THE KEEPERS OF THE
A quiet Saturday in June, at the very mouth of the northern summer,
and I’m standing beneath the white disc of the Sun, on a very trimmed-
up little piece of Earth, staring down into the grass at my feet. Not an
insect in the air. Not a sound, save my breathing. I look to the horizon- small line of trees, a swell of green, the Earth dropping to meet the
lip of a pond, that tiny rippling flag – then back at the ground beneath
my shoes. Yes, that’s my ball there. Dammit. Two hundred thirty-nine
yards and one wet sheaf of grass from home.
But this is golf and I have to play. I don’t like the lie. Side-hill,
slightly downhill. All around me, my friends advance. I’m above the
hole though and the wind is at my back. Difficult. It is my shot. I
know I am capable. That is the affirmation of the game: I can do it.
The compact of the game? I have to make a lot of choices – club,
stance, target line, swing speed, hip position and so on – and I must
act. Quickly, proficiently, using only the skills I bring and the tools
in my bag. Just then, I wish I’d brought a little more. I want some-
thing new in my bag. It’s a long way to the hole.
Golfers always want. This is one of the great truths of the game
and one of the ways it’s such a good sport for humans. We want.
More distance, more spin, more game. More time. More tools. More
choices. This is not greed I’m talking about. Not lust, or envy. A golfer
wants to match his equipment to his game. A golfer doesn’t need
every putter ever made so much as the single putter for him, for his
posture, his balance, his confidence level. Want, in golfer’s terms, is
the ability to make better choices within the frame of the game. And
in golf, those choices (the ones you can control with your wallet,
anyway) come in the form of products, brands, makes, designs and
specifications: ball compression, stiffness of shaft, tackiness of grip,
cavity-back iron or blade. There are hundreds of choices, thousands
of discrete decisions in the matter of want: what to carry, what to
wear, what iron to play, what ball to favour, what tee, what glove,
what bag to carry all that in.
These choices are framed months before that quiet, bug-free Saturday
in June on the muni course in Wherever, Indiana. They’re born, in
fact, in a pre-retail carnival in central Florida in January called the
PGA Merchandise Show. The show gathers 40 000 attendees on
92 000 square metres of convention space. All 50 states are repre-
sented among the exhibitors. Eighty-four countries.
Those are the small numbers. Here’s the big one: golf is a R900-
billion industry in the United States.
To find where a golfer’s midsummer choices on a long par 5 are
born, you have to go to the show.
BEFORE IT REACHES
YOUR GOLF BAG,
NEW GEAR IS ROLLED
OUT AT A FLORIDA CON-
VENTION CENTRE –
ALONG WITH FREE
SAMPLES, ADVICE AND
PLENTY OF STORIES.PHOTOGRAPHS BY
JEFFERY SALTERBY TOM CHIARELLAA
AUGUST 2017 _ http://www.popularmechanics.co.za 67