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Speaker 2: The fried egg requires a different technique. What you need
Speaker 2: to do is actually square the face so they'll dig
Speaker 2: down underneath that bad lie and propel that ball right
Speaker 2: out onto.
Speaker 3: The green Here's it's a playing out of a buried
Speaker 3: lion of Bunker is completely different than playing out of
Speaker 3: a night and clean lion of greenside Buker.
Speaker 4: You need to be aggressive on it's sitting cleanly or
Speaker 4: it's Frida Egg. Well, we've all faithd it the dreaded
Speaker 4: fried egg and not to be cleared, though it's actually
Speaker 4: a pretty easy shock to hit.
Speaker 1: It was eighteen ninety eight. Joe Mitchell was the professional
Speaker 1: at a golf club in the Cleveland, Ohio area. One day,
Speaker 1: a member named Coburn Haskell arrived and he handed Joe
Speaker 1: a golf ball. According to an account in the BEF
Speaker 1: Goodrich Company Archives, here's what happened next.
Speaker 3: Hit this ball for me, mister Haskell, requested of Joe.
Speaker 3: The ball looked exactly like the usual ball, the cover
Speaker 3: having been pressed in the same mold, and Joe took
Speaker 3: his stance and walloped it, with never a thought that
Speaker 3: he was assisting at the making of history. Out across
Speaker 3: the fairway of the first hole was a bunker which
Speaker 3: never had been carried by anybody. It was so far
Speaker 3: from the tea that only an occasional tremendous poke with
Speaker 3: the old gutty would send the ball rolling into it
Speaker 3: in dry weather. And it was right over the middle
Speaker 3: of that bunker that Joe's drive with the new ball
Speaker 3: sailed high in the air, landing yards beyond. Joe Mitchell
Speaker 3: stood watching the ball with eyes and mouth wide open.
Speaker 3: Then he let out a yell and began a sort
Speaker 3: of dance. Then he began to implore mister Haskell to
Speaker 3: tell him if he was dreaming, and if not, what
Speaker 3: was in that ball?
Speaker 1: What was in it was basically rubber. Here's how the
Speaker 1: story usually goes. Coburn Haskell was visiting a friend at
Speaker 1: the good Rich rubber factory in Akron. There, Haskell picked
Speaker 1: up some elastic rubber thread, wound it around and around itself,
Speaker 1: and the resulting ball bounced like a grasshopper. Haskell, who
Speaker 1: was an avid golfer, had an idea. He asked the
Speaker 1: factory workers to encase the ball in a layer of
Speaker 1: gutter percha, and that's how in eighteen ninety eight he
Speaker 1: invented the wound core golf ball. Five years later, the
Speaker 1: Haskell ball had taken over the game and redefined it
Speaker 1: in ways we're still arguing about today. This is Friday Stories.
Speaker 1: I'm Garrett Morrison. This episode is the second of three
Speaker 1: to take a closer look at the golf ball, its design,
Speaker 1: its history, and its impact on the game. Each installment
Speaker 1: focuses on a different revolution in golf ball technology. Part
Speaker 1: one told the story of the gut of Percha ball,
Speaker 1: which changed who could play the game. Part two will
Speaker 1: consider the Haskell ball, which I think changed something about
Speaker 1: the very essence of golf, or at least how we
Speaker 1: think and talk about it. Basically, when the Haskell arrived,
Speaker 1: golf had a decision to make ban it and become
Speaker 1: a game fixed in time, separate from the modern world,
Speaker 1: or embrace it and become a game that accommodates science
Speaker 1: and technology, that adjusts its playing fields and even its
Speaker 1: rules to keep up with the times. That was the choice,
Speaker 1: and the brightest minds in golf battled over it in
Speaker 1: the early years of the twentyth century, and today, somehow
Speaker 1: we're still having the same debate.
Speaker 4: If you know something about the history, the debate today
Speaker 4: sometimes lapses into verbatim verbatim sentences. I mean it literally,
Speaker 4: it's the same sentence.
Speaker 1: That's Robert Crosby, a golf historian. And in this episode,
Speaker 1: Bob is my guide through the post Haskell moment, a
Speaker 1: moment that in many ways created the golf world as
Speaker 1: we know it now, and at the center of it
Speaker 1: all was an Englishman named John Lowe.
Speaker 4: John Lowe was a remarkably precocious, remarkably brass, self confident
Speaker 4: Avid golfer.
