Michael Bamberger > Quotes

“Golf is like everything else. You plan. Then real life intervenes.”
― Michael Bamberger, The Second Life of Tiger Woods

“The scream is the great multitasker of human expression. It covers agony, ecstasy, relief, frustration. It's especially useful when you're at a loss for words.
Tiger did a lot of screaming that afternoon. With Joe. Coming off the green by himself. Walking toward the clubhouse, in response to his fans. His people. Primal screaming, his mouth so open you could count his teeth. Golf is famously a game for whispering. Roger Maltbie, in the NBC Sports trailers, is the Golf Whisperer. Spectators use their library voices. Players and caddies confer quietly. Golf, Calvinist by origin and reserved by tradition, had never heard such screaming, the likes of Tiger Woods, either. Tiger had won at Augusta, the place where he got the first of his fifteen, and a dam had burst.”
― Michael Bamberger, The Second Life of Tiger Woods

“That made sense to me. More than any sport I know golf provides an all-encompassing code. The game's unwritten rules elicit socially redeeming behavior; when a match is over, you shake your opponent's hand. The game's written regulations place all players on an equal footing; everybody starts from behind the tee markers. Golf is a world unto itself.

Standing at the head of a course in the early light of a late-summer day, with the fog lifting and the sheep bleating grass clippings sticking to the sides of your shoes and the air smelling of damp wool, the golf course is a sanctuary. You wonder: What's in store for me today? There's hope in your voice, of course. Without hope, there is no golf.”
― Michael Bamberger, To the Linksland: A Golfing Adventure

“Ballard had made an intensive study of Ben Hogan and his “half a left arm.” It was a phrase Hogan used, as a right-handed golfer, to keep the left arm, from the top of the shoulder to the elbow, connected to the body throughout the swing. Ballard devoted his teaching life to this principle. All Ballard players—Curtis, Rocco, Sutton, Luis—make that move. They’re zealots about it.”
― Michael Bamberger, The Playing Lesson: A Duffer's Year Among the Pros

“meeting and three hundred people showed up. They said, ‘We don’t care how many Japanese die of pneumonia, we don’t want your bloody changing room.’ Every change is resisted, regardless of its merits. So Beveridge is not a popular chap.” It would be hard to imagine Old Tom getting worked up about changing rooms. He was a man who walked to the sea every morning, including the winter months, and went for a quick dip—three strokes out, three strokes in. It was his elixir. Then he’d walk across the first and last holes of the Old Course, dripping, and return to his flat above his shop. “The Old Course is a phenomenon,” Beveridge said. “The New Course is a better course, per se, a better test of golf, but you cannot convince the people of that. It is simply not the Old Course. People have been conditioned by books and articles on the Open to think of the Old Course as truly the Home of Golf, as the course every golfer must play, as Mecca. They come here with this great feeling of anticipation, with this idea that they’re going to savor their every shot, and document a goodly portion of their round on film or videotape. They must complete every hole, no matter what kind of score they run up, so they can have all the boxes in their scorecard filled up, so they can keep their scorecard. They’ll say, ‘I shot a hundred and thirteen on the Old Course, and I counted every last stroke.’ “The ultimate beauty of the Old Course is that it is not fair, and in that it approximates life. You can do all the planning you like, but in the end the Old Course has the final say. If you make a shot, you must accept the outcome. You can’t play it again. That is preparation”
― Michael Bamberger, To the Linksland

“All the while, an intensely personal real-time documentary was being shot, with the help of seventy-five CBS cameras, about a man, private by nature but famous by deed, trying to reclaim a lost life while starting a new one, and doing so with millions of people watching.”
― Michael Bamberger, The Second Life of Tiger Woods

“In rich detail, Ken told us that on the second hole of the opening round, Hogan got stuck while standing over a putt. Hogan had the yips. “I can’t take it back, Ken,” Hogan said. “Nobody gives a shit, Ben,” Ken said back. That bit of wise-guy humor was evidently all Hogan needed to hear: At age fifty-three and playing barely any tournament golf, he finished twelfth. Venturi finished three shots behind. Palmer was leading by seven with nine holes left and lost to Billy Casper in a playoff. Ken”
― Michael Bamberger, Men in Green

“most every golfer over the age of fifty has to make some sort of adjustment while putting, some sort of concession to frayed nerves. The”
― Michael Bamberger, The Ball in the Air: A Golfing Adventure

“party, and because I’m a sportswriter, some hostesses confuse me with the witty scribes they remember from old TV shows, Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple, maybe. Anyway, we’re invited to some nice gigs. I am not a party person,”
― Michael Bamberger, The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale and Lost

“Because it gives us energy, Michael, that's the single best thing about the game. The better we play, the more energy we get. From now on, ask yourself, after every round, if you have more energy than before you began. 'Tis much more important than the score, Michael, much more important than the score.”
― Michael Bamberger, To the Linksland: A Golfing Adventure