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A Zen Approach To
Playing Golf In
Scotland

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James C. Plowden-Wardlaw

James Campbell Plowden-Wardlaw hit his first golf ball into the gorse bushes at Old Prestwick -- the cradle of championship golf and site of the first British Open -- at the age of nine, during a family visit to a great aunt in Ayr, Scotland. He returned home to America impressed by the game, but waited more than fifty years to play again in Scotland...(More...)

Alex B. Pagel

Alex B. Pagel dubbed his first shot at the Maidstone Club course on Long Island in the 1940s under the Scottish eye of the club professional Jack Ross. This legendary man endeavored to teach him how to hit a ball, never a total success, and how to enjoy the game, by contrast a long and continuing success story. Old Jack also frequently implied that the true object of the game was to play in Scotland on a links course in the wind...(More...)

 
 
 

 

The “Halfway House”: (A Few Reflections on Where We Have Been)

The seasons and climate play a role in both golf courses and Zen gardens. Viewing a garden where nearby cherry trees have shed their white blossoms to cover the sand induces the feeling of snow in spring and in Winter snow itself, and fallen red-orange autumn leaves again change the aspect of and one’s reaction to a garden. Likewise a great golf course cannot be played in the same way twice, for the rain, the mist, the sun, the shadows of the time of day give birth to many different courses born out of one. That is why each time one plays golf, one’s attitude, and consequently one’s ability, seem to change.

Accordingly, some practice shots are advisable to key one’s mood to the Zen approach. The monks guarding the great Saioji Moss Garden will not allow a casual tourist to view it until they have spent an hour or so copying sutras, or chanting or meditating. For the same reasons, some preparation is necessary to fully appreciate and to think out one’s intellectual and emotional approach to a Zen Golf Course.

Harmony with nature does not necessitate a blending of balls with gorse nor water nor sand. Narrow twisting fairways with impenetrable rough may be a professional challenge, but they give no joy to those who simply love golf. There is no joy to an artificially designed sand obstacle course which is constructed where it is simply to enhance a residential development, or a hotel wishing to advertise enhanced amenities or a commercial “club.” A properly chosen golf venue ought to be selected because of its suitability, not its profitability nor its proximity to a commercial site.

You can read the entire chapter in our book "A Birdie for Buddha"
  

 
Clubhouse at Boat of Garten
Saiho-ji Moss Garden

Golf is a pathway to a new you, an escape from the mundane, and the course is the pathway to golf. If the design and the scenery of the course are mundane, how can it lead to escape from the mundane? Life is a lighting bolt. The great Zen course must stun the golfer into excelling himself, surprise him out of himself. A blind shot over a hill to within a foot of the hole is just such a thunderclap; so is the well-judged 30 foot putt, the drive cutting off just enough to avoid the water or the putt holed from the bunker.
 
     

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