Speaker 1: By the mid eighteen nineties, Lowe had regular bylines in
Speaker 1: golf magazines, and when the governing body of British golf,
Speaker 1: the RNA, formed a rules committee in eighteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: he was a member. Just a few years before that
Speaker 1: he had been a student at Cambridge. I didn't realize
Speaker 1: that he was so young when all of this was happening.
Speaker 5: He was a kid.
Speaker 4: He's not just another letter in the letter box that
Speaker 4: you would find reproduced and say golf illustrated. He's leading
Speaker 4: the debate. He's a remarkably outgoing, very bright, incredibly articulate
Speaker 4: and extraordinarily self confident for somebody his age.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen oh one, John Lowe was already a
Speaker 1: prominent figure in the game. In nineteen oh one was
Speaker 1: the year that the Haskell ball made its debut in Britain.
Speaker 4: A couple of balls appeared and they were given to
Speaker 4: Horace Hutchinson, who then gave a couple of the balls
Speaker 4: to John Lowe and others of his friends, and they
Speaker 4: played with it at Saint Andrew's.
Speaker 1: Right away low saw that this ball was different.
Speaker 4: Lowe writes about he took one of the balls and
Speaker 4: dropped it on the floor and I guess the RNA clubhouse,
Speaker 4: and the ball bounced over his head. It was clear
Speaker 4: from the get go that it was a longer.
Speaker 1: Ball, Yet neither Low nor his friends took the Haskell
Speaker 1: all that seriously.
Speaker 4: At first, they thought it was just a novelty.
Speaker 1: Because the ball was so lively, they assumed it would
Speaker 1: be harder to put and chip with.
Speaker 4: It turned out that you could adjusted that pretty easily.
Speaker 1: And the Haskell, already popular in America, caught on like
Speaker 1: wildfire in England and Scotland, so.
Speaker 4: That by nineteen oh two it was played everywhere.
Speaker 1: By then, John Low knew a couple of things about
Speaker 1: this ball. First, it went much farther than the gutty.
Speaker 4: The estimate varied from twenty yards to four yards farther,
Speaker 4: But it was a ball that clearly left the club
Speaker 4: face at a higher rate of speed than any gutty
Speaker 4: could ever hope to do.
Speaker 1: Second, and this is the most important thing, it introduced
Speaker 1: a whole new method of designing a golf ball. The
Speaker 1: gutty had just been a solid hunk of hardened gum.
Speaker 1: Aside from experimenting with dimples, there wasn't much an inventor
Speaker 1: could do with it.
Speaker 4: The gutty was the gutty. It just was a technology
Speaker 4: at a dead end.
Speaker 1: But it soon became clear that the wound ball design
Speaker 1: had opened up a new set of possibilities for the manufacturers.
Speaker 4: The leap forward with the Haskell was that it had
Speaker 4: a core, sometimes made of something solid, sometimes made of
Speaker 4: something liquid, surrounded by a wound bands of rubber at
Speaker 4: a certain tension level, and then covered by some sort
Speaker 4: of rubber covering. It was a whole new kind of ball,
Speaker 4: but it introduced a whole concept that there would be
Speaker 4: better and better balls coming along on a fairly regular
Speaker 4: basis that would be yet longer, yet more durable.
Speaker 1: And that was why John Lowe became worried, so much.
Speaker 4: So that low goes to the RNA Autumn meeting in
Speaker 4: nineteen o two and says, guys, who got this something
Speaker 4: about this bomb? This is going to render obsolete the
Speaker 4: best golf courses we know. The RNA responds by saying,
Speaker 4: and Low thought hopefully that yeah, we'll address it at
Speaker 4: the spring meeting in the nineteen oh three spring meeting.
Speaker 4: In the meantime, let's do some checking and look look
Speaker 4: into it and see exactly how much farther it flies,
Speaker 4: Let's see what the effect is having. I'm scoring. By
Speaker 4: the time of the May nineteen oh three meeting, it's
Speaker 4: pretty clear to everybody that the ball is, that it
Speaker 4: represents an enormous leap in ball performance, that it is
Speaker 4: indeed having an effect on how golf courses are played. Nonetheless,
Speaker 4: and this is what angers Low, and he stays angry
Speaker 4: about this for the rest of his life. Notwithstanding all
Speaker 4: of that, the RNA refuses to ban it.
Speaker 1: Low felt that this decision at its root was self serving.
Speaker 4: It wasn't just that they thought the ball was okay.
