Novel Ideas
Literary giant John Updike answers 18 Questions about his other passion
By Gary Larrabee
John Updike, a long time North Shore resident, is one of the world’s most accomplished poets, short-story writers, essayists and novelists. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes, as well as the National Book Award, the American Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Arts Club Medal of Honor.
The Los Angeles Times noted that he “has earned an imposing stance on the literary landscape… earning virtually every American literary award, repeated bestsellerdom and the near-royal status of the American author-celebrity.”
In recent years, he has become a prolific and much-sought-after writer on golf, which has played a prominent role in several of his most successful novels and essays. In 1996, his collection of golf essays, anecdotes and short stories called “Golf Dreams” was released to rave reviews.
Updike is just as likely to be found on one of his many favorite North Shore public courses as he is on Myopia Hunt Club, his home course.
We began our exchange with the creator of Rabbit Angstrom by asking the 71-year-old Updike about his earliest experiences with the game.
1. North Shore Golf: What were your golfing roots?
John Updike: My roots were shallow; golf was beyond my family’s social station, and I didn’t touch a club until my first wife’s Aunt Dorothy put one in my hand on her Wellesley lawn, at the side of the house. I took a piece out of her lawn, but she told me I had a lovely natural swing, and I was hooked. She and I used to play at Nehoiden, in Wellesley, and I began to play by myself at the public courses in and around Ipswich. Soon I acquired some Wednesday afternoon partners, and there was no looking back.
2. NSG: How difficult has the game been for you to learn?
JU: Pretty difficult; my best handicap at Myopia was a 17 and now it’s a 24. I think my basic problem is that I can’t believe, with the irons, that I must take turf for a crisp hit, and that the arms should descend with the wrist-cock intact. I tend to hit from the top, with the usual feeble, pushed and fat results.
3. NSG: Are you a good student on the lesson tee?
JU: No. I get uptight and feel intruded upon. I’d rather work things out for myself, as in my other fields of endeavor.
4. NSG: What is the most important golf tip you have received?
JU: Two from Jack Nicklaus, in some instruction piece I read. On a chip, imagine yourself throwing the ball with your right hand to the desired spot for the first bounce. And in putting, think of yourself stroking the ball halfway to the hole and having it coast the rest of the way. Of course on an uphill putt you imagine more than halfway; on a downhill, less.
5. NSG: What is it about the game that creates such a powerful attraction for so many?
JU: The beautiful landscape, the occasional good hit, the sense of freedom and infinite possibility. The fact that it’s a mind game, which gives even the elderly hope, and makes every round a fresh start.
6. NSG: You are known for popping up without fanfare on any number of modest public courses on the North Shore. Can you give us a condensed update as to your impressions of your preferred layouts in the region?
JU: I played a lot of Candlewood in Ipswich and Cape Ann in Essex when I lived in that area. [Candlewood] is a short, tight course and a real experience in golfing democracy: retirees, 10-year-olds, grandmothers. We all poke it around, trying not to hit each other, and nine holes takes less than two hours.
7. NSG: Your golf writing indicates a strong affection for Cape Ann Golf Course in Essex. Could you explain?
JU: Cape Ann is a more spacious course, with a wonderful high marsh view from the fourth tee, and an amusing tidal water hole for the seventh. It’s actually been improved since I began to play it 45 years ago, though the same family runs it. A nice low-pressure venue. I had my best round ever there: 38 on the first nine, and par 35 on the second, for a sparkling 73. I’m not sure I ever broke 80 again.
8. NSG: What is your history of accomplishment and failure at your home course, Myopia Hunt Club?
JU: Myopia records fewer rounds than any course in New England, I am told, and you can walk on without a tee time most any day, even weekends. The full 18 is a real grind, if you carry your bag as I do. My favorite exercise there is to play a few holes alone, and try to work on what I’m doing wrong. Or right, even.
9. NSG: What was the gist of the conversations you had with the late Jack Lemmon during his visits for the Myopia Fourball?
JU: Lemmon was very charming and low-key; he played with his prep-school roommate, Rick Humphries. The one exchange I remember came on the fourth hole, a dogleg. I had foozled my second shot and, in foul temper, hit down furiously on the ball in the short rough with an 8-iron; it took off like a sizzling rocket and landed right on the green. Lemmon said, “Jesus!”
