Golf Ball

Object Lessons

by Harry J. Brown

In the history of sport, golf bears a unique relation to the natural world. The game evolved on the Scottish “links,” a peculiar terrain linking arable land and the rocky coast, which farmers could not domesticate as plowed land or pasture. Modern course design aims to simulate this semi-wild borderland, artificially constructing the water hazards, sand bunkers, and rough grass that occur naturally on the links. Golf simulates the effort to traverse and tame this landscape, with players hopping among islands of fairway and green while attempting to avoid hazards. In this simulated expedition, the golf ball functions as the player’s avatar, different from a baseball, soccer ball, or a billiard ball because it represents the attempt of a single person to navigate an unpredictable landscape. In this sense, the ball is an assertion of control over the natural world, an extension of the ego: a bad shot can arouse violent anger, while a good shot can feel sublime. Technical refinements in ball construction reflect ongoing attempts to enhance this sense of control. Consequently, golf course design has evolved in response to the evolution of the golf ball, which is now constrained by rigorous standards created to forestall the obsolescence of the world’s courses.

Despite their considerable technical refinements, golf balls reveal the futility of control. They inevitably disappear in plain sight and find their way into hazards. Golf balls play with people. They do things we do not anticipate as if by their own will, so we project a will on to them, telling them: “Go left!” “Stay out of the trap!” or “Get in the hole!” But the imagined “will” of the ball is just a function of its interaction with a terrain, a natural world, we do not fully understand, and in this sense represents a vestige of animism.

Genres: Nonfiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published December 18, 2014

Reviews

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like the 33 1/3 series which delves into the minutia of a single album by a band expounded upon by articulate writers/fans, the Object Lessons series delves into everyday items with equally talented guides.

"...an exploded garden, holding our conciousness in a delicate, liminal state of pleasure between artificiality and wildness."

Harry Brown's poeticism drives (pun intended) this short musing on the golf ball. But it is so much more. I had moments where I put the book down and felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of golf balls in the world, the sheer number of golf courses: an area the size of Connecticut could be filled with the golf courses of America; an area the size of Massachusettes filled with all the golf courses of the world. And just think of the artificial golf-ball-mountain that could be erected from the billions of golf balls that have been made and have nowhere to go, that have been lost in the wildness of artificial greens. This book captured my imagination. It is pretty and well written and there is poetry. Plus Brown quotes a book that I am in the middle of reading "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experince" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
I'm reading Hotel by Joanna Walsh next.!

[Simone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yep, I'm making my way through as many of these little Object Lessons books that I can get my hands on. So I liked the history of golf section at the beginning (I was unaware of the history of golf) and then the middle sort of dragged, but right before the end he does a thing about golf balls and the moon that snuck up on me and took my breath away. It's so short that I think it's almost worth reading for the thing about the moon.

[Steven Beningo · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent look at the history of a very common sporting object.