Opinion & Analysis
Finding poetry in golf
Relax, friends. This article is not one more attempt to try to convince you to love poetry. It is about perspective.
One of the best things about being a super-senior golfer is that we have “perspective.” That may only be a nice way of saying that we can remember golf shots from July 6, 1978, but can’t remember where we put our car keys last night. I prefer to think of perspective as the ability our experience gives us to see golf as the historical, sociological and even literary phenomenon that it is.
For younger golfers, the sport is the round they played last weekend. For super seniors, golf is what we have done every weekend all our long, long, long lives. (I could add another long here but I think you get the idea.) This long association can’t help but lead super seniors to ask questions that youngsters don’t think to ask or maybe don’t have the time to ask. For example, consider the question: what do we love about golf?
Super seniors love to get the competitive juices flowing, just like we always have. We play golf against each other. Look at any men’s club. There will be a large percentage of the group who will be in our age group. It’s fun to beat people our own age. But isn’t the highlight of your week when you take a buck or two from the flat-bellies that hit the ball a mile but can’t sink a putt?
We play golf against the course. Even if we have played the same course every week for 20 years, we can always find some view of a hole that we have never seen before. (Most of my “new views” unfortunately seem to be the ones I find from behind an old tree after an errant shot.) Golf courses have a way of making our lives exciting. There are times that you would swear that a really good course is a living creature, changing and morphing into a new place bent on pushing and challenging us to hit a new shot or forcing us to remember how we miss-hit an old one.
We play golf against ourselves. The mystery that is golf manifests itself when we have to reach into parts of our minds and bodies, to find strength we didn’t know we had, and to fight through body parts we know we have but would rather forget because they don’t work as well as they used to. This constant battle between our physical strengths, weakness and the subtleties of the golf swing keep golf a fresh challenge even if we are playing as a single, without any competition except ourselves.
And we love the opportunity golf affords us to find beauty. For super seniors, the perspective we have developed allows us to see beauty on a very different level than we saw it in our youth. We see that beauty in the friendships we have nurtured over the years with our favorite foursomes. We see the beauty of the game itself, in the challenges it presents to us. We see the beauty of the well-made swing. We see the beauty in the equipment we use. And it goes without saying that on the courses we play, we see the beauty that nature presents to us on some of the most beautiful places in the world.
All of the things we love about golf should make it an ideal subject for literature. Literature adds a context to our understanding of golf and what it means to be a golfer. Golf has been a subject of interest for both fiction and non-fiction prose for many years. Golf books line the walls of many of our “man caves” (and the female equivalent). But for reasons I can only speculate about, there are comparatively few serious works of poetry about golf.
I hold myself very fortunate to be among those who love both golf and poetry. The comparative lack of golf poetry is very disappointing but to some extent understandable. I understand why most people could not care less about poetry. Like golf, I know that poetry is a difficult thing to love. Most people have a track record with poetry going back to their youngest educational experiences. They may have been forced to memorize a poem for a grade-school class. In high school, they went through the process of scanning for rhyme and metric patterns. In college, they fought their way through the obscure references and archaic language in poems that had little or no apparent relevance to what career they were really interested in.
While this article isn’t an attempt to coerce anyone into suddenly developing the kind of love for poetry that I have, there are striking parallels between golf and poetry that do make the lack of golf poetry puzzling. I am hopeful that these commonalities might be interesting to super senior golfers. After all, our status gives us the perspective to explore such things.
What are the parallels? Here are a few that I have found. For example, don’t most people have strong feelings about golf like most people have strong feelings about poetry? These critics are often not satisfied with ignoring both golf and poetry. Many people cultivate an active dislike bordering on prejudice against them.
Why do people have such strong feelings again poetry and golf? Some of their objections are actually based on the same misconceptions. Many people see both golf and poetry as elitist. Poetry is for the intellectual snob, they will tell you. And many people will tell you that golf is the sport of the economic and cultural privileged only.