Speaker 4: They didn't. They agreed it was a bad thing for
Speaker 4: the game, But they made and this is what angered
Speaker 4: Love so much. They made a decision not to ban
Speaker 4: it because of its popularity, and that in turn, was
Speaker 4: based I think, on fears that if they did do so,
Speaker 4: no one would pay attention to them anymore.
Speaker 1: So the Haskell in effect became the new standard ball.
Speaker 1: John Low was pissed, and we've already established that he
Speaker 1: wasn't exactly shy, so he started firing off letters to
Speaker 1: magazine editors, and in his book Concerning Golf, he said
Speaker 1: his colleagues in the RNA were quote, neither prompt nor
Speaker 1: brave enough to carry out their own convictions.
Speaker 4: He was the bete noir of so many people, the
Speaker 4: target of cartoons mocked by other journalists, made fun of
Speaker 4: here and there, and it didn't phase him. He just
Speaker 4: marched on. He just soldiered ahead with his objections to
Speaker 4: the Haskell.
Speaker 1: So why did he feel so strongly about the ball? Well,
Speaker 1: it had to do with his overall vision of golf.
Speaker 4: Lowe was concerned first and foremost to try to preserve
Speaker 4: various attributes of the traditional Scottish game.
Speaker 1: These attributes belonged to three main categories, the courses, the rules,
Speaker 1: and the equipment. In the traditional Scottish game, as low
Speaker 1: knew it, you had courses on the seaside, links, rules
Speaker 1: based on the old Saint Andrew's codes, and clubs and
Speaker 1: balls fashioned locally out of wood iron and got a percha.
Speaker 4: Because he thought those attributes made the game the interesting
Speaker 4: game that it was, and not because those attributes would
Speaker 4: make it a popular game, but because those attributes had
Speaker 4: intangible benefits to golfers. They tested character, They developed perseverance,
Speaker 4: the ability to deal with good breaks and bad breaks,
Speaker 4: which all led to higher levels of camaraderie. It was
Speaker 4: a metaphysical view that saw golf as important to character
Speaker 4: and absent the attributes.
Speaker 5: Of the older game.
Speaker 4: Low believe those benefits to character were less available. The
Speaker 4: difficulty and unpredictability of the game is a feature, not
Speaker 4: a problem. And for so long as people have the idea,
Speaker 4: and this is a phrase that Glow returns to again
Speaker 4: and again that they that they want to quote conquer golf,
Speaker 4: tame golf, it's a completely incorrect mindset to bring to
Speaker 4: the game. The haskell sits in the middle of all
Speaker 4: of those issues. It is a way to short circuit
Speaker 4: the best parts of the game by overcoming the difficulties
Speaker 4: and unpredictability of the game.
Speaker 1: And so in the process of debating the Haskell ball,
Speaker 1: Low articulated an entire philosophy of golf. He liked to
Speaker 1: say he represented the conservative party of the game. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, conservative has a political meaning now as it
Speaker 1: did then, but this is different. Low used the word literally.
Speaker 1: He wanted to conserve the old ways of Scottish golf.
Speaker 1: He thought those old ways built character, bred camaraderie and
Speaker 1: were just beautiful in and of themselves. Opposed to this
Speaker 1: conservative party, Lo said was the Party of Equity, which
Speaker 1: he thought pandered to the masses by seeking to close
Speaker 1: the gap between weak and strong players. The Party of
Speaker 1: Equity thought an easier game would be a more popular game,
Speaker 1: and that was why they embraced the Haskell ball. This conflict,
Speaker 1: although specific to golf, had a lot to do with
Speaker 1: what was going on in the world.
Speaker 4: Let's go back to nineteen oh one nineteen oh two.
Speaker 4: The Victorian age was coming to an end. The Edwardian
Speaker 4: age was just a borning as they say, and Low
Speaker 4: was a young man very much an at Wardian. Younger
Speaker 4: men like Low, like Cold, like Fowler, like Simpson, were
Speaker 4: trying to sort out a different way to think about
Speaker 4: golf than their what their Victorian forebears had taught them.
Speaker 1: For the Victorians, broadly speaking, golf was about fairness. It
Speaker 1: was about a very public display of virtue. So to them,
Speaker 1: any course design, any rule change, any new club or
Speaker 1: ball that seemed to make the game more fair, more regular,
Speaker 1: was clearly good. But at Wardian golfers like John Lowe
Speaker 1: saw things differently.
Speaker 4: It was okay to just enjoy the challenges of the game.
