 In other sports the opponent
is regarded as the enemy.
We seek by our actions
to disable him. In tennis our stroke defeats
him; in football our tackle lays him low.
This is not the way to
salvation, or more accurately, it is at one remove.
The golfer, on the other
hand is never directly affected by his opponents' actions.
He comes to realize that
the game is not against the foe, but against himself.
His little self.
That yammering fearful
ever-resistant self that freezes, chokes, tops, nobbles, shanks, skulls, duffs,
flubs.
This is the self we must
defeat."
from The Legend of Bagger
Vance, by Steven Pressfield
(photo: James McLean, professional golfer, Whitlock Golf Club, ca 1960)
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"...All sport is holy,
for it embodies the objectified
search for
the subjective experience
of yoga, meaning union, union with the divine.
But golf is supreme because
it more closely mirrors
the reality of the way to self-realization...
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