Off the Fringe
Off the Fringe
FOR A SPORT that is supposed to be one of our most traditional pastimes, golf has certainly undergone a revolutionary amount of change in the past few decades. Golf is cool—unlike
when I was in schoolIt's a far different game today than the one I first started playing in the early 1960s, that's for sure.
Back then, golf was mostly for the stuffy country club set, and a kid who played it was considered suspect. I captained my high school golf team, and I can tell you that on the list of wussy sports, golf ranked right up there with lawn bowling.
Golfers were not considered athletes then. They didn't pump weights and run five miles day, like they do now. In fact, most golfers didn't engage in any form of outside exercise -- except, perhaps, wrestling with Primo beer.
In those days, you couldn't walk into a bookstore and find 437 different titles on golf. You didn't see a golf infomercial every time you turned on the television. ESPN didn't exist, much less the Golf Channel.
Spalding, Wilson or MacGregor manufactured most of the name-brand golf clubs at that time, and they didn't cost a fortune. Woods were made of wood and irons were made of steel. Shafts were also made of steel and came in three varieties: regular, medium and stiff.
Golf shoes had metal spikes, carrying bags had one strap, and a standard set of clubs included a two-iron. The 60-degree wedge had yet to appear. And there was no such thing as a seven-wood, much less a "Heavenwood."
It was more difficult to hit a golf ball then. You didn't have the advantage of jumbo-size drivers with titanium heads and lightweight graphite shafts. You didn't have offset, over-sized irons with cavity backs, perimeter weighting and square grooves.
Then as now, Titleist was the leading golf ball, but the only thing you had to figure out was whether to use one with 80, 90 or 100 compression. You didn't have to analyze its dimple pattern, or worry about whether it had a wound, liquid or solid core, a hard or soft cover.
I have to admit that when the onslaught of technological advances began, I resisted the trend, considering it a desecration of the game. I was slow to retire my persimmon driver in favor of one with a metal head, and even slower to switch to graphite shafts. I was a lot like the veteran sportswriter I used to laugh at because he refused to trade in his old Underwood typewriter for a computer.
I'm older and wiser now. One of the things that happens when you age is that you learn to embrace technology because it's what keeps you in the game.
Technology aside, however, what amazes and pleases me most about the way golf has changed is the popularity and acceptance the sport has achieved.
I was reminded of this at a recent high school reunion when a girl -- a former cheerleader, in fact -- came up to me and said, "Wow, you were into golf when golf wasn't cool."
You can't imagine the satisfaction I felt at that moment. To realize, after all those years, that your former classmates no longer regarded you as a wuss, but as a kid who was ahead of his time.
Now that's what I call real change.
Grady Timmons has been writing about golf in Hawaii
for 25 years and playing it even longer. He can be reached
through sports@starbulletin.com