Both golf and poetry can be frustrating to those who need a black-and-white finality in their lives. Great poetry can never be totally understood. A poem’s “meaning” may be obscure or multidimensional. It may even change over time. There is no right or wrong to a poem’s meaning. This lack of finality can drive some people crazy.
Our sport can drive people crazy for a similar lack of finality. Golf can never be mastered, only approached. Golf is a sport that cannot be truly dominated, even by the greatest golfers who ever lived. Golf is never “over.”
Given the commonalities between golf and poetry, it seems logical then that there must be at least a few great poems about golf. Being the inquisitive sort, I decided to find a few examples. In my search, I guess I wasn’t surprised to discover no shortage of golf limericks. I also found silly rhymes that hardly deserve to pass as poetry. But what of the kind of poetry Robert Frost described as “begin[ning] as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness”?
I’ve found that that caliber of golf poem is hard to find. And when you do find one, it is a treasure that would be worth sharing. One recent find is just such a treasure. It’s a very short but poignant poem called “A Bridge to Sunset” by Aldo Kraas. It speaks to super-senior golfers because of what I see is its themes: the timelessness of golf, the fellowship we find in the sport, and why golf remains so central to our lives, even as our skills decline.
A Bridge to Sunset
The bridge to sunset
Is located inside a beautiful golf course
And the man I know goes golfing every weekend
With his friends
Super-senior golfers can see the first glimpses of sunset on the horizon. My favorite time to be on the golf course is the evening. Thankfully, my love of golf at sunset isn’t shared by everyone. At sunset, there are some days when I am literally the only person on the course. It’s the time the world of golf finally operates at my speed. I have trouble walking these days so my speed is slow. At sunset, there is no pressure to move along. I can take my time and stop when I need to stop. I don’t have to be “guilted” into using a cart. I can tote a few clubs in my old carry bag again. I can hear the wind and visit with the geese. I can watch the muskrats get ready for nightfall. We have hawks on our course. At sunset I can watch them swoop and soar, dive and snatch a mouse for an evening snack.
Sunset also represents the coming end of my days. Fortunately that time isn’t exactly near, but it is nearer than it ever has been. At sunset on the course, I remember people I once knew who have walked into the sunset. I remember my dad who taught me the game and with whom I spent many wonderful late evenings on the course. I think about my uncles who played the game with vigor if not with skill. Sunset makes me think about those golfers who walked these same fairways, who laughed and struggled with the game during their days. In the quiet of sunset, I can almost hear their voices. You can hear them too at sunset, if you listen.
The poet’s imagery of the bridge is important to golfers but even more so to super-seniors. One of the most enduring images many of us have is Arnie, Jack and Tom crossing the Swilken Bridge at Saint Andrews — the symbolic crossing-over from being a competitor to being a legend. Most courses have less famous bridges but bridges that we know we will someday cross for the last time. Every time we cross them, even if we don’t think of the final crossing we‘ll all make one day, we know we are moving towards new stages of life.
The last line of the poem speaks of importance golfers attach to our friendships. Golfers collect friends. Our golfing buddies are sometimes our closest friends. They are people we see rain or shine, in the heat and cold, year in and year out. We may not know their children’s names. We may not even know if they have children. We may not know whether they are married, divorced, gay, straight, homeless or wealthy. We may not know what they do for a living, whether they are Democrats or Republicans, Methodists, Marxists, Martians or Free Masons.
This is an aspect of golf that most non-golfers cannot understand. My wife thinks it’s amazing beyond words when I don’t have any idea that one of my golfing buddies is dating one of her friends, has lost his job or is being promoted to be president of the bank. We don’t share those things. We share golf. And in sharing golf, we share something much more profound than who they are. We know “who they are.”
I know if they are dependable or lazy, if they are patient or a “foot-tapper” and if they are honorable or a cheat. I know if they make me feel better after a bad shot, whether they need to laugh or to be left to fight whatever battle they need to fight alone. I know if they pay their debts. I know if they are easily distracted. I know if I like them enough to spend four or five hours sitting next to them in a golf cart and not have to explain to them why I like poetry.
