Q&A / CARL HIAASEN: 'I don't think writers are cut out to be golfers'

http://www.ajc.com/living/content/printedition/2008/05/12/hiaasen.html

Just curious what golfers on this board think of these quotes.

 

Hard to believe someone I've never met knows me so well.

 

Hiaasen's new golf memoir is "The Downhill Lie" and those are quotes from him about the book and the game.

 

For a Q&A subject, Hiaasen's a pretty good writer.

 

Read the excerpt that appeared in Sports Illustrated recently and he described just about every lousy shot, every gut wrenching, emotionally scarring moment I've spent on a golf course. I didn't know whether to feel better about myself because there was someone else who sucked too, or worse because it likely won't get any better.

 

I think there's a lot of truth to what he's saying.
Think about a story you just wrote. You look at it after it goes to press, you can find ways you could have made it better. If you fire off a great feature, perhaps your best, you sit down a few days later and find ways it could have improved.
Golf is no different. If you take your golf seriously, you think about rounds for a while after they're done. I shot a career-best 78 last year and was pissed I made 10 pars and eight bogeys and was thinking about the stupid shots I missed from the fairway and lack of strong birdie attempts.

 

Here's something that's long puzzled me about golf writing -- so many newspaper writers seem to turn in golf copy that's a pleasure to read (and I am not a golf fan). Aside from top specialists like Bonk and Dorman, it seems like even the off-duty football and basketball writers and the general sports columnists who parachute in for majors seem to write really well when they cover golf. I've edited some writers who I thought were good but not great on their regular beats, but send them to Augusta or Pebble Beach for a week and they tear it up.

 

Carl Hiaasen is my favorite author, so I can't wait to read this book.

 

There is next to no connection at all between the attributes needed to be a good writer and those that are necessary to hit a golf ball well. You need concentration to do both, but the list ends there.

Yeah, after you've done both you can go back and think about how you could have done better. But you can say that about 100 things you do every day -- driving to work, making the bed, preparing dinner.

 

Golf competition is the ideal undertaking to write about, at least that's what it felt like when I was still doing it. You've got a lot of choices: man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs. history, man vs. his own psyche.

 

Don't forget the competition always ends before sundown, too, which is more and more a rarity in other sports.