Real Scotsmen Don't Keep Score..

There has never been a golfers’ book quite like this one. Birdie reinvents the whole concept of the modern game (as played outside the United Kingdom) for players past their best days and for hesitant beginners of all ages. It recounts the personal golfing pilgrimages of its authors through Scotland, and shows, using color photographs, how to recapture the original spirit of golf, with all its magic and wonder. At the same time, it explains why the Scottish links have been so irresistibly seductive to players for hundreds of years.

Book Cover - A Birdie for Buddha

You will discover why the spirit of the game in Scotland remains the same as it was in the very beginning, and why real Scotsmen today still don’t keep scorecards, except in tournaments. You also will learn how selected Zen Buddhist techniques not only epitomize this spirit, but how their use will change your whole mental attitude towards the game and make using what the authors have named “A Zen Approach to Golf” a special and joyful experience for every golfer.
Each chapter, or, “Hole” in Birdie is named for a Scottish golf course actually played by the authors, and describes one or more of the Zen techniques they used to free them from the same anxieties that might be inhibiting your own game.

For an additional insight into the magic of the Scottish golf course the authors introduce you to its equally breathtaking predecessor – the Zen garden of Japan. Both the links and the gardens lead the viewer back to nature. Birdie enables you to experience these same feelings of wonder and personal renewal every time you play golf. There’s no voyage quite like it.

About the Authors - The authors are unimportant to this volume, other than as the “Messengers” for the wisdom imparted to them by the two Highland sheep encountered on the Brora Golf Course in the Scottish Highlands one time when they (the authors) were playing a round there. However, you can tell just by looking at them that these sheep were not ordinary sheep. In fact, these sheep, whose ordinary job is trimming the rough and the fairways, were not always “sheep”. In a previous life they’d been well-known Zen Buddhists - who also happened to be two of the champion links golfers of Scotland. You will note that one of the sheep is a ram, and the other is a ewe. This was not a coincidence. Our Highland sheep were imparting knowledge for both gentlemen and lady players. And so, dear readers, are we.

Quite by chance one of the authors had hit his ball slightly off line and to within several feet of these particular Highland sheep. They may have heard him muttering a Zen Mantra, and, entirely unexpectedly, the sheep began to bleat to him in a charming Scottish burr. Both of the authors, using the backs of their scorecards, immediately began to take notes of this “received knowledge” - and thus this volume was born. Any errors are those made by the authors in translation - the original, in “bleat”, was perfectly pure and true.

Zen Buddhist Sheep of Brora

Both scribes, Alec and James, have played golf (as opposed to Zen Golf) since childhood, and by this stage of their lives, both indisputably qualify as “ready” to learn the “ways” described in their own book. They are most grateful to their fluffy Scottish friends for imparting the insightful thoughts about the Pastime that are passed on in this book.

Content ©2006 A Birdie for Buddha