Sandy Green

Sandy Green's golfing career started with his first round, when he managed to hit an electricity pylon (and that was about all). A deep interest in anthropology diverted the authors' interests towards the game of golf as a psychological condition, not just a 'game'; how else to explain the vast manicured bits of nature devoted to the 'game' of golf ? Something deep in human consciousness awakes a primitive challenge; how to drive a small ball at high speed using a tiny hole in the ground as a ...See more

Sandy Green's golfing career started with his first round, when he managed to hit an electricity pylon (and that was about all). A deep interest in anthropology diverted the authors' interests towards the game of golf as a psychological condition, not just a 'game'; how else to explain the vast manicured bits of nature devoted to the 'game' of golf ? Something deep in human consciousness awakes a primitive challenge; how to drive a small ball at high speed using a tiny hole in the ground as a 'target' ? The condition of 'golf' now affects nearly as many women as men, though the use of a primitive club to drive a stone towards a 'pin' is undoubtedly the origin of golf. Primitive man distilled the challenge into an absorbing pastime - otherwise known as 'life'. And it's clear that revered ancient monuments are, in reality, ancient golf courses. From Stonehenge to the Golfe de Morbihan, from primitive golf 'toys' (the game of bagatelle), Sandy Green links the evidence to embrace even St Peters in Rome, all obvious candidates for historic sites enshrining the hallowed origins of golf. Included is a lexicon of ancient golfing terms - unchanged, but still recognizable as frequently used expressions, some undoubtedly hardly changed for millennia. Many of these will be familiar, though the question of early pronunciation is hotly debated. Only this author has considered the curiously ancient concept of the 'hole' as 'refuge', or its qualities (emanating 'safety', 'resolution', 'finality' ?) as inherent in this 'event horizon'. Or invoked Heisenberg's 'uncertainty principle' familiar to particle physicists and golfers alike, plus the concepts of mass and energy in relation to time. These concepts Einstein wrestled with, as the golfer does with swing and pace as the 18th hole approaches. The golfer is never just 'playing another round' but wrestling with concepts encountered only at the very boundary of what the human mind is capable of grasping. This is Sandy Green's world - the true world of golf - where time travel and the vagaries of particle physics collide, where the human struggle to understand universal truths is distilled into the unalloyed elegance of the perfect shot. See less