Friendly Matches: Three Types of Golf-Friendship

“The Match” airs today. For whatever it’s going to be, watching it will be better than not watching it. On display will be all sorts of things: showmanship, shot-making, ostentatious wagering, crude commercialism, and the culmination of horrible, forced Twitter trash-talk.

Nonetheless, somewhere near the core of this over-the-top spectacle is the relationship between Phil and Tiger. It’s well-documented how the rivals have become friendlier of late. As Tiger said not long ago: “Our friendship has gotten stronger over the years.” “The Match” will allow us to daydream about making six-figure side bets–if you’re even into that sort of thing–however, it might also give us an occasion to consider the game of golf and its particular ability to build and foster friendships.

A little while back, I suggested that friendship is necessary for a flourishing life, following the lead of both experience and Aristotle. Today I’d like to look at three types of friendships as analyzed by that same philosopher. Considering golf, it must be said that the game gives rise to, shapes, and enriches friendships. By taking in this read, hopefully you’ll be able to figure out what kind of golf-friend you are and what types of golf-friends you have.

We have three categories of friendship, then: 1. those based on pleasure, 2. those based on utility or usefulness, and 3. those that are “complete friendship,” centered in goodness, virtue, and mutual concern. These are each shaped by a certain kind of love, the type of love present determining what kind of friendship is present. And the type of love is determined by what in fact is loved in the friendship.

As Aristotle says, those that love because of pleasure, love the witty friend not for the friend’s own sake, but because he makes one laugh. Those that love a friend for her usefulness don’t love the friend herself, but rather, the goods that come from the friendship. Aristotle says these friendships are “coincidental,” and are “easily dissolved,” since the friendship only persists as long as it coincides with either the pleasures or goods derived from the relationship.

The third type of friendship, on the other hand, is enduring since the friends therein love each other for the other’s sake, not primarily for any good derived from the friend. In these friendships, we “wish goods to each other for each other’s own sake.” Friendships such as these, those built amongst people of virtue, are lasting since virtue is lasting. In this we love the friend because of who he is, his good character, without qualification or condition. Further, these friendships involve a mutual concern and “reciprocated goodwill.”

In reference to the two aforementioned incomplete species of friendship, Aristotle makes the point that this complete form actually possesses that which is good in the other, imperfect iterations. For, the good and virtuous friend that we love for his own sake will be pleasant to be around, since the good are pleasant in company. Additionally, since the friend will love us for our own sake, the friendship is sure to be useful and advantageous to us, though not in the mercenary manner found in friendships solely based on usefulness.

There is so much more to be said about friendship and the game of golf. Consider this an initial exercise in the making of distinctions. Such distinctions and the realities they highlight can help us, though, as we continue to enrich our golf friendships, or perhaps think of what kind of golf friend we already are, or hope to be. The nice thing is, though, with the game of golf as a shared activity, all our golf friendships stand to benefit from the particularities the game affords those who call each other “friend.”

*Based on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII, Chapters 1-4.

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Two Necessary Things: Golf and Friendship

If you’re putting together a short list of reasons people golf, friendship will most likely find a spot toward the top. From strangers meeting for the first time on the first tee, to the decades-long weekly match among old friends, the game of golf seems to have a particular proclivity toward the fostering of friendships. I’d like to devote a couple of posts to this facet of the game, and in doing so I’d like to call in the thought of Aristotle on the subject. Not a golfer himself—unless the history of golf goes back way further than we presently think!—he is certainly regarded as expert on the topic of friendship. By calling to mind this ancient Greek—once widely-known as the Philosopher—I think we can get to know the game of golf, and its fostering of friendships, all the better.

While I’ve argued before that golf is an activity good for its own sake, I think it is, of its own very nature, such an activity that allows itself to be a common pursuit of a collected number of people. Which is just a long-winded way of saying that golf is played in common. And having a common pursuit amongst them, golf’s players find a touchstone for their friendship. In time, I’d like to examine golf’s particularities vis-à-vis the facilitation of friendships, but for today I’d like to introduce some preliminary thoughts from Aristotle on the topic.