Speaker 4: It didn't have to have a higher moral purpose, enjoy
Speaker 4: the process and learn from the process, whether or not
Speaker 4: it brings you, you know, gets you into heaven ultimately.
Speaker 1: And Gardians made golf more about private enjoyment, private self
Speaker 1: and provement.
Speaker 4: And there are things that I can do that I
Speaker 4: like to do, and that's okay, and that's okay, and golf,
Speaker 4: for Low is that thing. It might not make for
Speaker 4: better civil servants in the British Empire, but it's fun.
Speaker 1: In other words, fairness and public virtue were beside the point.
Speaker 1: Lo saw golf as an individual, heroic adventure, and anything
Speaker 1: that made the game less adventurous, easier, more predictable, more
Speaker 1: under control, he tended to reject.
Speaker 4: One of the key motivations for science is to take
Speaker 4: control of nature. Low's concern is those people that want
Speaker 4: to take control of golf. Golf is a man made thing,
Speaker 4: and it can be changed if man wants to change it.
Speaker 4: But if we are going to enjoy its real benefits,
Speaker 4: we have to leave it where it is, in its
Speaker 4: more or less traditional forms. And if that means golf
Speaker 4: becomes less popular, so be it.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 1: In the first decade of the twentieth century, it was
Speaker 1: the Victorians versus the Edwardians, the Party of Equity versus
Speaker 1: the Conservative Party, And while they all bickered, the British
Speaker 1: ball manufacturers got to work.
Speaker 4: By nineteen oh five nineteen oh six, a couple of
Speaker 4: years after the haskell Is not banned, they're all sorts
Speaker 4: of experimental balls coming out with different sorts of windings,
Speaker 4: different sorts of cores. Some use mercury, some use water,
Speaker 4: some all sorts of different things, virtually all of which
Speaker 4: didn't really pan out as advertised. But there was this
Speaker 4: wild experimentation going on. If you go into some of
Speaker 4: the British newspapers between nineteen oh five and nineteen eleven
Speaker 4: or twelve or so, the advertisements for golf balls are fascinated.
Speaker 4: I mean they're making all kinds of wild claim.
Speaker 1: What are some examples that you can think of?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, just you know, our golf ball will
Speaker 4: go much farther, last longer and staying round longer than
Speaker 4: the haschol You know, extraordinary links, you know, the usual
Speaker 4: advertising burgs you and I can sort of make up
Speaker 4: here on the spot are all for the first time
Speaker 4: being promulgated by golf ball manufacturers.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't just marketing, There were some real advances
Speaker 1: in technology happening.
Speaker 4: The ball was getting longer and longer again because there
Speaker 4: were simply no rules and why not try something.
Speaker 1: Yet by the end of the decade, a funny thing
Speaker 1: had happened. A lot. More golfers had come to agree
Speaker 1: with John Lowe that something needed to be done about
Speaker 1: the ball. This was partly because more edward ends had
Speaker 1: come of age, and it was partly because the so
Speaker 1: called Conservative Party had a number of eloquent supporters in
Speaker 1: the press, including perhaps the greatest golf writer of all
Speaker 1: time in Bernard Darwin. But most it had just become
Speaker 1: obvious to everyone that the rubber wound core ball did
Speaker 1: go farther and it was changing the game.
Speaker 4: As far as I know, every open venue made substantial
Speaker 4: additions to its length between say, nineteen oh five and
Speaker 4: nineteen ten. They had no choice, They really had no choice,
Speaker 4: and it was a shadow that hung over the game.
Speaker 4: Golf courses couldn't be sure at any point in time
Speaker 4: that they weren't going to have to undergo yet further
Speaker 4: major changes to match up with the golf ball.
Speaker 1: And this was how something like a consensus started to form.
Speaker 4: Nobody can deny that the new balls are really affecting
Speaker 4: golf courses. It's just in front of your face. Don't
Speaker 4: even begin to tell me it hasn't had an affecting
Speaker 4: golf course.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirteen, John mow became chairman of the RNA
Speaker 1: Rules Committee. The stage was set. The RNA and USGA
Speaker 1: were in touch, Various standards were being discussed, and the
Speaker 1: passing of the first ball rule in golf history seemed imminent.
Speaker 4: And then World War One hits and everything comes to
Speaker 4: a screech and hall.
Speaker 1: World War One brought devastation on a scale that Europeans
Speaker 1: could scarcely understand on the Western Front, trench warfare rage
Speaker 1: for four years. Obviously, no one was really thinking about
Speaker 1: golf at the time. Well, John Lowe sort of was.