These are the people I am growing old with or, in the imagery of the poem, they are the people I am crossing the bridge with. We built the bridge, brick by brick, week after week, year after year. I will see them cross over that bridge at their last sunset. They will see me do the same in mine. I will miss them when they are gone over that bridge. I hope it’s their voices I hear in those beautiful sunset times when hawks swoop and the muskrats dive deep into their ponds.
Those voices that I hear sound very happy that they were golfers. I am very happy I am a golfer who loves poetry.
As the editor-in-chief of this website and an observer of the GolfWRX forums and other online golf equipment discourse for over a decade, I’m pretty well attuned to the grunts and grumbles of a significant portion of the golf equipment purchasing spectrum. And before you accuse me of lording above all in some digital ivory tower, I’d like to offer that I worked at golf courses (public and private) for years prior to picking up my pen, so I’m well-versed in the non-degenerate golf equipment consumers out there. I touched (green)grass (retail)!
Complaints about the ills of and related to the OEMs usually follow some version of: Product cycles are too short for real innovation, tour equipment isn’t the same as retail (which is largely not true, by the way), too much is invested in marketing and not enough in R&D, top staffer X hasn’t even put the new driver in play, so it’s obviously not superior to the previous generation, prices are too high, and on and on.
Without digging into the merits of any of these claims, which I believe are mostly red herrings, I’d like to bring into view of our rangefinder what I believe to be the two primary difficulties golf equipment companies face.
One: As Terry Koehler, back when he was the CEO of Ben Hogan, told me at the time of the Ft Worth irons launch, if you can’t regularly hit the golf ball in a coin-sized area in the middle of the face, there’s not a ton that iron technology can do for you. Now, this is less true now with respect to irons than when he said it, and is less and less true by degrees as the clubs get larger (utilities, fairways, hybrids, drivers), but there remains a great deal of golf equipment truth in that statement. Think about it — which is to say, in TL;DR fashion, get lessons from a qualified instructor who will teach you about the fundamentals of repeatable impact and how the golf swing works, not just offer band-aid fixes. If you can’t repeatably deliver the golf club to the golf ball in something resembling the manner it was designed for, how can you expect to be getting the most out of the club — put another way, the maximum value from your investment?
Similarly, game improvement equipment can only improve your game if you game it. In other words, get fit for the clubs you ought to be playing rather than filling the bag with the ones you wish you could hit or used to be able to hit. Of course, don’t do this if you don’t care about performance and just want to hit a forged blade while playing off an 18 handicap. That’s absolutely fine. There were plenty of members in clubs back in the day playing Hogan Apex or Mizuno MP-32 irons who had no business doing so from a ballstriking standpoint, but they enjoyed their look, feel, and complementary qualities to their Gatsby hats and cashmere sweaters. Do what brings you a measure of joy in this maddening game.
Now, the second issue. This is not a plea for non-conforming equipment; rather, it is a statement of fact. USGA/R&A limits on every facet of golf equipment are detrimental to golf equipment manufacturers. Sure, you know this, but do you think about it as it applies to almost every element of equipment? A 500cc driver would be inherently more forgiving than a 460cc, as one with a COR measurement in excess of 0.83. 50-inch shafts. Box grooves. And on and on.
Would fewer regulations be objectively bad for the game? Would this erode its soul? Fortunately, that’s beside the point of this exercise, which is merely to point out the facts. The fact, in this case, is that equipment restrictions and regulations are the slaughterbench of an abundance of innovation in the golf equipment space. Is this for the best? Well, now I’ve asked the question twice and might as well give a partial response, I guess my answer to that would be, “It depends on what type of golf you’re playing and who you’re playing it with.”
