Guest-blogger Kim Shippey has worked as a broadcast journalist in many countries. He is now a full-time writer and editor with the Christian Science Sentinel, a weekly print and online publication.
At this time of year, American baseball players are coming back to the plate; in Europe, cricketers and tennis pros are loosening their shoulders; and top golfers from many countries are assembling for the first Major of the season, the US Masters, to be played from April 11 to 14 among the azaleas and songbirds that abound on the fairways of the National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia.
Golf, of course, teaches many life-lessons, and has spawned hundreds of jokes, including
the one about the little white ball that has a whim to hit a tree or take a swim.
As a reporter on several sports, who always worked weekends, I was never free enough to learn to play golf–a game I suspect I would have loved.
But I was privileged to work on many sports programs with the man who for 20 years was BBC Television’s senior golf commentator, Henry Longhurst. He wrote 12 books on golf in a prose style that his colleagues insisted was “as effortless as falling out of bed.” Also, his “on air” quips were legendary. “They say ‘practice makes perfect,’” he once observed. “Of course, it doesn’t. For the vast majority of golfers it merely consolidates imperfection.”
Longhurst loved the Masters, as does a good friend of mine who knows the Augusta course quite well. My friend played on the European and US golf circuits, and tells me that Continue reading →