Speaker 4: Even though normal functions that the RNA were shut down
Speaker 4: during World War One, low kept discussions of the ball
Speaker 4: alive among members of the Rules Committee.
Speaker 5: Wouldn't let it go.
Speaker 1: There were a few basic proposals on the table. J. H.
Speaker 4: Taylor h and Harold Hilton had an idea that what
Speaker 4: we ought to do is licensed ball manufacturers and as
Speaker 4: a condition to them making approved balls, we can inspect
Speaker 4: your factories to see how they make balls. That sort
Speaker 4: of thing.
Speaker 1: That would be a strict sort of regulation, giving the
Speaker 1: governing bodies direct control over all aspects of the ball,
Speaker 1: including its design and material composition. Not a popular idea
Speaker 1: among manufacturers. Other proposals were less stringent.
Speaker 4: Willie Parker was among the first to suggest the idea
Speaker 4: that we limit balls by limiting its weight and size.
Speaker 4: In other words, it can't weigh more than x or
Speaker 4: have a diameter of less than X.
Speaker 1: This would qualify as regulation, but it would also give
Speaker 1: manufacturers plenty of room to innovate. For John Lowe's part,
Speaker 1: he was frustrated that no one seemed to want to
Speaker 1: go back to the gutty, so he came up with
Speaker 1: an alternative, the floater.
Speaker 4: The ball that floats, easy standard to implement and enforce.
Speaker 4: Does it float.
Speaker 1: The floater did gain support among those fellow conservatives, but
Speaker 1: the problem was most golfers liked what the round ball
Speaker 1: did for them, and they knew that any ball that
Speaker 1: could float had no chance of beating the Haskell. The
Speaker 1: floater would effectively be a rollback to the gutty, and
Speaker 1: that was where things stood. When the war ended in
Speaker 1: late nineteen. The next year, the Daily Mail newspaper sponsored
Speaker 1: a tournament at Saint Andrews that came to be known
Speaker 1: as the Substitute Open. There, the ball issue took on
Speaker 1: some extra urgency.
Speaker 4: People were hitting the golf ball distances they had never
Speaker 4: seen before. People were hitting the fourteenth hole, the long
Speaker 4: hold at the old course with a driver and a
Speaker 4: seven iron. They were chipping onto the seventeenth holl for
Speaker 4: their second shots. People were shocked, stunned.
Speaker 1: So as soon as the RNA opened back up, John
Speaker 1: Lowe was ready.
Speaker 4: He was able to present to them a subcommittee that
Speaker 4: he had formed to investigate ball regulation, named the committee
Speaker 4: members and said, we're going to contact the USGA, ball
Speaker 4: manufacturers in the British PGA and get everybody on board.
Speaker 4: And that's exactly what they did. Immediately, the USGA writes back,
Speaker 4: says we're with you on this, buddy. Let's do it.
Speaker 4: Something's got to be done.
Speaker 1: But it turned out that other US golf organizations were
Speaker 1: less enthusiastic.
Speaker 4: The Western Golf Association and the USPGA oppose any ball
Speaker 4: rules at all. Nothing we want nothing. We want pure
Speaker 4: libertarian golf. I can play with any ball I want
Speaker 4: to play with. Get out of my face.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen twenty, the USGA traveled to Mierfield for
Speaker 1: a summit with the RNA, and the American delegates had
Speaker 1: bad news for John Lowe.
Speaker 4: We can't do the floater. If you're going to do
Speaker 4: the floater, we're out of here.
Speaker 1: Now. Keep in mind, at this point, Lowe was about
Speaker 1: fifty years old. He was no longer an upstart firebrand.
Speaker 1: He was an elder statesman, maybe a little gentler, maybe
Speaker 1: a little more diplomatic. So he decided to compromise on
Speaker 1: the ball role At Mierfield, the RNA and USGA agreed
Speaker 1: to regulate size and weight a minimum diameter of one
Speaker 1: point sixty two inches and a maximum weight of one
Speaker 1: point sixty two ounces, which was approximately the size and
Speaker 1: weight of the best performing balls of the time.
Speaker 4: But low thought, well, I was defeated on the floater,
Speaker 4: and that's a disappointment. But I got a rule, and
Speaker 4: that rule ought to be able to shield us from
Speaker 4: further ball improvements down the line, and I'll count that
Speaker 4: as a victory.
