18 Holes & True Enlightenment

Here’s how my 5-iron wound up among the naked tai chi people on the first full day of the “Golf in the Kingdom” workshop:

Our guru-pro, Fred Shoemaker, sets up a cage on the main lawn of the Esalen Institute so we can throw clubs into it. Oh, we hit a few balls first so he can videotape our normal swings. But the idea is to learn how much better we look when we LET GO. So Fred tells us to fling one club after another at a bull’s-eye on the back of the cage. Just fling ‘em. Let ‘em go.

It’s a metaphor, of course. LET GO with your swing. LET GO in life. But more on golf-life metaphors later. First the naked people. They’re in the pool area adjoining the lawn. A few are merely sunbathing, but others stand at the edge of the Big Sur cliffs, gazing at the Pacific while going through their slow-motion exercises, like Pat Morita doing his one-legged swan in those “Karate Kid” movies. That some are doing it in the buff is hardly unexpected. After all, this is Esalen and--golfers around or not--this form of letting go has been par for the course here since the place opened in 1962.

In any case, I dutifully face the other direction, toward the cage, and start to throw clubs, intent on impressing my mates with my ability to LET GO. And the first club does zoom at the bull’s-eye, safely into the netting. But then . . . well, I hold on tooooo loooong. I clutch the 5-iron until my swing is nearly complete and the club beside my head. So when I finally do LET GO, the club helicopters backward, higher and higher--propelled by all the force of my 200 pounds and, if I do say so myself, rather strong wrists. There’s no denying it--the videotape captures perfectly my head contorting to follow the club as it soars above the iron fence around the pool and lands, with a clank, among the nubiles.

I grab another club and begin tinkering with my grip. To no avail. Some of my colleagues scamper to retrieve the errant missile, struggling to keep straight faces. The tai chi people are fuming, wondering who let golfers in here. And the pro is patting the video camera, telling no one in particular, “This one’s a keeper.”

The first full day and here I am, trapped in an emotional sand trap. The one known as TOTAL HUMILIATION.

Is this any way to find enlightenment on the links?

*

THE MOMENT I’D HEARD YOU COULD HAVE A “GOLF IN THE Kingdom” experience, I knew I had to check it out. Michael Murphy’s 1972 novel was a classic of the counterculture--that striving to find deeper meaning amid a materialistic, selfish society. Zen adherents had long shown that higher levels of consciousness could be reached through everything from flower arrangement to archery. “Golf in the Kingdom” extended that notion to a game associated with $2 Nassau bets among the Republican country club set. Murphy had co-founded Esalen on his family’s coastal acreage, where he attracted a crowd known to despise golf as the environmentally insensitive indulgence of imperialist lackeys. But his point was that satori could be found in unlikely places. Roughly based on his own life, the book told of a Stanford philosophy student who heads overseas to study at an Indian ashram, only to discover his true master in Scotland, where he plays “gowf” with a pro named Shivas Irons, who ruminates on the whiteness of the ball and instructs students, “Let the nothingness into yer shots.”

As soon as the book was published, I scooped it off the shelves. I’d just finished a college career in which I engaged passionately both in the study of comparative religions and competitive golf, a combination classmates viewed as absurd. “Exactly!” I’d respond, then taunt the know-nothings with a discourse on the metaphysics of divots. To me, you see, golf was an exercise in comic existentialism. Embracing absurdity--that was my metaphoric slant. Woody Allen was my pro of choice, not some Scottish sage. To me, golf was an opportunity not to Become One with the world, but to flail away at it with a stick.

Yet even if I had a different view of the game, I relished Murphy’s quest for something more on the course. And as golf experienced a revival in recent years--amid a barrage of high-tech equipment and infomercials--I was pleased when his book was rediscovered in the last decade, reminding folks of the soul of the game. “Kingdom” now has sold in the hundreds of thousands and spawned a cult following, especially in California.

During the 1992 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, devotees formed a Shivas Irons Society, the members ranging from tour pro Peter Jacobsen to comedian Tommy Smothers. Carmel’s foremost celeb golfer, Clint Eastwood, bought the movie rights. The society staged “Shivas Irons Games of the Links” at the great courses of the Monterey Peninsula, featuring scotch sipping, bagpipe music and midnight golf using chemical “glow” balls. Then a Marina del Rey firm stepped to the tee, marketing outings with “the golf Zen master,” Murphy himself, at upscale resorts such as the Ojai Valley Inn and La Quinta.

