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contact | review quotes | excerptBuy the book: Hardcover | Paperback In the Depression year of 1931, on the golf links at Krewe Island off Savannah's windswept shore, two legends of the game, Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen, meet for a mesmerizing thirty-six-hole showdown. Another golfer will also compete--a troubled local war hero, once a champion, who comes with his mentor and caddie, the mysterious Bagger Vance. Sage and charismatic, it is Vance who will ultimately guide the match, for he holds the secret of the Authentic Swing. And he alone can show his protégé the way back to glory. Contact Steve with questions or comments about Bagger Vance NOTE: Mr. Pressfield reads all e-mails and tries to respond personally to as many as he can. He hopes his correspondents will understand, however, if time-constraints of work, travel, research, and family prevent him from answering every one. "The Legend of Bagger Vance is such an entertaining book on the surface you hardly realize you are being taught some of life's greatest truths. Pressfield has seamlessly brought together that rare combination of fun and enlightenment in a novel that seems destined to take its place alongside some of the great works in golf literature." Excerpt [This first passage is from the book's very beginning.] A NOTE TO THE READER In May of 1931 an exhibition match was held over 36 holes between the two greatest golfers of their day, Walter Hagen and Robert Tyre "Bobby" Jones, Jr. The match was the second and last between the two immortals (Hagen shelled Jones, 12 and 11 over 72 holes, at the first in Sarasota, Florida in 1926.) This second match was held at what was, at the time, the most costly and ambitious golf layout ever built in America, the Links at Krewe Island, Georgia. Much has been written about the rather odd events of that long day. We have Grantland Rice's dispatches to the New York Tribune, which were published at that time. The notes and diaries of O.B. Keeler devote several quite absorbing pages to the match. And of course the reports from the dozens of newspapers and sporting journals which covered the event. One aspect of that day, however, has been largely overlooked, or rather treated as a footnote, an oddity or sideshow. I refer to the inclusion in the competition, at the insistence of the citizens of Savannah, of a local champion, who in fact held his own quite honorably with the two golfing titans. I was fortunate enough to witness that match, aged ten, from the privileged and intimate vantage of assisting the local champion's caddie. I was present for many of the events leading up to the day, for the match itself, as well as certain previously unrecorded adventures in its aftermath. For many years, it has been my intention to commit my memory of these events to paper. However, a long and crowded career as a physician, husband, and father of six has prevented me from finding the time I felt the effort deserved. In candor, another factor has made me reluctant to make public these recollections. That is the rather fantastical aspect of a number of the events of that day. I was afraid that a true accounting would be misinterpreted or, worse, disbelieved. The facts, I feared, would either be discounted as the product of a ten-year-old's overactive imagination or, when perceived as the recollections of a man past seventy, be dismissed as burnished and embellished reminiscences whose truth has been lost over time in the telling and retelling. The fact is, I have never told this story. Portions I have recounted to my wife in private; fragments have been imparted on specific occasion to my children. But I have never retold the story, to others or even to myself, in its entirety. Until recently, that is. Attempting to counsel a troubled young friend, for whom I felt the tale might have significance, I passed an entire night, till sunrise, recounting the story verbally. It made such a profound impression on my young friend that I decided at last to try my hand at putting it down in written form. This volume is that attempt. I have chosen, for reasons which will become apparent, to tell the tale much as I recounted it that night. It is a story of a type of golfer, and a type of golf, which I fear has long since vanished from the scene. But I intend this record not merely as an exercise in reminiscence or nostalgia. For the events of that day had profound and far-reaching consequences on me and on others who participated, particularly the local champion referred to above. His name was Rannulph Junah, and Bagger Vance was his caddie. Hardison L. Greaves, M.D. Savannah, Georgia May, 1995 This second excerpt is Chapter Thirteen, which comes about halfway through the book, just before the golf match starts. Readers familiar with the Bhagavad Gita will recognize this section as a deliberate knock-off of the opening of the Gita -- the scene on the battlefield with the two armies massed across from each other, when the troubled warrior Arjuna orders his charioteer, Krishna (i.e., God in human form), to drive him out between the two armies, where he, Arjuna, lays down his arms and gives voice to his despair. T H I R T E E N The Chalmers pulled up on a sand ridge beyond the greenskeeper's road that paralleled the eighth and ninth fairways. You could see the galleries surging along the high ground adjacent to the first and second, seeking position for the match's start. Number One was already encircled tee to green in ranks three and four deep; thousands and thousands of white shirts and neckties, crew hats and panamas and boaters, ladies' parasols and periscopes, the first shock troops rolling into position across the turf's undulations, while their later fellows swept along the flanks in skirmish lines, rushing ahead to form their perimeters along fairway Number Two. All these the Chalmers bypassed, seeking the high ground beyond. The car stopped and the parking brake cranked on; before Bagger Vance stepped out I had already sprung from the running board and scampered to the rear, hauled Junah's golf bag from the trunk, not even sure why except perhaps hoping to inspire the champion with the sight of his weapons, and whisked it around to the auto's flank. The ridge itself was a brilliant vantage, elevated, sealed off from the multitudes by several hundred yards of duneland, with an unbroken vista out over the sand plain to the ocean. To the west the view was clear back to the hotel's spires, the bright canvas of its tourney tents and the fresh thousands swarming in from the entry drives and the auto lots. From the Chalmers' rear door Junah now emerged. He didn't step fully forth, but came half-forward, shoulders and torso into the doorframe, placed one spiked sole before him into the sand, then sat slowly onto the running board and lowered his head into his hands. "Put