Speaker 1: That was May nineteen twenty, Just a few months later,
Speaker 1: before the rule even went into effect, the ball manufacturers
Speaker 1: had a surprise, they came out with prototype balls that
Speaker 1: fit the new specifications.
Speaker 4: It turned out the prototype balls went farther than the
Speaker 4: older ball, and everybody was in shock, absolute shock. Jaje
Speaker 4: Taylor says, Load, my girlfriend, Load, you really screwed this up.
Speaker 4: It's just a big miss.
Speaker 1: To this day, nobody knows exactly how the manufacturers did it.
Speaker 4: The theory is that they made the windings were tighter,
Speaker 4: there was a slightly thinner cover, that the core was
Speaker 4: made out of some sort of liquid know one. Loan
Speaker 4: never could figure out what they did. He was deeply
Speaker 4: frustrated by I think he felt betrayed by the manufacturers
Speaker 4: because they had been in close consultation with him up
Speaker 4: to the ball rule, and I think he felt backsided
Speaker 4: by them. I suspect, Garrett, this is rank speculation that
Speaker 4: the manufacturers got together and talked about it and they
Speaker 4: shared ideas. Their response to the ball rule was nothing
Speaker 4: short of glee. They loved it. Essentially, they didn't have
Speaker 4: to change anything on their manufacturing lines. And I also
Speaker 4: suspect they knew in the back of their mind ways
Speaker 4: to get around it, and lo and behold, that's exactly
Speaker 4: what they did. Almost immediately, so they were ready. They
Speaker 4: were just, but they had big I assumed they had
Speaker 4: a round of drinks and their officers.
Speaker 1: The events of nineteen twenty made a few things very clear. One,
Speaker 1: if you regulate just the size and weight of the
Speaker 1: ball instead of what it's made of, you're not doing much.
Speaker 4: If you give the manufacturer a max men limit, he's
Speaker 4: going to push it in ways that pikers like you
Speaker 4: and I can never imagine.
Speaker 3: Two.
Speaker 1: The new rule didn't settle the ball issue. It did
Speaker 1: the opposite. It ensured that the debate would continue.
Speaker 4: That that wrestling men. It took a war. That wrestling
Speaker 4: match between the ingenuity of the manufacturers and the rule
Speaker 4: makers in the game is very much still with us.
Speaker 1: And Three, golf itself would not be what John Low envisioned.
Speaker 1: It would not be an island in time. Instead, golf
Speaker 1: would change as the world changed, and whatever the current
Speaker 1: science was, the game would that it.
Speaker 6: But so the origin story is I was at a
Speaker 6: golf outing.
Speaker 1: That's Brett sergallis the author of Golf's Holy War, The
Speaker 1: Battle for the Soul of a Game in an Age
Speaker 1: of Science. He's telling me how he came up with
Speaker 1: the idea for the book, you're.
Speaker 6: On the potting green, you're hitting balls, you're eating like
Speaker 6: a box lunch of sliced apples, you know. And there
Speaker 6: was a guy named Skip Latella who was giving a
Speaker 6: lesson on the range. It was giving a demonstration. He
Speaker 6: was using these things called flex sword discs, which are
Speaker 6: like these hard rubber things, almost familiar now, where a
Speaker 6: student was standing on them, and he was kind of
Speaker 6: teaching the student how to move, and it didn't seem
Speaker 6: very interesting at all. And then Skip said, by her
Speaker 6: standing on these flex sor discs, she was innervating her
Speaker 6: deep muscle tissue, which was opening up the communication between
Speaker 6: the neurotransmitters neurotransmitters in her brain and her muscles, and
Speaker 6: so he was teaching her to relearn a complex motor pattern. Subconsciously,
Speaker 6: I for some reason, I was paying attention, and I
Speaker 6: was like, what the hell did that guy just say.
Speaker 1: This was two thousand and eight. Brett was a young
Speaker 1: reporter at the New York Post. He had played golf
Speaker 1: in high school but hadn't really kept track of the game.
Speaker 6: I still had my DCI irons and like my old
Speaker 6: nine to seventy five d driver, I didn't really know
Speaker 6: exactly too much about the cutting edge of the game.
Speaker 6: And I was like, well, what has happened to golf
Speaker 6: in this time where I haven't been paying super close attention.
Speaker 1: So Brett went up to skip Letella, the guy with
Speaker 1: the flexwor.
Speaker 6: Disks, and I was like, well, who uses these things?