Like I said, I had to check it out. But a problem: Such weekends cost $3,000 or so, prompting editors to wonder why a writer who normally explores the Mafia and mass murder was proposing a golf story. Their looks suggested this was a scam . . . for, of course, I’d have to lure Murphy out for a round at a place like--well, Pebble would do--to test how he walked the walk. Would mysterious winds blow his ball into the hole? Could he handle a shank with a smile? Could he play a lick?

Then word came that Esalen was offering Kingdom workshops twice a year. The catalog promised five days’ “exploration of the inner game.” All for $730 plus greens fees. That I could sell.

So late on a Sunday afternoon, I find myself in a candy apple-red rental, driving the Coast Highway approaching Big Sur, searching for the entrance to the famous retreat where you’re invited to bare both body and soul. As the sun sinks to the ocean, I steer down a gravelly drive--a clunk-clunk-clunking from the trunk reminding me of the tools that I and 13 others are bringing to this journey of self-discovery.

MY ROOM IS IN THE BIG House, reached by walking from the main lodge through the vegetable gardens, past the Indian meditation kiva, then across a footbridge above the stream that descends from the Santa Lucia Mountains to carve a sharp ravine through the 27-acre property. The room sits a chip shot from Big Sur’s wondrous cliffs, no phone or TV, naturally.

It don’t take no genius to distinguish the golfers from the regulars in Esalen’s dining room, most of whom are here for the other workshops: Group Process Training, Courage, Chakra Integration and Awakening from Trauma. Not likely a golfer: the woman in a tie-dyed dress, feeding an infant in a tie-dyed diaper. Likely a golfer: the fiftyish white guy in the vest sweater. I take my tray from the buffet line (vegetable stew and steamed greens) and join him with a handshake. “Jeff,” he says. No one has to tell you this is a first-name-only place.

Back in L.A., Jeff heads a company that makes movie promos. He belongs to the Riviera Country Club. But we don’t dwell on our work or game--we share our credentials as ‘60s dudes, as if to reassure ourselves we belong. Jeff From Riviera says he hopes to recapture that era’s “spirituality” without the paranoia. I relate my experience with encounter groups during the summer of ’69 before taking in Woodstock in a painted bus.

Thus bonded, we head to the first meeting of our workshop in the Huxley Room, named after the “Brave New World” author. One wall is mirrored, as in a dance studio, another all windows. Like other Esalen meeting rooms, it is ringed with huge pillows--ideal for sprawling on or, in emotional moments, hugging. We each grab one and sit in a circle.

Although women have signed up in the past, our circle has 17 white males: 14 enrollees and three instructors, including Steve Cohen. From the Bronx, he taught school before coming to Esalen two decades ago. An avid golfer, he was the one who proposed “Golf in the Kingdom” workshops, then started the Shivas Irons Society, running it from his home in Carmel. He has the Santa look--roundish, gray-bearded, a ready laugh. But he’s not laughing when he tells us, “Some little element of transformation is possible.”

He starts us out with exercises. Recline and feel the floor push against your body. Visualize the scenery driving in. Walk around the room. See how you walk. Are you following a rigid pattern? Avoiding others? Now see how you instantly change the pattern, once aware of it.

Only when we return to the circle do we introduce ourselves. The group includes a transplanted Englishman who sometimes teaches golf, a Mexican American businessman (a member at posh La Costa) and a German management consultant who wanted to experience Esalen but has never touched a golf club. Oh, and two guys from Jersey.

Most are Esalen first-timers and use words like “clarity” “serenity” and “confidence” to explain what they’re seeking. It takes an Esalen veteran to mention golf. Leon, a builder from Santa Barbara, looks like a yoga instructor with his perfect posture, nearly shaved head and close-cropped white beard. He says he once tried this workshop and “it took two strokes off my handicap.” So he’s back.

Then my turn. Waving my notebook, I dutifully report I’ll be on the job. I reassure the group, though, that I’m here as an old golfing religion major looking for a respite from stories on the “underbelly of society.” I want to play this week. With my swing. And with ideas.