For my part, I don’t mind embarrassing myself with vintage blades and persimmons chasing after the quasi-spiritual elevation of a well-struck shot, but that’s just me. Plenty of folks don’t give a damn if their grooves are conforming. Plenty of folks think the folks in Liberty Corner ought to add a prison to the museum for such offences. And those are just a few of the considerations for the amateur game — which doesn’t get inside the gallery ropes of the pro game…
Different strokes in the game of golf, in my humble opinion.
Anyway, I believe equipment company engineers are genuinely trying to build better equipment year over year. The marketing departments are trying to find ways to make this equipment appeal to the broadest segment of the golf market possible. All of this against (1) the backdrop of — at least for now — firm product cycles. And golfers who, with their ~15 average handicap (men), for the most part, are not striping the golf ball like Tiger in his prime and seem to have less and less time year over year to practice and improve. (2) Regulations that massively restrict what they’re able to do…
That’s the landscape as I see it and the real headwinds for golf equipment companies. No doubt, there’s more I haven’t considered, but I think the previous is a better — and better faith — point of departure when formulating any serious commentary on the golf equipment world than some of the more cynical and conspiratorial takes I hear.
Agree? Disagree? Think I’m worthy of an Adam Hadwin-esque security guard tackle? Let me know in the comments.
@golfoncbs The infamous Adam Hadwin tackle ? #golf #fyp #canada #pgatour #adamhadwin ? Ghibli-style nostalgic waltz – MaSssuguMusic
Episode #16 brings us Cliff McKinney. Cliff is the founder of Old Charlie Golf Club, a new club, and concept, to be built in the Florida panhandle. The model is quite interesting and aims to make great, private golf more affordable. We hope you enjoy the show!
Last week, I came across a reel from BBC Sport on Instagram featuring Scottie Scheffler speaking to the media ahead of The Open at Royal Portrush. In it, he shared that he often wonders what the point is of wanting to win tournaments so badly — especially when he knows, deep down, that it doesn’t lead to a truly fulfilling life.
View this post on Instagram
“Is it great to be able to win tournaments and to accomplish the things I have in the game of golf? Yeah, it brings tears to my eyes just to think about it because I’ve literally worked my entire life to be good at this sport,” Scheffler said. “To have that kind of sense of accomplishment, I think, is a pretty cool feeling. To get to live out your dreams is very special, but at the end of the day, I’m not out here to inspire the next generation of golfers. I’m not out here to inspire someone to be the best player in the world, because what’s the point?”
Ironically — or perhaps perfectly — he went on to win the claret jug.
That question — what’s the point of winning? — cuts straight to the heart of the human journey.
As someone who’s spent over two decades in the trenches of professional golf, and in deep study of the mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of the game, I see Scottie’s inner conflict as a sign of soul evolution in motion.
I came to golf late. I wasn’t a junior standout or college All-American. At 27, I left a steady corporate job to see if I could be on the PGA Tour starting as a 14-handicap, average-length hitter. Over the years, my journey has been defined less by trophies and more by the relentless effort to navigate the deeply inequitable and gated system of professional golf — an effort that ultimately turned inward and helped me evolve as both a golfer and a person.
One perspective that helped me make sense of this inner dissonance around competition and our culture’s tendency to overvalue winning is the idea of soul evolution.
The University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies has done extensive research on reincarnation, and Netflix’s Surviving Death (Episode 6) explores the topic, too. Whether you take it literally or metaphorically, the idea that we’re on a long arc of growth — from beginner to sage elder — offers a profound perspective.
If you accept the premise literally, then terms like “young soul” and “old soul” start to hold meaning. However, even if we set the word “soul” aside, it’s easy to see that different levels of life experience produce different worldviews.
Newer souls — or people in earlier stages of their development — may be curious and kind but still lack discernment or depth. There is a naivety, and they don’t yet question as deeply, tending to see things in black and white, partly because certainty feels safer than confronting the unknown.
As we gain more experience, we begin to experiment. We test limits. We chase extreme external goals — sometimes at the expense of health, relationships, or inner peace — still operating from hunger, ambition, and the fragility of the ego.
It’s a necessary stage, but often a turbulent and unfulfilling one.