For starters, it is commonly held that friendship is “most necessary for our life,” in fact, “no one would choose to live without friends even if he had all the other goods” (Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. VIII, Ch. 1). All walks of life are needful of it. The rich more so than others, for they need friends in order to show their generosity, they are also in need of friends for the protection of their wealth. The poor in their misfortune need friends, as people are of the opinion that these are “the only refuge.” The young need friends to guide them, and the old need friends in their weakness. Those in the prime of life need friends to magnify their ability “to do fine actions.”

Overarchingly, “friendship would seem to hold cities together,” this being even more central to political life than justice, since friendship already entails justice within itself. As Aristotle puts it: “if people are friends, they have no need of justice, but if they are just they need friendship in addition; and the justice that is most just seems to belong to friendship.”

So much for the necessity of friendship. I hope to return to this topic later this week, looking at the different types of friends Aristotle considers. At the very least I hope it can be seen that because of golf’s intimate relationship to friendship, and friendship’s essential place in a person’s life, that golf is not at all trivial, but might in fact hold some discoverable secrets regarding human flourishing.

In any event, just consider No Laying Up’s recent “Strapped” episode. Big Randy and Young Neil express quite a bit about golf, camaraderie and friendship:

The Witty Golfer

I get upset over a bad shot just like anyone else. But it’s silly to let the game get to you. When I miss a shot I just think what a beautiful day it is. And what pure fresh air I’m breathing. Then I take a deep breath. I have to do that. That’s what gives me the strength to break the club —Bob Hope

It goes by a couple names: wittiness, ready-wit, mirthfulness. (I think mirthfulness is my favorite, though I’ll use them all interchangeably.) Falling under the cardinal virtue of temperance, mirthfulness is the ingrained habit of joking well, laughing well, seeing the world with a playful vision, and includes providing for others’ enjoyment and levity. This wittiness implies the ability to recognize those facets and aspects of human life that call for a jovial or joking response.

The golf course is certainly an arena of human life where this virtue makes its great worth known. Whether laughing at oneself or helping a gloomy playing partner along with a quick one-liner, recognizing the comic element—maybe even the cheerful element—of the game is of great value.

In the next couple of paragraphs, I’ll draw on the thoughts of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas regarding this virtue. My hope is that by looking to an ancient and medieval author, we moderns might more fully grasp what this great character trait is, how we might live it out more fully, and how it contributes to our pursuit of human flourishing.

Starting from a rather obvious point of departure, Aquinas argues that it is against reason for a person to be “burdensome to others”[i]. When it comes to the activity of conversation and communication, it is the bore, characteristically, that fits this description. The type of burden the bore places on others is either an inability to “offer pleasure to others,” or the “hindering [of] their enjoyment.” The person without mirth, according to Aquinas, is one that not only lacks “playful speech,” thereby not positively contributing to whatever social interaction is at hand, but one that is also taxing on others as they are “deaf” to others’ wit and amusement, thereby spurning the enjoyable offer of levity from others.

In the section of the Nicomachean Ethics dealing with the witty, Aristotle begins by acknowledging that rest is a part of life, part of this rest being “leisure and amusement”[ii]. When at this leisure and amusement, Aristotle considers there to be a fitting “kind of intercourse which is tasteful,” that is, saying and listening to what one should and how one should. The conversation and interaction that Aristotle holds up for admiration is the ability to “joke in a tasteful way,” and he considers those that can do so “ready-witted.” An aspect of this ready-wittedness, according to Aristotle, is a person’s conversational agility.

Plato and Aristotle walk the fairway

Present with the mirthful character is tact. The tactful person differs from the buffoon as regards how they joke and what they joke about. Illustrating his point, Aristotle compares what he labels the “old and new comedies.”  He states that the old comedies “found their fun in obscenity,” while the new comedies turned to innuendo, with the difference between the two styles being of “no small degree in respect of propriety.”

I think another angle on this is that the truly witty person’s humor is agile, subtle, and has a certain intelligence and timing to it. Bob Hope’s joke above is a perfect example. The buffoon’s is a blunt instrument, the bore’s is non-existent.

The mirthful person, the person that jokes well, is not simply marked out by what sorts of jokes he will laugh at or make. This person will also illustrate his possession of the virtue exactly in what he will not laugh at, or by the types of jokes he will not make.

