An incident happened on the golf course the other day. A
group of older men confronted a group of younger men about the pace of play.
This often happens, especially on public courses. In this instance, it was
serious. The four old men were white; the four young men they confronted were
black.
The four older men were regulars on the course. Once a week,
every week, on Wednesday or Thursday, they played the same course together. They
were retired from a lifetime of toil so that they could play rapidly in the
middle of the week rather than slowly on Sunday. They usually started at 8
o’clock and expected to finish by around noon. Sometimes, though, they were
unable to secure their usual time, and had to begin an hour later. This often
meant that the round would take up to an hour longer. This was because younger
men usually began later and played more slowly.
You might think younger men would play more quickly than the
older group, but that is usually not the case. For one thing, the older men, playing
every week for years, are used to the course. They don’t hit the ball as far, and
thus tend to avoid trouble. Younger men have work and other obligations that
prevent them from practice and regular play, especially in mid-week. So, when they get together with friends for a
rare mid-week golf outing, they want to have fun. Being young, they can sometimes
hit the ball longer — when they actually do make contact — but that usually means
more trouble because they are bound to hit it with a “banana slice” or a “duck hook,”
results that are as bad as they sound.
Golf is a game that demands frequent practice. It will
humble even the most talented and skilled. The dilettante cannot possibly hope
to successfully navigate the course without frustration. He will spend precious
time searching for lost balls. He will be forced to hack out of forests, dig
out of sand traps, and slash through deep grass.
Young men, by their nature, will not accept these truths.
They still retain the optimism and competitiveness that keeps them running the rat
race of mid-life. When they play this game with their peers, who are roughly
equal in their ineptitude, they will act like adolescent males. They will
tease, challenge, and try to humiliate their friends. If one reaches the green
in seven, and the other in eight, they will slow down to now seriously compete
to see who can score lowest on the hole that the card says should be finished
in four strokes.
For the old men, waiting to hit every ball while the four
ahead of them tacked from the rough on the left to the trees on the right,
inching their way toward the distant green, and then waiting more while the
four athletes measured three-footers for eight to win the hole and so better
the chance to avoid paying for the beers, the wait was agonizing. Old men
measure events in the amount of time remaining; they can’t spend precious time
waiting for something to happen. They resent traffic jams, supermarket lines,
and most of all, doctor’s offices. They cannot be placed “on hold.”
So, here’s what happened. On the very first tee, while the
old men were waiting for the group of young men to begin, they noticed some
things that they recognized immediately were going to slow the round. First,
the young men insisted on playing from the tee that required the longest,
straightest drives. This position should be restricted to the pros or best
amateurs, but it is common for boys and young men, no matter the lack of skill,
to want to get their money’s worth, which they think forces them to swing as hard and as often as possible.
Efficiency and economical preservation of effort are skills the older players
have learned in order to survive in this game. The young, most of whom will
soon abandon the game for marriage, children, work, and other games and less
time consuming sports, are ignorant of this.
The second item of concern was that three of the young men,
when flubbing their first tries, played a second ball. This is known as a
Mulligan and it is acceptable on the first tee, recognizing the natural
nervousness of duffers to cause a stumble at the start. But to the old men, it
was an “uh-oh” moment. The third issue the men observed with trepidation was
the jocularity with which the young men faced the embarrassment of their
fellows’ failures. Golf to the experienced older player, while still a social
event, permitting good fellowship among old friends, is far more serious, once
the round has begun. The experienced serious older golfer knows when to josh
and when to shush.
That brings up an additional point that must be emphasized.
Golf has lasted a few hundred years with some lasting traditions. It began as a
gentleman’s game that required gentility and patience, but one invented by the
irascible Scots whose temperaments were carved by their intemperate climate.
They played the game against cruel nature; they played angry at the ground, the
rain, the cold. To prevent homicides during the game, they carved out strict
rules of conduct among players.
Play the ball as it lies, call a penalty on yourself even if
no one is looking, and most of all, be considerate of others on the course.
That means moving along at a decent pace, spend no more than five minutes
searching for a lost ball. Many other rules are meant to encourage an orderly
and more rapid completion of each hole. The old men knew and respected these
traditions and appreciated their importance. The young men didn’t know the
rules. The young are often contemptuous of tradition, assuming that any rules
made by previous generations are stupid, and are probably designed to hamper
their enjoyment of life. They feel it is their privilege, even their duty to
break the rules and find pleasure in the mere act of doing so.
As the old men watched the preceding group as they scrambled
along, the pace met their expectations. They had anticipated the delays, but by
the twelfth hole, they had had enough. While on that green, they noticed the
foursome ahead of them to be standing on the next tee. The fairway ahead of
them was vacant, meaning that the preceding group was not a cause for delay.
Protocol required that the group should tee off as soon as they can safely do
so. Things slow down when some players who are unfamiliar with the course or
with their own lack of skill, delude themselves that they might reach the
faraway golfers ahead of them. They wait, and wait. When they finally strike
the ball, they dribble it a few yards forward or worse, many yards sideways.