It doesn’t occur to me the second form of play may not be welcomed.

When we’re done with introductions, Cohen reminds us of the cynics who belittle the notion of golf as spiritual. He cites comedian George Carlin’s venomous spiel on silly rich men chasing balls in green pants.

I pipe up: “What’s wrong with doing something stupid?”

“If I have a choice,” Cohen retorts, “I try not to do stupid things.”

I let it drop. But it’s not the only unsettling moment of the first hours in The Kingdom. There’s the matter of someone who’s here--and someone who’s not.

Murphy won’t be here. Although he sometimes stops by the workshop to hold court for a night, he’s closeted in his Marin County home, Cohen says, working on the long-awaited sequel to “Kingdom.” It throws a crimp--for the moment--in my plan to lure him onto Pebble Beach.

And who is here? Another writer. It’s not just the competition factor, the worry the other guy will do a better story. There’s also the matter of having a professional witness around. Let’s suppose you wish to suppress a detail--like a club hurled into a naked tai chi class. . . .

His name is Jeff. A second Jeff. Jeff The Writer. We exchange polite “good to meet you’s,” but avoid asking what the other is up to. He’s clearly not into comic existentialism--too serious. An earnest Everyman. Mid-30s. Neat dark hair. Glasses. What Jeff The Writer seems to be, though, is a Zen Golf Zealot. Cohen introduces him to one of the golf pros helping out, saying “you’ve probably read Jeff’s book . . .” I miss the name, but I gather they quote from it in the workshop.

I split, joining several others for a first visit to Esalen’s communal baths, clothing very optional, where you can soak and watch the whales migrate during the day, or lean back to catch shooting stars at night. I sit and soak and watch the bright ideas plunge pitifully into the black sea.

WE BRING OUR PUTTERS TO MONDAY’S breakfast. After granola and fruit, we carry them to Huxley, where putting cups are set up on the aqua rug. Now the message is: “You’ve got to find that place of nothingness to putt from.”

We’re finally in the hands of Carmel pro Fred Shoemaker, the star of this show. While Cohen watches over the group dynamics, Shoemaker guides us through the game as metaphor. At 44, with a mop of curly dark hair, he’s a handsomer version of actor John Turturro. Over the days we get snippets of his story: how as a top golfer at UC Santa Barbara he wore a short-haired wig to cover his then-longer mane; served in the Peace Corps and as a suicide counselor; helped found a chain of “Extraordinary Golf” schools, where he’s as likely to quote the Three Stooges as Ben Hogan (“I’m thinkin’! I’m thinkin’! But nuttin’s happening!”) while introducing the art of . . . club throwing.

Before we actually LET GO of a club, Fred starts us with putting. He explains that the natural stroke is spoiled by doubts, fears, lapses, demons. So we do exercises to get us putting freely, often with eyes closed. And we learn to see the sparkles on the dimples of the ball, where the sun hits it. Why have we never seen them before? “If you change the way you see the world, other changes will occur naturally,” Fred says. “Be with the ball, then let it go.”

I’m listening hard--putting yips were one reason I gave up the game for years, until they invented those long “old men’s” putters. But the aphorisms are coming a little fast. It’s a relief when we’re led outside, by the pool--to be videotaped throwing clubs. And, then . . . well, you know.

During lunch hour, I use a pay phone to call Murphy’s office in Marin County. I get a machine and leave a message. I want to set up a meeting, soon, on the links.

Maybe I can salvage this thing.

AFTER LUNCH, THE LAWN BECOMES A SCREWBALL PITCH-AND-PUTT course on which we’re to keep an unconventional score--an enjoyment rating, from one to four.

We tee off from a landing next to the lodge and have to hit around--or over--the pool to reach a flag stuck under towering evergreens. Need I say what happens? The Kikuyu grass grabs my club. My shot pulls left, into the pool, near the tai chi people who are doing their thing to a beating conga drum.

Later, we sit in the shade, discussing the exercise. “Last night you asked for serenity,” Fred begins. “If not here, then where?”

He’s amazed not everyone marked down the maximum “4” at the second “hole,” set up along the cliffs. Luckily, someone else volunteers that tension with the pool crowd had compromised their pleasure. Fred answers, “Serenity is not a function of your surroundings. You should be able to find serenity at a municipal course at 10 a.m. on a Saturday,” when play is slow and testy.