David Duval fell off the map after reaching World No. 1. Bubba Watson had his own “Is this it?” moment with his caddie, Ted Scott, after winning the Masters.
In Aaron Rodgers: Enigma, reflecting on his 2011 Super Bowl win, Rodgers said:
“Now I’ve accomplished the only thing that I really, really wanted to do in my life. Now what? I was like, ‘Did I aim at the wrong thing? Did I spend too much time thinking about stuff that ultimately doesn’t give you true happiness?’”
Jim Carrey once said, “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.”
Eventually, though, something shifts.
We begin to see in shades of gray. Winning, dominating, accumulating—these pursuits lose their shine. The rewards feel more fleeting. Living in a constant state of fight-or-flight makes us feel alive, yes, but not happy and joyful.
Compassion begins to replace ambition. Love, presence, and gratitude become more fulfilling than status, profits, or trophies. We crave balance over burnout. Collaboration over competition. Meaning over metrics.
Interestingly, if we zoom out, we can apply this same model to nations and cultures. Countries, like people, have a collective “soul stage” made up of the individuals within them.
Take the United States, for example. I’d place it as a mid-level soul: highly competitive and deeply driven, but still learning emotional maturity. Still uncomfortable with nuance. Still believing that more is always better. Despite its global wins, the U.S. currently ranks just 23rd in happiness (as of 2025). You might liken it to a gifted teenager—bold, eager, and ambitious, but angsty and still figuring out how to live well and in balance. As much as a parent wants to protect their child, sometimes the child has to make their own mistakes to truly grow.
So when Scottie Scheffler wonders what the point of winning is, I don’t see someone losing strength.
I see someone evolving.
He’s beginning to look beyond the leaderboard. Beyond metrics of success that carry a lower vibration. And yet, in a poetic twist, Scheffler did go on to win The Open. But that only reinforces the point: even at the pinnacle, the question remains. And if more of us in the golf and sports world — and in U.S. culture at large — started asking similar questions, we might discover that the more meaningful trophy isn’t about accumulating or beating others at all costs.
It’s about awakening and evolving to something more than winning could ever promise.
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Charles
Jun 11, 2013 at 1:17 am
Thanks for the thoughtful piece. How about:
Breathe there a man with soul so dead,
That never to himself hath said,
‘This is my own, my native track’
Whole heart has ne’er within him burned
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d
From playing foreign tees, at back.
etc etc
I picked up the game at 50, ten years ago, and it took a while for me to see the poetic side …. but I have it now.
Sean
Jun 7, 2013 at 11:39 pm
Well done George. I picked up the game at 50 and have found there is much more to this game than the game.
yo!
Jun 6, 2013 at 3:20 pm
Cigar and single malt scotch … good excuse to play golf, or not …
Martin
Jun 6, 2013 at 7:40 am
Wonderful article! I started playing golf again five years ago, after ten years away from golf. I am not a senior, I am in my early forties. Since I started again I have been struggling with my game, I was a steady four index when I stopped playing. But I keep on chipping, pitching, putting, hitting balls on the range and of course walking the course and I am really enjoying it. Often I have been thinking that its just like poetry, which I am a big fan of. Lines from poems I like sometimes pop up in my head when I am on the course or lines from movies or novels. I have tried to talk about this with friends I am playing with, but I notice that most of them dont see it that way. I can play with two friends, and they both shoot mid eighties and I shoot mid nineties, but I can clearly see that I am enjoying myself more on the course then they do, because my poetic approach to golf… And this approach will eventually let me hit more scores in the seventies again. But thats just one aspect of the game. The poetic approach involves so much more than scoring.
Garrett Scott
Jun 4, 2013 at 11:07 pm
Well done George, I am proud to count you as one of my golf friends and one who like you will cross over that bridge some day, hopefully not in the near future. I know my time on the course and in life will be better because of time spent with friends like you.
Asleep
Jun 4, 2013 at 7:17 pm
Nicely done All i got.