Golf Wedge Quotes

Charlie made an art of living. He understood, as great artists do, that every life is a mixture of comedy and tragedy, joy and sorrow, daring and fear. We choose the tenor of our lives from those clashing notes. Even when Charlie’s strength was fading, when the golf course had become an obstacle course, when the infirmity of encroaching time could no longer be denied, he chose to turn his wedge into a walking stick and to carry it with panache.

was running out of valuable athletic clichés. Would beach volleyball say much about proposals for federal health care reform? Could I use mumblety-peg comparisons to explain the North American Free Trade Agreement negotiations? Golf, however, is ideal for these purposes. “Christian fundamentalists put a wicked slice in the Republican party platform.” “Somebody should replace the divot on the back of Al Gore’s head.” “Let’s go hit Congress with a stick.” I also wanted a sport with a lot of equipment. All truly American sports are equipment intensive. Basketball was strictly for hoop-over-the-barn-door Hoosiers and Jersey City Y’s until two-hundred-dollar gym shoes were invented. And synchronized swimming will never make it to network prime time because how often do you need new nose plugs? I’m an altruistic guy, in my own Reaganomics way. Sports gear purchases are about all that’s keeping the fragile U.S. economy alive, and you’d have to get into America’s Cup yachting or cross-country airplane racing to find a sport that needs more gear than golf. I’ve bought the shoes, hats, socks, pants, shirts, umbrellas, windbreakers, and plus fours—all in colors that Nirvana fans wouldn’t dye their hair. Then there are the drivers, irons, putters, and the special clubs: parking-lot wedge, back-of-the-tree mashie, nearby highway niblick. MasterCard has installed a plaque on the wall of its headquarters to commemorate my taking up golf.

relatively wide stance—about the width of my shoulders between my heels—and gradually narrow it as the clubs shorten and the swing force decreases, to probably only 6 inches with the wedge. I effect this narrowing simply by moving the right foot closer to the left. In that way I maintain a constant relationship of the ball to my left heel. As I narrow my stance, I also “open” it by setting my left foot

Golfing potential depends primarily on a player’s attitude, on how well he plays with the wedges and the putter, and on how well he thinks.

You should always visualize the ball flying low to the target, even though the club being used, the wedge for example, will send the ball with plenty of height. The lower the shot is visualized, the better the shot will be. See Figure 27. Permit the loft of the club to do the job it was built to do.

If you had ever leaned sideways into the breeze with a sand wedge in your hands, staring through windblown tears at a golf ball entombed in four feet of fanged thistle, clothes soaked through to the skin, fingers like an overworked fishmonger, and yet you couldn’t bring yourself to stop smiling—then you got it.