Ah, one of the great debates: whether consciousness changes society, or vice versa. I pipe up again, recalling a Chekhov short story, “Ward Six,” about a doctor who pontificates to a mental patient that “there is no difference between a warm comfortable study and this ward . . . Peace and contentment do not lie outside a man, but within him.” Authorities wonder why the doc is having odd chats with a nut--and throw him in the ward. The doc drops dead within a day.

So why are they looking at me like I belong in the ward? Someone does recall a POW in Vietnam who used imaginary golf to escape the misery. But Fred announces it’s “time to look at some film” and leads us back to Huxley.

He starts with the Blooper Reel footage of the club flying over my head. Appropriate laughter. Then he gets on with business, showing how everyone had a “shtick” in their swing--a jerk, loop or (golf pro humor) “premature acceleration”--that they were totally unaware of. He explains, “It’s in the blind spots that all the major stuff takes place.”

Then the videotape shows that when we throw the clubs--not thinking about our swing--the motion becomes smooth. “Your natural instincts are pretty remarkable,” Fred declares. “We don’t have to fix anything! It’s like everything you’ve always wanted you’ve already got!”

Classic Natural Man stuff. Strip away the corruption, and purity is left. Adam and Eve before the apple.

Tomorrow, we’ll try it on our Garden of Eden, a course in Carmel.

THE CARAVAN NORTH would make Esalen originals cringe: Cohen’s Mercedes. Jeff From Riviera’s BMW. A Cadillac. I go with Leon, the Esalen veteran, and am surprised to learn that Michael Murphy is not a revered figure these days--he’s seen as “a little mainstream.” Stays up in Marin. Hobnobs with big shots.

I don’t tell Leon I’d finally reached Murphy before breakfast. Over the phone, he launched right into the “weird stuff” golfers have told him. Paranormal experiences--eerie auras on the course and the like. But Murphy hesitated when I pushed for a meeting on the links.

“I don’t play much,” he explained. “It would feel kind of contrived. I would much rather just talk . . . I can tell you the damnedest array of experiences.”

Sorry. I’ve read the clips. For years, he’s been telling the same tales. They’ve even set up a Shivas Irons Society Web Site so golfers can e-mail their mystical moments. Like I said, sorry. I want him to do his talking with his driver and sand wedge. “I’ll think about it” is how he left it.

The workshop’s destination is not a fancy course but a public one where it’s easier--and cheaper--to get tee times and space on the driving range. We start by hitting practice balls to sense the “shticks” in our “blind spots.” Not fix ‘em, just sense ‘em. Fred said I bobbed my head. Fine. Meanwhile, I peek across the range--at Jeff The Writer. He’s not exactly a duffer but pulls up out of his swing something fierce. He couldn’t be much better than a 90-shooter. Hardly an expert.

Then club throwing again, without a net. This time, mine all zoom straight ahead. Good rhythm. Who knows why. After half a dozen flings, I announce, “Don’t need no more.”

Cohen urges me to keep at it, but I almost snap at him. I got the idea, didn’t I? Cute exercise. Cute metaphor. Let go in life. What more is there? He shrugs.

We return to the range to hit balls again. And . . . My shots go higher. And farther. Majestic shots. My shots didn’t go like this when I was 21 and making the tournament scene. I step back, take a break, then try again. Still majestic.

I search out Fred. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask.

“Tell you what?”

“This works.”

I’m dying to try it when we play nine holes, but orders are to shed thoughts of “performance.” As in the mythical round in Murphy’s book, we’re supposed to play the first holes with half effort “for the centered swing”; the next “tae feel gravity”; and only on the last strive “ta scoor.” Again, we’re to grade ourselves on some personal criteria.

Jeff From Riviera resolves to soak in the surroundings. So he’s lookin’ at the trees and the streams and singin’ Simon and Garfunkel’s “Feelin’ Groovy.” He also makes two birdies.

Our German visitor, Peter, playing for the first time, sets out to view the game as “a dance of freedom . . . in harmony and grace.”

