Editor’s note: in advance of this weekend’s U.S. Open, this is the first in a series of posts exploring the metaphorical relationship between golf and writing.

Golf can be a bit of a mystery to those who have never played. Mainly it probably appears (a) boring and (b) much easier than it really is. Writing can also look that way to the uninitiated, and in fact golf and writing have a lot in common.

Both are solitary, addictive pursuits of an ultimately unreachable perfection. How, you ask, is golf solitary, what with all the crowds and the playing partners and the caddies in the pro game, let alone the beer-imbibing camaraderie-filled version more common to hackers like me? First because, even when you’re betting (thanks to a handy little invention called the handicap system) you’re always pretty much competing against yourself. Second, golf is intensely mental in its requirements – you have to try to remain calm and make measured decisions in the face of literally infinite small disasters and somehow shake off the feelings of deep depression and self-abuse that can accompany them: golf looks so doable and yet it’s so insanely difficult – again, like good writing (watch Tiger Woods: his menacing rage after a poor swing is always transformed in the space of half a minute into what I can only call a fierce serenity of absolutely purposeful concentration as he prepares for the next shot). For comparison, think about those blues you get when you receive back your dissertation draft all marked to hell by your advisor — it’s really hard to stop moping and continue sometimes.

The mental pressure in golf results in large part from the fact that one spends drastically more time thinking about hitting shots than actually executing them (as writing takes so much longer than reading). A swing takes about a second; it can take you ten minutes to find your wayward shot in the bushes, as cac.ophony blogmaster Luke Waltzer can tell you. And what does one ponder while walking from tee to ball or lining up a putt? Where are my feet? Is my posture right? Am I standing too close or too far from the ball? Should I try under or over those trees? Is my grip too tight or too loose? Am I keeping my left arm straight? Am I keeping my head down? (Yes, simply watching the ball proves to be very, very difficult.) Full swing? Half swing? Wind direction? Topography of the green? Location of water? (It pulls putts toward it if it’s sizable.) These are just a few questions that go into every shot.

The key of course, like with writing, which has its own army of minutia to consider in each sentence, is, through practice and patience, to make as much of this as possible automatic. If you never spend time either writing or reading, each comma and each “its” vs. “it’s” decision can be a tiresome burden. If you never spend time either writing or reading, then it can be hard to even know where you went wrong – just like in golf, merely figuring out what to work on to improve can be an extraordinarily daunting propect all its own.

This Thursday the United States Open begins at the beautiful Torrey Pines Golf Course in California, where almost every hole offers up a vista of the Pacific framed by those craggy little west coast tress that look so picturesque against an evening sunset. So we will take the opportunity this week to talk about where golf meets communication/writing. I encourage everyone to tune in to watch a bit of the action and then (consistent with public safety) to grab a club and try to hit a ball where you’re aiming – beware: it’s as easy to get hooked as it is to slice. (Also, everyone interested in pinnacles of human achievement should consider taking time just to witness Tiger – in golf he’s Bird or Jordan, he’s Gretsky, he’s Ted Williams or Dimagio, he’s Faulkner or Dickinson, he’s Rembrandt; he’s someone your grandkids will have heard about.)

Fore!

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