Speaker 6: Like is there a teacher that uses them? And he
Speaker 6: said David Glenn's. So I went out and I spent
Speaker 6: some time with David Glenn's talked to him, and he
Speaker 6: had a guy down the range that was teaching named
Speaker 6: Henry Ellison who was like the exact opposite. He was
Speaker 6: like this spirit virtual, esoteric, like really just interesting guy.
Speaker 6: He had a long relationship with technology and then he
Speaker 6: had this horrible divorce with technology and ended up becoming
Speaker 6: like this spiritual guy. So I was like, hey, here's
Speaker 6: this conflict.
Speaker 1: Brett had stumbled upon a widening divide in twenty first
Speaker 1: century golf, a divide between science and art, between technology
Speaker 1: and spirituality, however you want to put it. And the
Speaker 1: more Breton I talked, the more I was reminded of
Speaker 1: the Party of Equity versus the Conservative Party, the Victorians
Speaker 1: versus the Edwardians, the manufacturers versus John Low.
Speaker 6: You know, it kind of represents a worldview. Do you
Speaker 6: think of life as something inherently solvable? Or is their
Speaker 6: inherent mystery? So how you kind of look at the
Speaker 6: world then projects on how you play and think about
Speaker 6: the game. How do we deal with like all of
Speaker 6: this increasing technology and all of this data that's now
Speaker 6: at our fingertips? You know, do we embrace science or
Speaker 6: do we kind of resist technology?
Speaker 1: Brett thinks these questions are especially keen for golfers.
Speaker 6: You want to grab hold of something tangible and you
Speaker 6: want to know that you have the answer. And golf
Speaker 6: is you're constantly like there's nothing, nothing's perfect. You never
Speaker 6: hit a perfect shot. It's just constantly dealing with small
Speaker 6: or large amounts of failure. And how do you deal
Speaker 6: with that?
Speaker 1: One way to deal with it is to turn to
Speaker 1: science and technology, whether that means flex or desks, track
Speaker 1: man numbers, or the latest ball in a chaotic game.
Speaker 1: These technological supplements give us more control, or at least
Speaker 1: the promise of it.
Speaker 6: It is the promise of having more control. When I
Speaker 6: got fitted for my driver, you know it's adjustable because
Speaker 6: every driver is now right and the fitter set it
Speaker 6: to a certain setting that was optimal for me, and
Speaker 6: I haven't touched it, you know, because to me it's
Speaker 6: it's like, okay, well I now know what this is
Speaker 6: going to do. Yeah, it's definitely there's definitely a feeling
Speaker 6: of more control. There's no question about that.
Speaker 1: So we know John Low well enough at this point
Speaker 1: to have an idea of what he would say here.
Speaker 1: Golf should be unpredictable, uncontrollable, and if there is control,
Speaker 1: the players, not the implements, should be the agents of it.
Speaker 1: Brett does kind of agree with that view.
Speaker 6: To me, the equipment's made it a little less interesting
Speaker 6: to watch at the pro level because the bad shots
Speaker 6: are not as bad.
Speaker 1: But he agrees with it only to a point.
Speaker 6: Am I going to give up my four sixty cc driver?
Speaker 6: Am I giving? Am I going to give up control?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 5: I don't. I don't want to. I don't want to
Speaker 5: get worse.
Speaker 1: In this way. Brett is like a lot of golfers,
Speaker 1: both now and one hundred years ago. He sees that
Speaker 1: equipment advances haven't all been positive, but he just can't
Speaker 1: get behind the idea of a rollback.
Speaker 6: Well, it's it's a nice idea. But it's it's impractical.
Speaker 6: It's good to think about. It's like a thought practice
Speaker 6: it's not going to happen, you know, So it's cool
Speaker 6: to like like it's like the guys that go out
Speaker 6: and where and wear plus fours and play with hickory.
Speaker 6: Cool like great, Go have fun, Go play from the front,
Speaker 6: Go play Marion from the fronties with Hickory.
Speaker 5: Awesome. That's not going to happen every day, you know.
Speaker 5: It's just it's it's over.
Speaker 6: Equipment has gotten to the point where it is and
Speaker 6: it's not going to go backwards. So I don't think
Speaker 6: that's the answer. It's it's romantic bordering on delusional in
Speaker 6: terms of practically working, the answer lies and how do
Speaker 6: we deal with what we have right now? Because that's practice,
Speaker 6: that's the practical situation of the game. Gotcha, Sorry, I
Speaker 6: didn't even know like crush that romantic idea, but.
