Golf balls embody the complex human relation to the natural world, a will to control nature, but the action of balls in play reveals the futility of the endeavor.
In the history of sport, golf bears a unique relation to the natural world. The game evolved on the Scottish links, a peculiar terrain linking arable land and the rocky coast, which farmers could not domesticate as plowed land or pasture. Modern course design aims to simulate this semi-wild borderland, artificially constructing the water hazards, sand bunkers, and rough grass that occur naturally on the links. Golf simulates the effort to traverse and tame this landscape, with players hopping among islands of fairway and green while attempting to avoid hazards.
In this simulated expedition, the golf ball functions as the player's avatar, different from a baseball, soccer ball, or a billiard ball because it represents the attempt of a single person to navigate an unpredictable landscape. In this sense, the ball is an assertion of control over the natural world, an extension of the ego: a bad shot can arouse violent anger, while a good shot can feel sublime. Technical refinements in ball construction reflect ongoing attempts to enhance this sense of control. Consequently, golf course design has evolved in response to the evolution of the golf ball, which is now constrained by rigorous standards created to forestall the obsolescence of the world's courses.
Despite their considerable technical refinements, golf balls reveal the futility of control. They inevitably disappear in plain sight and find their way into hazards. Golf balls play with people. They do things we do not anticipate as if by their own will, so we project a will on to them, telling them: Go left! Stay out of the trap! or Get in the hole! But the imagined will of the ball is just a function of its interaction with a terrain, a natural world, we do not fully understand, and in this sense represents a vestige of animism.
About the Author
Harry Brown is Associate Professor of English at DePauw University, USA. He is the author of Injun Joe's Ghost (University of Missouri, 2004) and Videogames and Education (M.E. Sharpe, 2008). He has published articles on American literature and culture in The Journal of American and Comparative Culture, Studies in Medievalism, and Paradoxa, as well as original fiction in Blueline and The Mississippi Review.
Industry Reviews
Golf Ball is a funny, smart, and charming meditation on an unlikely subject. Who knew that the story of this humble little white sphere could tell us so much about our history and culture? Brown weaves cultural history, literary criticism, physics, and philosophy into this wonderful book. His meditation on the golf ball deserves a place on the reading list of the curious golfer and cultural critic alike. * Orin Starn, Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Duke University, USA, and author of The Passion of Tiger Woods *
Brown starts where the curious amongst us always seem to-by taking things apart. Departing from the physical dissection of a single ball, performed as a boy, Brown rollicks through a detailed and highly entertaining exploration of the history of the game of golf. Golf Ball will fill the air of the 19th Hole with questions answered and stories told. * Tom Chiarella, Visiting Writer, Esquire Magazine, and Award-Winning Member of the Golf Writers Association of America *
An intriguing mix of history, personal anecdote and cutting-edge philosophy, carrying the reader aloft over a range of courses and discourses past and present ... In Golf Ball, Brown has some fun with contemporary thinking whilst never getting too bogged down in the sand trap of theory ... leaving us with some intriguing questions to ponder about the objects we use, lose and overlook every day. * Neil Fitzgerald, LapsedHermit.com *
Golf Ball... begins with Harry Brown explaining how his object chose him. As an eight-year-old homegrown Heideggerian of a boy, he claims, he sliced a golf ball in two to inquire into its hardness. The book derives from this severing. It inhabits the 'glimpse of internal structure' that it offered, unfolding in two parts: 'Out: Thing,' and 'In: Phenomenon.' -- Julian Yates * Los Angeles Review of Books *
