I’ve not posted a Stymie for well over a week, and in the directory of drafts, perched over on the right of this dashboard at which I stare blankly most mornings, a number of half-formed themes or draft titles lurk, looking for my attention.
But none of them feel quite right, and so I drift on, working on some other stuff, and wonder if the well that seems to regurgitate these musings has run dry, perhaps turning brown like the run-offs in this warm, dry summer.
Another morning or two passes - the days seem to pass so quickly when I’m not golfing - but in listening to a podcast and working through a book that has been staring at me from a bookshelf for longer than I can remember - Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way” - a new theme leaps out which seems to speak to this lurking inertia that is holding me back.
Cameron suggests that “Easy Does It is actually a modus operandi”, and that it really means “easy accomplishes it”, and though she is talking primarily about the creative process, this observation has some value in the context of golf to me. Just as I’d been over-thinking an essay I’d written but couldn’t bring myself to release, I’ve also been tripping myself up at the range and on the course, filling my head with thoughts and technique when I should have been allowing the club to swing itself, letting the swing just flow, as the words do on some rare mornings. Taking it easy.
An hour later, as I head to the range - eager to try out this re-discovered sense of how I might hit the ball - the Daily Stoic podcast is playing, and Ryan Holiday’s guest is a retired NFL footballer turned actor, Tony Gonzales. Tony talks about the transmission of his mindset from one discipline to another, and as Ryan observes that all personal work is made of the same, basic stuff - people trying to solve hard problems, be they in writing or acting or catching footballs - his guest drops a phrase that haunts me for the rest of the day.
Speaking of the challenge of learning the actor’s craft, he likens it to “catching a feather”; an absorption of unwritten principles and feelings so delicate that it is hard to not crush the lessons, thus dropping the ball or fluffing our lines, or in our case perhaps duffing a pitch. I think of a great friend who, in our most recent game together, seemed to have found something precious in his own rhythm, causing the heaviest defeat I can recall him handing out in our decades of golfing adventures together. Wounded by the result whilst pleased that he’d caught this particular feather, I asked him what on earth was going on, and the same theme emerged.
“Just an easy swing”, he revealed, a precious secret he first unearthed back when we were playing in short trousers in the eighties, but which he not only forgets between rounds, but after two or three good shots in a row. A few easy swings, a few fine shots, and in kicks the brain, urging us back to the comfort of mediocrity, damaging the feather and trying to force the issue. I wish he’d forgotten it a little earlier in our match, but as I step onto the range, I am keen to use this easy vibe and try to let something happen, rather than become too attached to the result.
Predictably, when I harness the power of this “Easy Does It” mantra, I no longer follow the familiar path I’ve trodden for decades, of suffocating my freedom of movement in the urgent pursuit of a magic that can’t be hurried. Instead of the usual tight grip that shows a tension inside, I hold the tacky rubber of my club’s handle like Tony’s feather, and feel the club start the downswing not with the customary lurch, and that trademark, collapsing left leg through impact, but with a softer, gentler, quieter change of direction.
Devoid of a search for power, the club seems to do the work for me, building an effortless speed through the ball, and the tiny sweetspots of these old, forged blades seem to come to life, ball after ball exploding into space as I try to hide my smile and obvious surprise from the fellow golfing sufferers beside me. For three quarters of an hour, with the sun on my back and Gershwin in my ears, I take a step back from trying too hard, and instead slow everything down, to permit “Easy Does It” to take hold. I find the space to just listen to “what bubbles up”, as Cameron puts it, and slowly but surely build up a few dozen good moments - Holiday calls them “deposits” - in the memory bank for the next time on the course.
I’ve no doubt I’ll forget this mantra by the time I step onto that first tee, full of hopes but clutching at straws, and will probably also forget its potential application everywhere else in this life, but for a few precious minutes “Easy Does It” has worked a treat. I just need to have it written on my eyelids, in order that I do remember it more often, and all will be well.
Stymied will pause for a summer break now, heading for the Scottish coastline with a half-set of clubs and a camera: bliss. Thank you for reading thus far, and please pass this or any others you have enjoyed to your fellow golfing addicts. Play well!
"Easy Does it"
Thank you Richard, straight into the "re-read when in need of restoration" folder!