Aristotle’s exposition of this virtue forwards the ideal that when it comes to joking, the virtuous person, therefore, “will be . . . a law to himself.” Further, there is a certain versatility to the virtue, in that the way one jokes amongst friends will differ from how one jokes with children or how one will joke with grandparents, for instance.

In having taken a very quick and partial account of Aristotle and Aquinas’s take on the virtue of wittiness, it can be seen that a distinctive quality of this virtue is its concern for others. Namely, the humor employed by the mirthful is concerned with the enjoyment of others, and not only their enjoyment but the avoidance of their being offended or abused by such humor as well.

Like all virtues, they are best understood when embodied in particular men and women. In a certain way, you know it when you see it. And in seeing, a person can better emulate the admirable traits in others to the point that they become one’s own. Of course the line between wittiness and buffoonery can be blurry in places at certain times, but to be too concerned with this doesn’t seem to be in the spirit of the virtue.

So does this matter for golf? I’d say most certainly, yes. It matters for the overall enjoyment of a round, not just for oneself but for the whole group. It even matters for one’s play. We all know the dour effects of being overly-serious, or overly-dejected at a bad shot or bounce, or lip out, or flyer out of the rough . . . the list could continue. The worth of being able to lift yourself or a buddy out of golfer’s gloom can’t be underestimated. And not only that, wittiness or mirthfulness can only help us delight in the game more fully. And isn’t that what we’re after?

[i] Aquinas quotes taken from: ST, II, q. 168, a. 4, trans. English Dominican Province.

[ii]Aristotle quotes taken from: Nicomachean Ethics, Book IV, in Introduction to Aristotle, edited by Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1947), 394.

Golf is Useless (and Why That’s a Good Thing): Part 1

“Golf is the most useless outdoor game ever devised to waste the time and try the spirit of man.”

—Westbrook Pegler

“The best thing in us as precisely useless . . . things we enjoy doing for their own sakes.”

—James V. Schall

 

The question is more an accusatory jab than anything: “What is the point of golf? Nothing more than the most futile of exercises. Old men with stupid sticks smacking a small white ball toward a little flag-marked hole plugged in a big park. It all seems so very useless.” This sentiment and conclusion can be seen in the Westbrook Pegler quote above. Within it is the sense that golf is just a wasteful trial of no discernible worth.

Rushing to golf’s defense, a certain temptation emerges for the game’s defenders to marshal evidence that runs contrary to this accusation. Arguments made for the usefulness of golf. Surely—so it runs—you realize the value of fresh air, recreation, a long stretch of the legs, concerted concentration, not to mention the camaraderie. And, it must be admitted, there is something to all of is. I want to suggest, however, that the best apologia on golf’s behalf in the face of the accusation of uselessness is to admit the very charge and agree that the game, ultimately, is useless. And here’s the rub: that’s a good thing.

Certainly, golf is intimately related to, partially composed of, and inclusive of things like friendship, fresh air, exercise, gamesmanship, athleticism, aesthetics, recreation and, maybe for a rarified few, putting some cash in the pocket. I would like to argue, though, that golf is not, or should not be, only some interchangeable instrumental means used to achieve those further goals. In fact, it is the game in its wholeness that gives all those other goods their particular shape. They all take on a certain golfiness, to coin a terrible turn of the tongue. At its heart, golf shouldn’t be seen as just some means used to achieve some further ends. These ends are to be found within its overarching form.

The best and most noble things in our lives are the most useless. They don’t need to serve some further purpose. The hammer is useful, but only useful. The stroll with your wife is—even if in part for exercise and fresh air and getting out of the house—good for its own sake. Gazing at a beautiful painting or reading a poem or coloring with your kids, these are all good just for their own sakes. They aren’t done because they are useful for achieving some yet other purpose. By this all I mean is that there are some things we do that don’t need more of a justification than something like, “because I love it,” or “because it is beautiful.” Surely there are further ramifications of such actions, but, and here’s the key, the actions aren’t really done for these further ends.

Golf like all such things is done freely. I don’t need another reason, some further goal, some use of golf. It is done just for its own sake. To say that golf builds friendships, provides for some exercise and time in the great outdoors does nothing to negate this, it only describes in greater detail some aspects of the essence of the game and why people love it. For, again, all these constitutive components are given a particularly golf-y shape within the contours of the game. Here the game can be seen as a shared world for its inhabitants to enjoy such facets.