Speaker 1: Fiddle with some of the vocabulary and we could have
Speaker 1: had the same conversation at Mierfield in nineteen twenty, maybe
Speaker 1: with John Lowe sitting nearby stewing. Yet some things have
Speaker 1: changed since nineteen twenty, and the way we talk about golf,
Speaker 1: for one, thing. Professional golfers have far more of a
Speaker 1: voice now, and generally speaking, they side with the Victorians.
Speaker 4: The dominance of professional players over the culture of the
Speaker 4: game is now almost complete.
Speaker 1: That's Bob Crosby. Again, you've probably figured this out, but
Speaker 1: he's an Edwardian.
Speaker 4: If you are playing golf in order to put food
Speaker 4: on the table for your family, you will have a
Speaker 4: very very different concept of how golf ought to operate
Speaker 4: as a sport than if you are playing it as
Speaker 4: an amateur then playing it for pleasure or playing it
Speaker 4: because it's interesting and challenging. Between those two then diagrams,
Speaker 4: there's a very little overlap.
Speaker 1: And today the Party of Equity has pushed the Conservative
Speaker 1: Party to the margins of golf, and we're all more
Speaker 1: or less having the same debate we did in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds, but with one big difference.
Speaker 4: The difference, and I mean this to be controversial. The
Speaker 4: difference is that decide defending the conservative view of the
Speaker 4: game during those first two decades of the twentieth century
Speaker 4: was far more articulate and effective in making the case
Speaker 4: for conservatism than the Conservatives have been today. There is
Speaker 4: no one alive today that writes as well as Bernard Darwin,
Speaker 4: John Lowe, Tom Simpson. That bothers me. If you want
Speaker 4: to defend the conservative view of golf today, the place
Speaker 4: to go learn how best to do that is we
Speaker 4: read stuff from nineteen ten.
Speaker 1: There's something sad about that.
Speaker 4: There's something very sad about but there you are. You
Speaker 4: can't do much better, So borrow steel whatever you have
Speaker 4: to do.
Speaker 1: On that note, how about we borrow a little John
Speaker 1: low Towards the end of our conversation, I asked Bob
Speaker 1: to read me the final paragraph of Lowe's nineteen twelve
Speaker 1: essay Golf and the Man.
Speaker 4: What we desire to see is that men should act
Speaker 4: nobly and chivalrously by the game, having no regard for
Speaker 4: any little chance or trick which may give them an
Speaker 4: opportunity for personal display or game. They must love the game,
Speaker 4: but love it honorably. Man must continue to fight his battle,
Speaker 4: and fight it bravely, but golf must remain unconquerable. Golf
Speaker 4: and the Man is It is a deeply philosophical look
Speaker 4: into what what golf is? What constitutes golf? What are
Speaker 4: the constituent parts which, if removed, it ceases to be
Speaker 4: the same thing? I think he would say, there are
Speaker 4: three legs to that school. One are is the design
Speaker 4: of golf courses. That's what we play on, the rules
Speaker 4: we play under, and the kind of implements we play with.
Speaker 4: Any sort of material change to any of those changes
Speaker 4: the nature of the game itself, it becomes something else.
Speaker 4: That's what he was concerned over the course of his
Speaker 4: career in protecting I think at the end of the
Speaker 4: day he was reasonably successful with the rules and reasonably
Speaker 4: successful with golf architecture. His influence continues today in the
Speaker 4: sense that we still look back to older Saint Andrew's
Speaker 4: traditions for both of those. I think he probably would
Speaker 4: feel today he'd lost on the ballf ask the ontological
Speaker 4: question what is golf? And he had the answers.
Speaker 1: John Lowe's defeat on the ball front set the terms
Speaker 1: for the modern game. As long as the ball was
Speaker 1: a certain size and weight, it could be made of anything.
Speaker 1: It could even be made of space age plastics. That's
Speaker 1: next on Friday egg Stories. This was the sixth episode
Speaker 1: of Frida egg Stories and the second installment of our
Speaker 1: Ball series. It was produced and hosted by me Garrett
Speaker 1: Morrison and was edited and engineered by Jay Vierick. Our
Speaker 1: executive producer is Andy Johnson. Many thanks to Bob Crosby
Speaker 1: and Brett Sir Gallis. Brett's book once again is called
Speaker 1: Golf's Holy War, and Bob's essays can be found in
Speaker 1: the Journal through the Green check out the links in
Speaker 1: the show notes and thanks for listening.
Speaker 3: The Pip