10. NSG: You do quite a bit of traveling. What are your favorite golf venues outside the North Shore?
JU: I travel, but rarely take my clubs, unless it’s a golf trip. A group of us were going golfing in Brittany just after the World Trade Center was hit, and instead we traveled to Rhode Island. All the courses were delightful, but I remember especially the Newport course, with its clubhouse, up on a knoll, that follows you around, visible from everywhere. I birdied a tough par 3, I remember. I got to play Augusta in ’79, as a reporter covering the Masters, and played St. Andrew in the gloaming with a Welsh father and son, and my wife along with us. Both were idyllic experiences, especially the latter. But I’m not a golf course collector; any old layout is good enough, or too good, for me.
11. NSG: What course would you most like to play for the first time?
JU: Royal Portrush, in Northern Ireland. I missed that trip and people raved about it. I would like to play Dornoch (in Scotland) again, and I suppose Pebble Beach for the first time.
12. NSG: Can you tell us about your greatest triumph on a golf course? What was your worst experience?
JU: I’ve already described my good round at Cape Ann. Playing in a 4-ball at the Essex County Club, my partner and I in the flight finals went up against a formidable pair of brothers and were holding even with them. On the 15th hole, I pulled my drive into the overhanging branches of a pine tree, miss-hit the next shot into the rough halfway up the fairway, got mad with an eight-iron, like the Lemmon shot, come to think of it, and put it within a gimme, for a four. Our hole, and since we had strokes on the next, the long 16th, it seemed likely we would win. We did.
As for worst experiences, I can’t choose between a number of Sunday mornings when, dressed in shorts that were inadequate against the morning chill, I showed up for a final match I knew in my bones we were going to lose, and did. I don’t like playing on Sunday mornings; a lifetime of churchgoing puts a jinx on the clubs.
13. NSG: If you had one “golfing dream” that could become reality, what would it be?
JU: Since I’ve parred every hole at Myopia, putting it all together and parring them all in a row.
14. NSG: How much golf do you watch on TV? Who are your favorite players to watch?
JU: I watch Saturdays and Sundays when I can, especially in the winter, before golf becomes locally feasible.
I love Tiger, and on the distaff side Se Ri Pak. I remember her on television, when she was a new golfer to me, taking off her shoes in an LPGA tournament, standing there in a pond up to her calves and advancing the ball off a bank onto the green. With never as much as a flicker of expression. The mystery of the Orient. As [TV commentator] Johnny Miller said, just the sound of her club on the ball is pure. And I like how she wears her sunglasses on her visor.
Ernie Els has the swing I wish I could emulate. And Vijay Singh. Betsy King is from Berks County, Pennsylvania, as am I, and as long as she was around I rooted for her.
15. NSG: What are you working on for your next major literary project?
JU: I have a massive collection of early short stories to see through the press for this fall and a half-done novel to complete for [Fall 2004. After that, a graceful, grateful silence.
16. NSG: Any future golf writing plans?
JU: None. I think I’ve said it all, including some of this interview, before. Golf was meant to be my relief from writing, not an extension of it.
17. NSG: Golf writing has changed dramatically since the days of Herbert Warren Wind’s masterful works. It seems to have more of an edge, an attitude, if you will, whether it’s daily/weekly reportage or essays, even golf fiction. Do you like the “modern” style of golf journalism?
JU: I loved Wind’s loving resumes of the way golf was, back to Bobby Jones and Walter Travis and Ouimet at Brookline in 1913.
He really put you there, whether he was there or not. Good golf writing has to be saturated in the past, to have Wind’s quality of reverence for achievements written, as it were, on the wind. Playing St. Andrews, we walk the same ground as Old Tom and Young Tom Morris, squint at the same distances, over the same yellow gorse. Good golf writing extends the great fellowship of golfers, dead and living both. I fear that the reporting on the game, along with the game itself, is getting caught up in the hype, the money washing into the game from the advertisers on TV. All this hype about Annika Sorenstam was unheard of when Babe Didrikson did the same thing in 1945. As if male golfers haven’t had some of their most enjoyable rounds with female players, and haven’t learned from them. Golf, like politics, is in danger of being boiled down to video-bites, a Reader’s Digest approach to one of the few leisurely activities left.
18. NSG: Your “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu” essay about Ted Williams’ final game at Fenway Park in 1960 is a literary classic. Would you like to do a Jack Nicklaus version when the Golden Bear plays his final tournament?
JU: Jack’s last tournament isn’t apt to be as dramatic as Ted’s last game. Nor does Nicklaus captivate me the way that Williams did.
I was a [Arnold] Palmer rooter, and resented the way “Fat Jack” took golf over. Also, people emulating his hanging over putts added an hour to the average American round.
Still, with Tiger faltering a little lately, you have to appreciate the record the man left. Anyway, golf isn’t like baseball - the last game is the one just before you die.