My criteria? To moderate my urge to CRUSH the other guy. I will force myself to endure bad performance and see if I can maintain “connectiveness, calmness, direction,” as Fred puts it. To start, I use the wrong club on every shot and try to hit unnatural hooks. It works to the extent that two balls fly into the creek on a par 3, but I sure ain’t singin’ like Jeff From Riviera. I’m relieved when we reach the holes where the goal is “ta scoor.”

After the nine, we caravan to Fred’s home for a cookout. He passes around a plaque with an old-style feather ball and a slogan from Murphy’s book: “F- - - Our Ever Getting Better.”

WEDNESDAY WE assemble on the pillows to see where we stand. Giving me opportunity to step in it again. Our second pro is talking. Tall, graying Andy Nusbaum, 51, has been a star of the Shivas Irons Society’s “Games of the Links.” Paired with Murphy, whom he “held as a hero,” Andy got a hole in one at Pebble and rattled off birdie after birdie. Reaching a tee where they were supposed to goof around and use an Irish shillelagh to hit the ball, he was stunned when Murphy told him, “You can’t! You have such a good score going!”

“My goal was to be really non-caring,” Andy explains. So when they finished and others pestered him for his total, “I wouldn’t tell.”

The tale makes me like Murphy. But it also reminds me of the worst feature of Eastern concepts’ becoming the rage in the ‘60s. You’d get this talk about shedding ego, only to have devotees flaunt their newfound holiness.

I urge Andy to liberate himself: If score really means nothing, “Let it out. LET GO of it!”

He turns beet red. Uh-oh.

Around the circle, everyone shares insights. Jeff From Riviera says yesterday’s nine holes were the most spiritual of his life and now he’s going to have his employees “meditating at the office.”

Then Jeff The Writer. He’s been cautious in group settings. But now he tells how his notebook blocks him from experiencing the world. “Sometimes I feel like . . . throwing it over the cliff,” he announces, grabbing the thing. There’s a pause of anticipation until he flings it not quite over the cliff, since we’re inside, but against a wall. As everyone applauds, I write in my notebook, “Jeff flings notebook.”

The next day, they put Jeff The Writer and me in the same foursome for the culminating event of the Esalen workshop--18 holes of competition, “Golf in the Kingdom” style.

ON THE FIRST TEE, Cohen reads from a section of The Book in which a female character speaks of the glory of the game and the love men have for another: “It’s the only reason ye play. It’s way ye’ve found to get togither and yet maintain a proper distance.”

I step up, throw my wedge for good measure and only then pick up my driver--and hit the ball 250 yards down the middle. Jeff The Writer gives his ugly pull-up swing and hits one, surprisingly, almost as far.

Fred joked that this was the day, finally, “to beat your scum-sucking opponent.” Only Jeff and I are not opponents, but teammates, under a format designed to get each foursome working together. We’ll see. We’ll see.

Under the scoring system, the players can use the “best ball” of the four. Except it’s not like normal best ball tournaments, in which the most skilled player inevitably makes almost all the shots that count. Here, you get a bonus only if every player contributes a shot.

On this first hole, a long par 4, I hit the best drive, so I can’t even try the next shot. Another player has to come through--and it’s workshop staffer Brian. A physical trainer based in Palm Springs, he’s been putting us through daily stretching and breathing sessions. He’s also a brute of a golfer and now he lofts an iron shot 20 feet from the pin. The approach putt is made by David, a 30-year-old New York investment banker and regular at men’s sensitivity groups. Although nervous, he strokes the ball to within 18 inches of the cup. Now Jeff The Writer must make the final putt. Pressure on him. He makes it.

We fall into a pattern. On almost every hole, the final putt falls to Jeff. They’re not long, two feet usually. But I’m glad it’s not me, the onetime yipper. My role? They let me be THE BIG SHOT. I start hitting last. If the other three clunk one, or hit in the woods, I get to save the human race by knocking mine down the middle.

Hole after hole, whenever the others falter, I come through. and Jeff The Writer sinks every pressure putt.

We birdie eight of the first nine holes. High-fives become routine. We don’t know what’s happening with the other foursomes, but we’re in the zone.

After several more birdies, David and Jeff chat while walking the fairway. David then scurries over to me and asks if I’ve heard what Jeff is doing.

“He’s playing golf,” David reports.

“I see that,” I say.

