When learning Thomsen was writing Golf: Find Center: Enter the Circle, many had emphasized the diversity of golf due to its natural setting, and golf's natural setting was open to amateurs, professionals, and all ages as well. Thomsen was quick to agree, "Golf can serve the needs of many. It's my job to open up to more and increase the standards within the art form -golf." Some have asked, "Who do you think will read it, Jack?" "Few" came the reply. "Golfers mainly-and only the most obsessive of those. There's no popular market for this book. Materialism is too much in demand, and serving the spirit has become lost." That brief exchange reveals an unvarnished truth: golf is essentially caught in a materialistic grasp as an overview of the game, and yet as an art form, independent players function in it. The artist Vincent van Gogh had sold few of his paintings. Someone else had done that. Is the treasure the money or the art? Golf: Find Center: Enter the Circle, a genesis from a personal journal's beginning, has been imbued with a Joycean stream of consciousness that, in its intuitiveness, is likely to engage none but the determined reader. By way of contrast, however, the book's title rightly distills Thomsen's thesis. Golf, he asserts, can be a spiritual practice when done as an expression of the golfer's essential self and if engaged in it for the sheer love of golf's diversity, its wholeness, bringing on its transcendental nature. Accept Thomsen's invitation, turn your attention inward, tap into the answers that are there, feel the resultant centering, the balance, and project that centering-enter the circle. "A liberated person possesses perfect senses and with perfect senses only can one serve the sense proprietor," says the Bhagavad Gita.
Golf
By Kathryn Thomsen, Jack ThomsenTrafford Publishing
Copyright © 2015 Kathryn Thomsen and Jack Thomsen
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4907-5607-3Contents
Dedication, iii,
About the Book, vii,
About the Author, ix,
Introduction, xi,
Ch 1 Where is Center?, 1,
Ch 2 Why a Geodesic Dome?" (Dome/Dogs Painting), 5,
Ch 3 Who Designed This Plot? (graph), 13,
Ch 4 Measurement, 33,
Ch 5 Transcendental Golf (2nd Ma & Pa Painting), 40,
Ch 6 Transcendent Sports/Zen Caps, 49,
Ch 7 Art Forms & Golf s Linear - Circular Energy, 57,
Ch 8 Variable Lie and Ball Selection (SW. Doc), 69,
Ch 9 Boxing Connections and Infighters (3rd Painting), 92,
Ch 10 Does the Inside Move the Outside?, 111,
Ch 11 The Ruffler, 120,
Ch 12 Golf Needs George Carlin, 124,
Ch 13 Teaching/Teachers, 131,
Ch 14 Ever Changing: Golf & Golfers, 137,
Ch 15 Assessment: Read the Break, 144,
Ch 16 What Lie Angle for You?, 152,
Ch 17 What About the Flat Stick? (4th Painting), 156,
Ch 18 Staying Connected Works! (5th Hogan), 161,
Ch 19 Why a Cartoon?, 176,
Ch 20 Who Doesn't Want Clean Water?, 185,
Ch 21 The Feng Shui, 194,
Ch 22 What's Hinged/What's Cocked & Why?, 206,
Ch 23 Smilie Face and the Lariat, 210,
Ch 24 Hand Placement, 223,
Ch 25 Ray Berres: Baseball and Golf (6th Ray/ Bob), 229,
Ch 26 Mike & Ma's Great Hands (7th Ma tatting), 235,
Ch 27 True Gravity News Letter (8th Kathryn / Ma), 242,
Ch 28 Tee It Up - Radio (9th Dave and Scott, Graph), 246,
Ch 29 To Whose Convenience - 'Simple'?, 257,
Ch 30 How We Aim, 267,
Ch 31 The Bus Driver, 286,
Ch 32 The Dojo of Golf & Ol' Pros, 291,
Ch 33 Bit Crazy (10th Indonesia/Kids), 304,
Ch 34 Jack's or Better, 310,
Ch 35 Golf's Politicians (11th Pres. Ford), 314,
Ch 36 Ryder Cup: Golf's Thumbs-Up (12th R&P), 323,
Ch 37 Under the Microscope (Crooked Lies), 329,
Ch 38 Time for Nine, 334,
Ch 39 PGA Survey on Anchoring, 338,
Ch 40 Anchoring: Advantages/Disadvantages, 342,
Ch 41 "Awesome Alternative to Anchoring", 345,
Ch 42 Off the Street - into Creativity, 349,
Ch 43 Variety vs Consistency, 353,
Ch 44 With Walter/Without Walter, 358,
Ch 45 Enough Already: Money, Money, 363,
Ch 46 An I Ching Solution to Ray Martinez II (I Ching), 366,
Ch 47 Resolution #1: Annual PGA Meeting, 375,
Ch 48 Where's The Cranberry Juice?, 378,
Ch 49 Willie's Right Arm/Squeeze Play, 383,
Afterward, 391,
Translation and Purport, 392,
Epilogue, 395,
Glossary, 397,
CHAPTER 1
Where is Center?
