have it either, but Merion is soaked in it.
LA North? If duende was at the door, members would direct it to the service entrance, but only from 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. so there’s not a scent of it there. Duende is front-door, red-carpet – only it arrives at its leisure and has never graced LA North.
But it's draped all over The Country Club, though.
Frazier opined that to observe someone or something with duende (is to) “feel icy fingers running down our spine,” so it’s understandable that in another era Arnold Palmer had buckets of duende and so, too, Lee Trevino and Johnny Miller, but not Jack Nicklaus or Tom Watson. Crazy, huh? But duende isn’t about the most wins and the biggest trophy rooms, because if that was the barometer then Jack Burke Jr. wouldn’t have had any duende. Instead, he overflowed with it. And so, too, did Paul Harney, for that matter.
Mickey Wright most certainly had duende, as did Meg Mallon, and thumbs up to both Se Ri Pak and Lorena Ochoa. Annika Sorenstam, no. Karrie Webb, yes. Laura Davies, no. Judy Rankin, oh my yes.
Sunglasses and hat deals might have something to do with it, but you don’t feel a lot of duende in the pro golf world these days. Rory McIlroy had it, seemed to lose it, but in a nonsensical way the American Ryder Cup crowd poured loads of it back into the Northern Irishman’s till.
Scottie Scheffler is immersed in duende, as is Tommy Fleetwood and by all means Jordan Spieth still has it head to toe, even more so when said head and toes are faced with a precarious shot around trees and over a bunker.
Patrick Cantlay is a definite no, ditto Collin Morikawa and Bryson DeChambeau, who would probably just take a driver and smash duende if it came knocking. Alas, duende doesn’t come knocking; it is there or it isn’t.
It envelopes the story of Bobby Jones and both Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson, but let's never overlook Marion Hollins' life story. Duende through and through.
Always, it’s been there with Adam Scott. But what you get with Rickie Fowler is genuine goodness, not duende. In a strange way, it occurs to me that Edoardo Molinari might have duende but what definitely hasn’t got any is the label “strokes gained.” Oh, and the dubious U.S. Task Force? No duende there, for certain.
Of all the stories that resonate in golf, Marion Hollins' is as compelling as anyone's. Pure duende.
Fountain chronicled how “That certain something” is the headline that appeared over Frazier’s first duende column in February of 1963. In it, Frazier showed he did have a feel for golfers because he wrote that “(Jack) Dempsey had duende – he and Walter Hagen . . . ” and a list of other notables of the era followed. A small snippet, perhaps, but enough to have faith in my powers of observation that Frazier, were he alive today, would sense very little duende on the pro golf scene.
Could it be that being grossly overpaid, suffocatingly over-pampered, and ridiculously over-logoed, these pro golfers feel no need to use personality, guile, and charm to build a fan base? Methinks yes.
Methinks, also, that golf at the municipals and the publics and the resorts is booming and none of it is owed to the PGA Tour. Golf is hugely popular because golf is inherently brilliant in so many ways and thus do you find oodles of duende at those levels, though clearly it’s not everywhere.
There is the simple sight of three or four young kids, golf bags slung of their shoulders, walking down the first fairway, for instance. Oh, how that is duende to the max. But if those same kids were in a powered golf cart? Not a chance at duende.
Powered golf carts, for sure, will never have duende, nor do push-carts, to be honest, though in both cases it’s understood that they are necessary evils. OK, maybe not evils. But necessary admissions, yes.
One-day member-guests have duende, and so do inter-club competitions and even wine-and-dine happenings. But calcuttas, three-day tournaments, and those ABCD events are without a drip of duende.
Good, tidy practice ranges where shag bags with quality golf balls are available have duende brushed on in layers. Those driving ranges where the idea is to play loud music and sell rivers of beer? Well, they serve a purpose, just don’t expect to find a morsel of duende.
Short walks from greens to tee is duende magnified. Needing to ask other groups for directions to the seventh tee is hemispheres away from duende. There’s no duende to stopping at the turn to grab a hot dog, calling in a food order at the eighth green, or packing beers into a cooler on the powered golf cart.
But building time into your day to sit with your foursome and hopefully another foursome? Duende personified.
