Source: VT Golf Magazine | Issue: Summer 1997 | Author: Bill Noble
Synopsis: This article is about the Spanish decent journalist Royal Cortissoz and how he captured golf through literacy.
“Art is long and time is fleeting,” wrote Henry Wadsworth Longfellow more than a century ago. Chances are he wasn’t speaking of golf nor those who play it, yet he could have been, if the art in question is seen through the eyes of an art lover.
In this time of professional hype, where skill on the golf course is measured in dollars and cents rather than nourishment for the soul, the game itself has taken on mechanical-technical allure, and its heroes and heroines are those who drive a ball further, endorse more products and rush from tournament to tournament. The notion that golf offers more than here-and-now materialism seems quaint and unrealistic, until we pause to gaze at the game without a modern filter.
Do words like “enchanting,” “serene,” “masterpiece,” or “faith” fit our concept of the game? As we stride the fairways or linger over a putt, are sentiments of “beauty” and “joy” filling us? The answers, of course, depend upon who we are and where we are. But seen or experienced by an artiste, the game of golf can certainly evoke such descriptions.