When bending to the game of golf is one bowing to the teacher? Haven't you heard the golf ball say, "If you stay quiet within I'll travel truer without?"
What direction is the grip end of the golf club pointing as golfers address the ball? Is it not the belly? Where is "chi" which is an expression of eastern energy? Does the belly not move with the hands and the golf club? What is the unifying force of any total swing, but breath energy and the weapon of choice?
In golf, is it not so that the ball is quiet, and the terrain irregular, unlike most games where the playing field is flat and the ball in motion; soccer, tennis, baseball, and football being examples? Golf could be a total training calibration of golf shot diversity in practice and play, because golf s calibration includes trajectory, distance, and swing plane factors that mimic golf course variables. However, movement, feeling, and thought blend with angle totally, for good reason; which is a golf course s challenge. This is golf s uneven lie challenge for golfers at all golf courses. However, the 15% flat lie of the game of golf is practiced in excess of the variable lie angle s 85%. This condition therefore, needs to be understood totally as variable lie angle, which is an uneducated eighty-five percent of golf practice!
Practitioner characteristics in either Martial Arts or golf, in the dojo or the golf range, ones katas or fourteen golf club weaponry, the choice to practice and train are on flat surfaces, but the real experience of either/or is unlike their modified training location. It's time to embrace life s agenda totally: the known, unknown, and unknowable. How can the ocean be separate from the wave? Is it not so that the empi in karate is the enforcer of the other side? If we do not know the 'center' how could we establish yin/yang forces that move freely? Again, how can the ocean be separate from the wave?
Some of us have unwavering faith in traditional wisdom that proclaims, "By mastering one, you may master all." Like in yoga, one chooses one asana and practice until one has mastered it, arranging the rest of their disciplines simply to support this goal. Therefore, practice the pitching wedge on 'crooked lies'. Know the terrain. Know your center. Follow the breath. Find stability in both body and mind.
Will you ask, "How can I grow the game of golf?" As an antidote to profit maximizing business (PMB), socially responsible business (SB) can operate in the same market spaces competing with one another for market share on the new Wedge Course. The Short Game area can fit a single golf club to a poor human being-generating a unity of self and community. Please join in an effort of universal growth-find center, play golf, "Be the ball" and strike the wedge.
On this note, the shortest day, December 21, 2014, this is what has occurred, and is perfectly said from the Bhagavad-Gita, "The time was very short, and naturally Sukadeva Gosvami could have gone directly to the Tenth Canto to make a shortcut of the whole thing, as generally done by professional reciters".....
So it is in the art form golf, instead of proceeding systematically, so that both future readers and hearers might take lessons from the example of the procedure of variable lie angle, those in control seek repetition of the flat lie, without acceptance of the uneven lie in its constant change only on the golf course. Hence, 'a shortcut!' Practice fifteen percent of golf's flat lies, 100% of the time! Then, unwisely accept confrontation from uneven lies the remainder of the time, knowing little about "variable lie angle." This is the same as the putting dilemma: whether to "anchor or not to anchor," but not realizing an education is manifest in the act of training with the Putting Rod, an anchor system, yet one that studies and understands by sharing the value of the anchor's pros and cons, keeping the Rules of golf in tact (no mechanical aid-no anchoring). Why not gain a disciplined arc putting stroke through 'anchored' training? Likewise, why not calibrate one's golf shot with variable lie angle, and create a platform for Social Business?
Is it a gradual process of service and inquiries, or a poor fund of knowledge that one does not know variable lie angle calibration? Why stay uneducated in uneven lies, a diverse system where nothing is the same? Calibration on variable lie angle is the whole human beings center of thought, feeling, and movement. Thought is found everywhere. Feeling is found everywhere. Movement is found everywhere. How can I transcend that which I have never mastered? What if one can use the belly as an important gateway to the whole of yourself, your true center? What if one's use of power and ego associated with this center stem from a lack of understanding, appreciation and training? What if the heart of love and the heart of power are one...
