53. Talk to It: Golf balls

** part of an occasional series looking at people talking to non-humans

Some combination of curiosity, inertia, and happenstance had me watching golf for the first time in my life yesterday. Luckily, the playoff round of the US Open was not a bad time to start. Golf is a slow, analytic game (in his column today, David Brooks calls Tiger's style of play "actuarial"). So watching golf on TV always seemed to me like some Ouroborean caricature of leisure. Sort of like spending the day on the front porch telling stories about other days you've spent on the front porch. But if you turn your ear to the talk that goes on, it becomes considerably more action-packed. (A separate post on phenomena inherent to "golf talk" is clearly in order. Consider, to name a few: the announcers' habit of whispering during important putts; the peculiar tendency for great shots to be called "great shots" while truly exceptional shots are called "great golf shots"; and the inscrutable chatter that can occasionally be heard about wind directions.) Here I'll focus on one peculiar phenomenon: talking to the ball.

In golf more so than in other sports there seems to be a tendency to talk about and to the ball as if it is its own headstrong captain. A little agent. The reason for this seems to be a straightforward matter of elapsed time. In most sports involving a ball, things happen fast: you let go, or kick, or make contact with some instrument. And then things happen and happen right away. The ball goes in the hoop, is caught or dropped, rockets by the goalie or off a post. In golf there is a lot of time between the letting the ball go and the final conclusion of its motion, and it is in that stretchy, restless swath that we feel a vestigial animism arise. It takes hold of our throats and we want to do whatever we can to steer the journey. We want to give the ball some guidance, just some simple instructions. Usually imperatives.

On almost every tee shot you will hear some guy in the gallery yell "Get in the hole!". In fact, to my ears it always seems like the same guy. (He can be heard in the clip below.) On the greens you will also hear the golfers themselves as well as the announcers talk to the ball, the excitement welling up in there voices as it arcs deliberately toward the hole. During such an arc yesterday, one of the announcers could be heard to say: "Easy, eassssyy." There's really something special here about how closely the speech is coupled to unfolding course of the little hero. It would be awesome to just hear clips of this kind of talk, maybe looped.

When talking to your golf ball, it is, of course, perfectly acceptable to gesture. Tiger, famously restrained, tried to gesturally encourage a putt yesterday by pushing his hand outward from his body. "C'mon little guy, just a little farther. You can do it." In the clip below notice how, as the ball closes in on the hole, Tiger starts to walk backwards. Notice that the direction of his backward steps mirrors the direction in which he wishes the ball to go.