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Flight of a Good Golf Drive This Week at LiveAuctionTalk.com
Added: (Sun Oct 18 2009)
Santa Fe, Oct. 19, 2009 -- Picture yourself driving a golf ball through unmowed greens into a weed-infested landscape. The greenkeepers on the course are grazing sheep and if you are lucky enough to be female you’re smacking the ball through all of this in a bulky long skirt.
As far as I can tell that’s what golf looked like in 18th century Scotland. It was a simple game played with primitive wooden-shaft clubs and leather-covered balls. Some historians argue the game was actually played at Royal Blackheath in London as far back as 1608.
“What other people may find in poetry or art museums, I find in the flight of a good drive,” Arnold Palmer said.
A cross between romance and obsession. Not unlike many love affairs.
How often on the course has a foursome been engrossed in a “stymie” in which one ball is blocking another’s path to the hole? Artists don’t often miss much and in 1899 John Dollman captured the age-old dilemma in his hand-colored print called “The Stymie.”
The 14 ½ inches by 24 inches, hand-colored print sold in the Fine & Rare Books & Memorabilia auction at PBA Galleries in San Francisco on Aug. 6.
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Rosemary McKittrick is a storyteller who spotlights artifacts from the past through the lens of the auction camera.