Preferred Lies: A Journey to the Heart of Golf

by Andrew Greig

published

2007 by Phoenix

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binding

Paperback, 304 pages

isbn

0753821567 (isbn13: 9780753821565)

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Mark rated it:

(review of isbn 0297848356)

08/03/08

bookshelves: recentlyread

Read in July, 2008

I’m not sure who I’m writing this for—I was just going to give it a bunch of stars (yes, the maximum, since it’s an amazing & beautiful book, IMHO, and one I wish hadn’t ended—ever get that feeling as you finish a book?) & leave the rest blank; after all, the title says it all, right? Golf?? An acquired (and supposedly middle-aged) taste, right? Even if you’re OK with pro golf—i.e. you like Tiger Woods—this might be over the top for you: what Greig’s “searching”...more I’m not sure who I’m writing this for—I was just going to give it a bunch of stars (yes, the maximum, since it’s an amazing & beautiful book, IMHO, and one I wish hadn’t ended—ever get that feeling as you finish a book?) & leave the rest blank; after all, the title says it all, right? Golf?? An acquired (and supposedly middle-aged) taste, right? Even if you’re OK with pro golf—i.e. you like Tiger Woods—this might be over the top for you: what Greig’s “searching” for is really the antithesis of Tiger. Greig’s a purist seeking the essence of golf in its true home (don’t give me any of that shit about ancient China or Holland or whatever; golf originated in you-know-where), the “links” (not a generic name for golf courses, as many people seem to think, but the specific term referring to that rolling, grassy, dunesy area between solid land and sea, found in Britain and Ireland but rarely here in North America) where centuries ago courses just sort of emerged from the landscape and where hardy folks with varied equipment played and still play in the wind, rain, gorse, and sheep shit. Cut-throat competition like that which we see in Tigerland or, too often, the local course of a Saturday, is what drove Greig away from the game in his teens and kept him away for 40 years. As a kid he won trophies, but the pressure of competing got to him and poetry and rock’n’roll lured him away. After a successful career as a novelist, poet, and mountain climber, he nearly died from a brain tumor, provoking his return to golf, initially a therapeutic activity that came to take on philosophic importance. The title might suggest this: first, the idea of “lies” as falsehoods, fictions, illusions we create to tell others and ourselves in order to cope, to give our lives a sense of cohesion or justification. We “prefer” these lies to the truth, which can be harsh, bitter, embarrassing. But principally what the title refers to is the advantages we get from a good lie, i.e. the position the ball comes to rest in, and therefore the result of our action (careful judgment, swing, striking), affected by the external elements of wind and the contours of land. A bad lie must be played as it is; a good lie—in the fairway (a place I occasionally find) may be “preferred” or moved, cleaned, etc., without penalty. Analogies abound. As in most (good) books about golf, much more is always at stake—for Greig, taking stock of his life, coming to terms with his childhood and origins, reconnecting with friends and family, contemplating mortality and his spiritual life (the latter part of the book gets into Buddhism, though not as a central focus or to proselytize). Perhaps the best aspect of this book, though, is its descriptions of golf courses, both the familiar (e.g., the Old Course at St. Andrews) and the remote and little-known (e.g., on the northernmost Orkney island) and Greig’s sometimes-solitary, sometimes-not rounds of golf there....less

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