When Leon S. White retired and signed up for a poetry-writing course, he made a deal with the instructor. He would do the class assignments, but he also would write about his favorite sport: golf.
White, formerly an MIT professor and health-care executive, has combined those passions in a blog, golfpoet.com, and a self-published book, Golf Course of Rhymes—Links Between Golf and Poetry Through the Ages (Golfiana Press, $14.95). "If you think about it, you realize the fundamentals of golf and poetry are very similar," White says. "Tempo, timing and rhythm—they're important in both."
Many of the book's 50 stories and nearly 100 poems were culled from old magazines and books, largely published before 1930. (One citation dates from 1638 and the publication of "Muses Threnodie: of Mirthful Mournings on the death of Mr Gall.") Golf course designer and poet Robert Trent Jones Jr., Gr. '64, wrote the book's foreword. White also posts historic golf photographs on his blog and short verse on Twitter. Before Michelle Wie, '11, won her first LPGA tournament, he punned: A Wie win / Would be big.
White, who plays at a nine-hole course near his home in Lexington, Mass., considers the possibility of a flawless game in his poem, "Perfect Golf."
If. . .
in every game all greens were hit
and each was then one putted
would golf as a game
still be the same
its mystery all but gutted?
Errorless play may be the goal
but when you come down to it
to play the best
would end the test
so. . .
would you want to do it?
"As an engineer, perfection is your goal," says White, who earned two degrees in industrial engineering from Stanford. "But perfection in golf, which challenges you mentally and physically, isn't possible."
Part of the fun in Golf Course of Rhymes is discovering esteemed writers who also played golf, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes; Nobel Prize winner Rudyard Kipling; and humorist and fiction writer Ring Lardner. For a 1918 issue of The American Golfer, Lardner wrote "Nocturnal Golf," which concluded with this stanza:
I made the nine in a 43
Last night, as I lay in bed.
Oh, golf is no trouble at all for me
When I play a round in my head.
While researching, White concluded that the literature of golf is virtually timeless. "When you read these poems, no one could convince you they were written 100 years ago. These guys knew their golf, which, except for the technology, hasn't changed over time. The game is the same."
Liz Doup is a writer based in Weaverville, N.C.
