A SPIRITUAL OPEN
Now that I’ve had a few days to quiet my breathing and the “tearing at the gut” that Tom Watson so aptly described at the conclusion of this year’s Open Championship at Turnberry, I wanted to try and say something about this very special experience that golf lovers everywhere went through with “Old Tom” last week.
Being lovers of links golf, Shivas Irons Society members were, without a doubt, among those moved to another realm by this year’s competition. The dunes and the gorse and the pot bunkers and wind and rain and sun and clouds that painted our plasma all week with digital renderings of the kind of golf we live for were probably enough to stir our minds to dream state whether we were awake or asleep during the four days of this year’s competition.
If Heaven for us is a links course, then surely Turnberry could be part of Heaven’s Gate. With the possible exception of Rosapenna Golf Links in County Kildare, Ireland, which I was blessed to play on The Shivas Irons Magical Mystery Tour in the summer of 2006, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a course that appeared more a Linda Hartough oil painting come to life right in front of my eyes than the Turnberry of July 2009.
I think it was this for Tom Watson as well -- not to mention the added levels of parallel universes for him that went back all the way to youth and yet were the same feet beneath him as he walked this Turnberry 36 years on from the Duel In The Sun with the mythical Golden Bear.
For it was Watson himself who suggested all week that “there was something else out there” with him.
Visible or not, those of us who know Shivas saw it and felt it as well.
There was a serenity about Watson as he strode the fairways, stood on tees with his hands clasped behind his back gazing into the distance of both past and future seemingly united, and even as he danced on greens watching 50 foot putts sail magnetically home to cups that seemed to want, if not need, his ball.
IF, as Deepak Chopra has written in his marvelous book, “Golf For Enlightenment,” a golf ball can present a readout of karma, then surely Watson’s karma was aglow with Shakti, even on the greens, the so-called “realm of his downfall” which the commentators pointed out from opening day all the way to the fateful 72nd hole.
Watson was not just “in the zone.” The zone was in Watson. He not only played the course. The course played him.
While silly non-writers chortled in rags that Watson’s success “at his age” was “proof” of golf’s inferiority as sport, Old Tom cracked 300 yard drives that Tiger Woods was left to dream of back in his woeful state in the states. And he lifted a magical 21st century mashie known as a “hybrid” that the other Tom’s -- the Morrises, old and young alike -- were drooling over, just out of reach, from above the Firth of Clyde, and Watson’s 200 yard arrows rained down on short grass day after day while youth was wasted by the likes of Westwood and Goggin in the tall rough stuff.
This was surely “one of those moments” when history was alive before us in the present, as surely as when Hogan hit his 1-iron into 18 at Merion in 1950, or when Tiger limped around Torrey Pines on a crushed knee in 2008.
Watson at 59 -- that magical golf number -- showing that true sport -- perhaps only the truest sport -- could reveal a grace as fine in the later years of a man’s life that it would be admired even by the child that was father to that man.
Watson at the 72nd hole with the lead. Turnberry, July of 2009.
AND yet… and yet… and yet…
Even now, knowing what was to follow after that “one more perfect drive” on 18, it seems almost unspeakable.
Shakti the Dancer, who had guided Watson’s putts for 3 and 17/18ths days, was suddenly frightened away. Shakti can’t dance to fear.
And Watson was left alone in the coliseum to face the lion himself.
The crowd -- including us -- could barely stand to look from the corner of squinting eyes.
Even those who would benefit from the intrusion of death here in this moment, from the unwanted sinking feeling, seemed to be secretly rooting for the miracle of survival.
And yet the putt refused to roll.
THE rest is still a blank for most.
I know it still is for me.
And Tom himself said afterward that it would be for him, too -- just as the Duel In The Sun reputedly is to this day for the Golden Bear.
How could this be…?
How could it… be…?
How could it…?
AND yet, in that question is the answer.
For 71 holes it just was.
And for just 1 hole was asked this question -- how?
Shakti will never answer that question.
Shakti can only dance, can only be.
Asking that question, which Tom Watson did, even if only with his eyes on the 72nd green -- I’ve gone back and looked, replaying it again and again hoping I wouldn’t see what I could see -- but I can see it, now, with the lesser digitized magic of rewound time -- for the first time in 4 days, but now unfortunately for all time, there he is, Tom Watson is asking how, not being how he had to be.
IT took me until I went back to both Shivas and Chopra, days later, to let go, to let it be.
There, in “Golf and Enlightenment,” Chopra says, “Winning can be sweet or it can be bitter; the difference lies solely in what happens inside. The soul wants sweet experiences, but it learns from bitter ones. As we weave our way between these two poles, we grow spiritually. And once we appreciate the emotional drama being played out, it’s no wonder that golf pierces to the soul. At any moment defeat can be snatched from the jaws of victory, yet the most impossible shots can also go right. The whole game is like life condensed to its essence, lightning caught in a bottle. Winning can be spiritual because not just the ego is satisfied. Every experience, including losing, nourishes the soul. And matching up ego and soul is one of the major goals of spirituality.”
Tom Watson was right.
There was something out there with him for this Open.
And it was spiritual.
And I believe that is why so many felt so blessed to witness Old Tom’s week at Turnberry.
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Richard Lees is on The Board of Directors of The Shivas Irons Society, and President of Richard Lees Capital Management in Los Angeles ( www.RichardLees.com ). STREAMERS attempts to reveal bits and pieces of one golfer's ”fascination.” As Shivas Irons puts it, “Gowf is a place to practice fascination, and as fascination is practiced, a capacity develops to put forth streamers of heart power for the ball to fly on."