Not to go Captain Queeg on you – after all, he thought the strawberries unlocked the mystery to his quandary – but it was the wooden spatula that opened my eyes. That’s where it all made sense.
Needed as part of the dinner preparation, the wooden spatula was pulled out of the drawer and promptly it felt comfortable in my left hand. Instinctively a golfer’s grip was employed and my right hand slipped in so that the left thumb fit neatly into the lifeline of my right palm. Ignoring, for a moment, that the dumplings probably needed flipping, the spatula was incorporated in my shadow swings.
One, then a second, and a third quickly followed. Shadow swings with tempo and rhythm. It felt lovely, at least until the playlist landed on Bob Seger singing “Feel Like a Number” and with total aimlessness the wooden spatula was now a drumstick and imaginary tom-toms were being banged.
Golf club to drumstick. Such a seamless transition, and as my focus returned to the dumplings (eyeballs were upon me and this was dinner, after all) my mind settled upon the realization that golf and music are perpetually intertwined.
Not just because Noah Kahan a few weeks ago capped off his four consecutive sell-out concerts at Fenway Park by playing a round of golf at Boston Golf Club – and making an ace at the par-3 11th hole. Or because in previous generations singers such as Bing Crosby, Andy Williams, Glen Campbell, Sammy Davis Jr., and the Gatlin Brothers used their names to sponsor and promote PGA Tour tournaments. Or because a more recent generation of singers – Huey Lewis and Alice Cooper, Justin Timberlake and Darius Rucker, Jake Owen and Charles Kelley among them – have expressed a passion for the game and teed it up in prestigious pro-ams.
No, the parallel worlds of golf and music go much deeper than that – at least from my corner of the universe and my suspicion is others agree.
“I have never heard anyone say the words, ‘I don’t like music,’ ” said Steve Dederian, senior manager of communications at Mass Golf who is around golf daily and has also never heard the words “I don’t like golf.”
Welcome to the great intersection of passion because it has been reported that between 1.5 and 2.8 billion people across the globe attend music concerts and that 112.2 million people play golf.
Back in 1990 during the U.S. Junior Amateur out at Lake Merced in San Francisco, rules officials had to confer with a competitor who had headphones on. Was he listing to instructional tapes, which would have been a rules violation? No, he was listening to Taylor Dane music. Play on, he was told.
Rule 4.3a(4) in the USGA Rules of Golf states: Listening to general background music is technically allowed during a round, but using headphones to listen to music to eliminate distractions or help with swing tempo is strictly prohibited. Furthermore, local tournament committees and specific event organizers frequently implement a Local Rule completely banning electronic audio devices.
Listening to Bad Bunny on your iPhone in between shots, as one local competitor was doing recently, is OK. After all, Bad Bunny has never been known to help with one’s swing tempo.
He does, however, feed the thirst for good music and a good many of us have it in varying degrees.
Oh, you could use this to help cook your dinner -- but it doubles nicely as either a tool to help check your golf grip or a drumstick to play the imaginary tom-toms.
Personally, from Abba to Zevon, there are 96 playlists, and the number of songs downloaded onto my iPhone is in the thousands so the passion is quite intense. Does it rival the passion for golf? It comes close and there are great similarities in these pursuits, beyond the fact a wooden spatula can be used to improve the grip or as a drumstick.
For instance, debating which golfers are the best is a fruitless endeavor, one that rarely sparks my interest and a similar attitude is carried over to music. Load me up with stories or black and white clips on Harry Vardon or Gene Sarazen or Bobby Jones or Sam Snead or Ben Hogan; just spare me the drivel produced when they are compared against Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy.
Different eras, different equipment, different everything, and it’s shameless to ignore Byron Nelson, Gary Player, Arnold Palmer, Tom Watson, Ernie Els, and Scottie Scheffler.
It matters how good they were, not where they rank.
Likewise in music where ridiculous debates are often waged about the best guitarists ever. Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Brian May, Prince, Mark Knopfler, and Duane Allman get bandied about frequently. That such a list would leave out Keith Richards, Alvin Lee, Lyndsey Buckingham, Buddy Guy, B.B. King, Joe Satriana, Steve Vai, and perhaps a dozen others, is proof enough that such discussions should be avoided at all costs.
Shouldn’t it be enough that they are all brilliant, that some play rock better and others are magnificent at blues and still there are those who have mastered the blues-funk genre?
Just as it’s nonsensical to debate golfers and guitarists, don’t get me going on singers and songs. We know what we like, don’t we, so if you were to be told that the volume gets turned way up when the best lyricist of them all, Jimmy Buffet, fills the air, or Stevie Nicks sings “Silver Springs” or the words to Emmylou Harris’ “Red Dirt Girl” play in my head while riding the bogey train – One thing they don’t tell you about the blues is when you got ‘em you keep on falling ‘cause there ain’t no bottom – accept it as part of having a passion that needn’t be explained.
Ditto the great game of golf where in another chapter of my life Bruce Lietzke’s swing charmed me endlessly and the search for scores started with his name first. Never could there be too much written or too much read about Seve Ballesteros and nothing was more engaging than the stares and ferocity of those gents named Raymond Floyd, Curtis Strange, and Lanny Wadkins. (Of course, this was before my job required speaking to players.) None of that needs to be defended.
While there are differences between golf and music – relentlessly the former is played for immense pleasure despite my limited skills; there is nothing participatory about the latter where talents are non-existent – my eyes and ears know excellence when it crosses our paths.
So with fond memories of Tiger Woods’ 2000 U.S. Open and the overwhelming awe when those first sounds of Mark Knopfler’s riff into “Sultans of Swing" exploded in my ears, here’s a nod to those times when perfection has been nearly reached in my presence.