the clubs away, Hardy," he said in voice nearly inaudible. "I see no profit in them or this whole fool enterprise." I turned desperately to Bagger Vance. The caddie as always was the soul of composure. He motioned me to set the bag down, there in the dune grass beside the champion. "Your mind is clearly in torment, Junah," Bagger Vance spoke slowly and evenly. "Tell me please: what is the nature of your complaint?" Junah glanced up sharply at this word which seemed to trivialize his emotion. "It couldn't be more obvious, could it?" he gestured toward the multitudes in their bright battle lines, visible across the linksland. "This whole endeavour is a freak show. A joke. What good will any of it do me, or anyone attached to it?" "I perceive much good," Bagger Vance replied in that same even tone, "But tell me more specifically, what is it you perceive?" Junah's eyes remained cast down. You could see his shoulders tremble and broaden as anger, long and deeply held, began to swell powerfully within him. "`Victory' and `defeat,'" he spat the words with revulsion, as if their very sound were obscene, "I'm sick to death of them, and of men contending as if there was any difference between them! What good ever came of human beings facing one another in conflict? To see men of such stature as Jones and Hagen steeling themselves for this child's game, it was all I could do to keep from howling with hysteria, or despair which would have been more appropriate. While the world is coming apart, our countrymen starving by the millions [the time is 1931, the Depression] . . . here we disport ourselves, chasing a dimpled ball across a millionaire's playground. And for what? An heiress' greed and desperation? A few dollars to be scraped from our visitors' pockets, the pathetic need of Savannah's war-haunted psyche to `redeem itself'--and through my efforts! I won't do it. I won't be a part of this circus. "They're here for blood," he said, gesturing with contempt toward the distant hosts, "Make no mistake about it. To see men contend against each other, hoping to watch one or all be torn and fall. This is war, for all its summer cottons and ladies' frocks, and nothing good ever came from that." Junah's hands were trembling. He ran them in pain through his hair, eyes gazing hollowly before him into the dunes. "What is ever gained by `defeating' others? What can be gained here today? If I win I take no pleasure, and if I lose . . . " Here Junah's voice choked and broke off; not, one felt, with the thought of his own possible defeat or disgrace, but with the overweening futility of contention itself, which even at my tender age I could see he had wrestled with long and hard. Junah's eyes rose now and met Bagger Vance's. "I have been a warrior," he said in a voice tremulous with emotion, "I have fought, and nearly died, in battles as grave and calamitous as any in the history of man. I have seen friends perish, and enemies who might have been friends but for the madness of war. I will never take up arms again," he gestured toward the bag and its clubs, "even surrogates as preposterous as these." Saying this, Junah slumped yet deeper onto the running board, his mind tormented by grief. Now Bagger Vance spoke. "This conduct is disgraceful," he said. "Unworthy of any man, but more so of you, Rannulph Junah, whom I hold dear and bless beyond all others. Get a hold of yourself! It provokes me to fury, to see you cast down your eyes and give voice to such ignoble thoughts!" Vance's tone had changed utterly. He had not, and never did in my hearing, regress to rage; rather he spoke with a fiery primordial force and emphasis. Junah's eyes rose again, shaken by the tone of his servant's voice. "What do you know of life?" Bagger Vance stood before the champion. "Are you a god that you have plumbed the depths of existence's meaning? What statement can you make about what is real or important? Have you pierced the veil? When you have, then you may display the temerity to which you now presume! Despair. Death. You know nothing of them! Are you a god? Then shut up and do your duty!" Junah started to speak, but Bagger Vance's force overrode him. "What if I tell you that before a thimbleful of sand has slipped through the glass, one of your opponents today will need another man's hand simply to rise from his chair . . . and the other will have passed into eternity? What if I tell you of your own death? And how swiftly it follows on the heels of this disgraceful moment? "And war, since you yourself raise the subject. Shall I tell you of another conflagration coming, soon, Junah, soon, which will dwarf your Great War, breaking nations and peoples in their millions and culminating in horrors beyond the race's imagining?" Junah's countenance was now chastened, even fearstruck. He looked up at his servant, with pure heartbreak in his eyes. "You upbraid me as if I were a child, and no doubt I deserve it. But please don't abandon me. Do you think I want to feel these awful emotions, that I take pleasure in the desperate conclusions my heart leads me too? I'm lost, Bagger. Help me, my friend and mentor. Tell me what I must do." Across the dunes now sped a Krewe Island station car, a marshal's vehicle, with a blue-blazered official driving and Dougal McDermott [the head golf pro at Krewe Island] white-faced in the passenger seat. Its high undercarriage skimmed clear, approaching fast over the tufted greenskeeper's road. It was coming for us. Beyond, we could see the galleries massed in readiness, swollen to six and seven deep along the first fairway. Jones and Hagen had finished on the practice green. You could see their party, moving along the crested path to the first tee. "We have spoken in jest many times, you and I," Bagger Vance addressed Junah, "about why I initially attached myself to you, and why I've remained at your side all these years. It was for this day, Junah. As we go, I will teach you." He nodded to me; I bent to the golf bag and passed it to him. Bagger Vance set it upright before the champion, its hickory-shafted irons flashing like quivered arrows in the sun. The Krewe Island car pulled up alongside us. Across the duneland you could hear the galleries cheer as Hagen and Jones approached the first tee. "Your heart is kind, Junah. You have seen the agony of war and you wish never again to harm anything or anyone. So you choose not to act. As if by that choice, you will cause no harm. "This intention is admirable as far as it goes, but it fails to apprehend the deeper imperative of life. Life is action, Junah. Even choosing not to act, we act. We cannot do otherwise. Therefore act with vigor!" Vance glanced once to McDermott, to let the professional know we were coming. Then he turned back to his champion. "Stand now, Junah, and take your place. Do honor to yourself and to your station!" |
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