This group was even more egregious. They not only waited far
too long. They were talking to each other so vigorously that they did not
notice the vast space ahead of them. They were having fun socializing. The men
on the green behind them were not. They anticipated another long wait. They
were furious at the inconsiderate antisocial behavior of the group. When they
finally got to the tee, the others had just departed. By the time they had
finished their work on the next green, the old men who were again waiting in
the fairway were grumbling to each other about the criminality of the conduct.
It was time for action.
In this particular situation, the generation gap was not the
only problem. The other was the cultural attitude separating the races. I need
to emphasize the point that if race was not involved — let’s say, if the
foursomes were all white — the old men would still have been fuming, and a
confrontation might have taken place anyway. But the added element of race — as
always in America — complicated the issue immensely.
At this point, I have to make what may seem to be a strange
reference. Do you remember the movie, Deliverance?
In my memory, it is about man’s nature as a hunter, an instinct that is
suppressed beneath civilization’s veneer, but which when released can lead to
dramatic consequences. The four characters who experience the event in the
movie all act differently. For one, played by Burt Reynolds, it is a challenge
to his manhood. Violent sport sparks his competitive soul.
Among the group of old men, one saw himself as Burt Reynolds
in Deliverance. He was long past his
prime as an athlete, but deep within, the tiny little fire still glowed. He had
played high school football at what he remembered was a high level. He had been
a lawyer, proud of his aggressive defense tactics, and now, at seventy, he
clung to this self-image. And at this moment, to mix a movie metaphor, he was
mad as hell and was not going to take it anymore. He raced his cart forward to
the green and challenged the group for their lassitude.
From the vantage of about 150 yards away, the confrontation
went this way. The old man drove his cart up to the tee where the four young
African American men had just teed off and were walking back to their carts.
After a pause, the old man stood near his cart. A man in an orange shirt looked
back to him, and words seemed to be exchanged. Then the man in orange walked
quickly toward the old man and they stood face to face, like umpire and manager
in a baseball dispute. A few seconds later a second African American man began
to walk up. He took his friend’s arm and they retreated to their cart, which
drove off.
When the three other old men reached the green, the first
man was still excited. He related his story to the others. He had told the men
that they were too far behind. The man in orange denied this. The old man had
insisted; the young man then became angry, called him a bitch and challenged
him. “He expected me to back off, but I didn’t. Then his friend said, ‘Okay,
we’ll speed up.’” Eventually the old man’s pulse slowed. “When he threatened
me, I was going to say, ‘If you do, I’ll own you!”
He meant that if he was assaulted, he would sue him. But the
old man had wisely held his tongue, realizing that to an African-American, the
words, “I’ll own you” had a completely different connotation that might have
provoked far more violence.
This leads to other aspects of this incident. The four old
men had been reluctant to press the issue of the bad behavior for more hours
than they would have, had the transgressors been four young white men — and
that reluctance was caused in great part by fear. White men are afraid to
confront African American men because of a prejudgment based on the reputation
for unreasonable violence. Rationally, the old men knew that golfing African
Americans were not the same as gangsters on the corner in a ‘hood or riding in
a black Escalade playing hip hop that reverbs until your teeth rattle. The old
men were influenced by racial stereotypes that supports profiling.
Another aspect is the history these old men have lived
through. Men now seventy or so grew up in the 50’s and 60’s when race relations
were a central topic of debate. These men happened to be of the part of their
generation that was sympathetic to the civil rights movement, especially in its
earlier, peaceful iteration. They remembered fondly Dr. King and the marches,
the fight for integration, and supported the passage of voting rights laws.
They praised the concept of diversity and denounced the idea of discrimination.
They admired Mohammed Ali, Hank Aaron, Halle Berry, Derek Jeter, and (three out
of the four) Barack Obama.
But they had been worried by the ghetto riots of the late
60’s, the Black Panthers, and the rage of Malcolm X. They each had experienced
friction at school with African American students, either in sports,
lunchrooms, hallways, or playgrounds. They were ambivalent about affirmative
action in colleges and work, and had sent their children to private schools as
the public education system they had survived now degraded and appeared to be
biased in favor of the poor who were predominately of colors other than white.
The tension of the situation was not one-sided. The
African-American men brought with them to the golf course their own set of
prejudices. To begin with, they were fully aware of the history of the game as
a white man’s domain. Even though this particular course was by no means a
country club, it was a public course in the heart of the white (or at least
mostly white) part of the city. Well brought up young men can tire of their
parents’ reminders to behave themselves in company so as to not discredit their
families. Some old men remembered a time when the warnings included the
impression they might give of their People — Jews, the Irish, Italians, or
other identifiable attachments. Young black men can easily tire of the reminder
to represent.
In the final analysis, the incident does permit a glimmer of
hope for the future. From the perspective of the old white men, the incident
was a success. No one was shot, and the rest of the round proceeded at an
acceptable pace. The old man who had braved the threat felt vindicated, and has
something over his more timid friends forever. The other three had benefitted
from their friend’s reckless risk taking behavior (aka courage). As one of the
men said afterwards, “It is like that in every war; most stay safe in their
foxholes while the few dare to charge the enemy!”
The final cause for optimism lies in my realization that the
incident provided statistical proof of progress. Only 25% of the African American
men wished to be combative, while 75% were conciliatory. The exact same
percentages applied to the old white men.
That is an interesting coincidence, don’t you think?