A follow-up Part II will appear on Wednesday. 

Updike on this Thing

An Updikean Addendum

I’d like to follow up an earlier post on happiness by looking at a portion of John Updike’s Golf Dreams. In this compilation is an excerpt from his novel Rabbit, Run. In it, the main character Rabbit is playing a round of golf with Episcopalian minister Jack Eccles. Eccles pesters Rabbit as to why Rabbit has recently left his wife. In the midst of this tension-filled scene Rabbit declares defiantly, “I told ja. There was this thing that wasn’t there.” Unsatisfied, Eccles interrogates his playing partner about this thing. What follows is worth quoting at length:

[Rabbit’s] heart is hushed, held in mid-beat, by anger. He doesn’t care about anything except getting out of this tangle. He wants it to rain. In avoiding looking at Eccles he looks at the ball, which sits high on the tee and already seems free of the ground. Very simply he brings the clubhead around his shoulder into it. The sound has a hollowness, a singleness he hasn’t heard before. His arms force his head up and his ball is hung way out, lunarly pale against the beautiful black blue of storm clouds. . . . It recedes along a line straight as a ruler-edge. Stricken; sphere, star, speck. It hesitates, and Rabbit thinks it will die, be he’s fooled, for the ball makes its hesitation the ground of a final leap: with a kind of visible sob takes a last bite of space before vanishing in a falling. “That’s it!” he cries and, turning to Eccles with a grin of aggrandizement, repeats, “That’s it.”

Here I think can be seen a certain satisfaction in having done well. A particular contemplative contentment. The moment is full, more than the sum of its parts. Therein can be found a harmonization and flowing freedom in realizing the sought-after goal. Which is to say, this all sounds rather Aristotelian. And perhaps this thing found in a purely hit tee shot is a condensed indication of a broader and richer phenomena.

Get Updike’s edited volume, Golf Dreams, it’s well worth it:

Happiness, Putter in Hand

“Happiness is a long walk with a putter.” –Greg Norman

“Happiness.” A word victimized by the banalities of greeting card companies, Pinterest, saccharine-sounding platitudes, and shallow cinematic treatment. And yet the word cannot be done away with. Nor should it.

But articulating its meaning, its essence, is a difficult task. Some would have it that the word “happiness” can be defined differently for each individual person. And of course the word allows for subjectivized colorings and shadings. But, if the word means whatever anyone wants it to mean, then it might as well be done away with, for it would have lost its communal meaning. A word without some sort of common, shared understanding is a solipsistic throw-away.

How to proceed, though? Even the philosophers can’t seem to agree. Gather Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, and John Stuart Mill around the table and they’ll all give you something else at odds with the other two.

Drawing from the world of golf, though, we can look to Greg Norman’s well-worn quote: “Happiness is a long walk with a putter.” No matter what the hole, course, or handicap, I think every golfer can attest to the joy of sticking a long approach on the green, this joy attended by its own sort of relief and contentment. No need to worry about some chip, flop, or bunker shot. All you have to do is stride along putter in hand, gathering a deep breath and soaking in the scenery.

So what the Shark was saying isn’t much different than the Philosopher.

And I really do think there is something in Norman’s words that is illuminating of the nature and essence of happiness, understood in a certain way. For here is the acknowledgement of happiness as being elicited, and in no way separable from, the realization and achievement of some activity’s goal.

Further, the long walk entails a noticeable period of enjoyment of that goal’s realization, the ability to relish in having done well. Of course, a three putt could dash one’s subjective interior state, but this need not take away the joy of a well-executed approach.

And this does, in fact, call to mind one of the aforementioned philosophers—the one formerly known as the Philosopher—Aristotle.

Now, as Aristotle notes, there is a such-and-such and a good such-and-such. We call “good” the one that realizes the end or ends of a particular activity. For the archer, it’s hitting the target. For the ship-maker it’s the well-made ship. For the human being, says Aristotle, there is one end or goal beyond and behind all other human activity. And to spoil the long chain of questions one could entertain to arrive at this good, it is the satisfaction in having lived well. Having lived virtuously so as to flourish in one’s life. And this we can call happiness.

So what the Shark was saying isn’t much different than the Philosopher.