IRIS EDITION
The Mystery of Golf: A brief account of games in general: their origin, antiquity, and popularity: and of the game called golf in particular: its uniqueness, its curiousness, and its difficulty; its anatomical, philosophical, and moral properties; together with diverse opinions on other matters pertaining to it.

The best way to begin a discussion of The Mystery of Golf is to consider its opening paragraph:

“Three things there are as unfathomable as they are fascinating to the masculine mind: metaphysics; golf; and the feminine heart. The Germans, I believe, pretend to have solved some of the riddles of the first, and the French to have unraveled some of the intricacies of the last; will some one tell us wherein lies the extraordinary fascination of golf?”

“Mystery” is not a word associated with the games of baseball, football, tennis, cricket, or soccer, but one that surely applies to golf. The dictionary has three meanings of “mystery,” and all have at their core, an inability to understand or an inability to explain. Every golfer has felt the joy of a perfectly judged and struck shot or putt. “How did we do that?” we wonder. At the opposite end of the spectrum, we have all felt utter frustration on the links, provoking such negative thoughts we may question our sanity. “Why do we feel that?” We love to play golf, although it can unexpectedly “get the better of us.” What is the attraction of golf and why is it often a fatal attraction, turning a pastime into an all-consuming passion? In two-and-a-half centuries of golf literature, Arnold Haultain has come the closest to explaining the inexplicable by exploring the “mind versus muscle” debate and probing golf’s love-hate relationship to its deepest depths. While the tour pros may use sports psychologists, this is the book the doctors refer to when they need a refresher course themselves. Contained in this rather small volume, is the very essence of golf.

A word of advice before continuing: as you can see from the title, Haultain’s writing style is a florid one, abandoned decades ago. However, once you accept it, the book is pure pleasure. No, the book is even more than that, it is pure genius.

As he states in the title, the author will, 1) briefly speak about sports in the broadest sense, and 2) describe golf in its historical perspective relative to all other games. Principally, however, he promises to explain in detail 3) the skeletal body movements needed in a golf swing, 4) why it is good for people to play golf, 5) how theory plays a consequential part in the game 6) why golf is a intricate game to master, 7) why it is unlike any other game, and 8) why golfers in particular are more inquisitive and investigative than participants in any other sporting endeavor. If that is not enough, he will 9) further detail his personal beliefs and resultant philosophy on golf. That is an enormous amount of ground to cover, and it is remarkable Haultain writes convincingly on every subject. More astonishing, his thoughts are as relevant now as when he wrote them. These are the universal truths and tenets of the game, the souls of man and golf exposed. Not surprisingly, The Mystery of Golf had, and still has, a cult following. The most recent similar phenomena is Michael Murphy’s Golf in the Kingdom, a serious book on golf’s metaphysical nature, clothed as a golfing travelogue. The bibliography to this unique study lists only two golf books, and one is Arnold Haultain’s.

In spite of the seriousness of the subject matter, The Mystery of Golf is first rate entertainment. The late Victorians relied heavily on books for information and amusement. Haultain’s intelligence on anatomy, philosophy, sociology, psychology, biology, morality, physiology and neurology is dispensed in calculated doses, and with a wit from which even the author does not escape. He is a recent convert to the game but already realizes “golf is like faith: it is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen; and not until it is personally experienced does the unbelieving change…” Once past the duffer stage, armed with perhaps too much information and desire, the game seems more impossible to master. Consider this attempt by Haultain to summarize the physical difficulties of the game: “In golf you get the whole gamut of the muscular sense, from the gigantic swipe at the tee to the gentle tap on the green. It is called into play at every stroke, and it differs with every difference of club—its weight, its length of shaft, the angle which its face subtends to the horizon, its rigidity or flexibility, the construction and material of its head. Golf in short, is a sort of Gargantuan jugglery, a prodigious prestidigitation, a Titanic thimble-rigging, a mighty legerdemain.” Perhaps in the final assessment, it is a kind of magic that golf works on us, but read the book and you can decide on your own.

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