“No. For a whole year. And writing a book about it. He’s being paid just to play golf. For a year.”

Behind the green, after another birdie, I ask Jeff where he’s played. He says, “Scotland, Ireland, Morocco, Nepal, Thailand. . . .”

On the next hole, David seeks him out again and a snippet of conversation floats my way. “Life . . . can be . . . a boondoggle.”

A hawk swoops down from the mountains. Wind whistles through the willows. The sparkles leap off my ball.

No. 17 is a 500-yard par 5. The other three hit poor drives. Again I fly one out there.

We’re 235 yards from a green guarded by sand traps. Since we’re using my drive, I can’t hit. Of the others, Brian is fully capable of smacking one home. But he pushes his shot. David tries too hard and flubs his effort. It’s up to Jeff. Though he’s made those knee-knocking putts, this is a long, precise shot--way beyond his ability. He clomps a 3-wood into the ball. It soars. Over the traps. To within five feet of the hole. We’re a lock for an eagle.

The last hole is an anticlimax, even though my drive is carried by a burst of wind, hits a cart path and bounds 300 yards from the tee. No big deal--two foursomes later, Fred The Pro, 50 pounds lighter than me, will launch his drive 10 yards beyond that, without a lucky bounce.

By then, Jeff The Writer and I are seated on the grass behind that final green.

“Sensei,” I ask. “How do you do it?”

“If you want the answer,” he says, “go listen to the waves.”

When Fred suggests we stop at Nepenthe on the way back, the words fly out of my mouth: “It’s on me.” Everyone accepts, like I owed them.

An hour later, we’re on the deck of the restaurant-bar with its unmatched view of the Big Sur sunset. As waitresses bring pitchers of beer, Jeff From Riviera announces, “So now we go home and our lives will never be the same.”

It’s not officially over. That night, we’ll make a final visit to the baths and the next morning meet again. But everyone is eager to hit the links before heading home. Several head down to Sandpiper, the great seaside course in Goleta. Jeff The Writer is set up at a Napa Valley resort, playing for free, part of a gig reviewing courses for a golf magazine. And Jeff From Riviera insists on going up to Pebble--”the Mecca”--even though he’s told he’ll have to wait hours, if he gets on at all. “I’ll take my chances,” he says. “You wanna come?”

I decline. I’m not worthy yet of that $275 treat. I pick another of the Monterey Peninsula courses, the Links at Spanish Bay. Not quite Pebble, but world-class. The first hole heads straight at the ocean, the green almost disappearing into the waves.

THEY GIVE US A DIPLOMA and a roster when we leave Esalen and only then do I learn his name is Jeff Wallach and his book is “Beyond the Fairway.” It’s a bit ‘60s--all those quotes from “Zen in the Art of Archery”--but I love the chapter where he confronts his golf demons in Africa.

I read it on the flight to see Michael Murphy. We meet at his Victorian mansion in San Rafael. He’s well into writing “The Kingdom of Shivas Irons,” which will parody the modern technical approach to golf. There is an Italian amateur, Horace Ziparelli, who seeks to “unzip space and time” and achieve a perfect swing by using engineering models.

It will also explore, Murphy says, “the strangeness curve.” He knows some folks think he’s way out on it already. But he’s heard too many stories: the guy who sensed a tiny ball marker on a green 400 yards away; the woman for whom everything on the course became transparent “as if it was God’s negligee”; or even the common experience of willing your ball around a tree.

Well, OK. It’s hard to argue when he notes how sports can be “an engine for exploring the human potential” and how golf, in particular, exposes character. But we need to get this straight. Does he really believe that psychokinesis is bending that golf ball? Or could it be the mind inventing a sexy explanation for spin imparted by a pattern of dimples?

“No, it’s true,” he says. “The game is, in fact, a theater of the occult.”

I hope Kingdom II is a bestseller. But I decide to offer advice, especially when I sense his frustration that Kingdom I hasn’t made it to the screen--Clint’s sitting on those movie rights. With Kingdom II, stick a babe in there--in Kingdom I, the hero rebuffs a would-be girlfriend, intent on keeping his body pure. And how about making the protagonist a lanky guy with a rubbery mouth, a bit over the top.

“Jim Carrey,” he says. “It so happens we saw ‘Dumb and Dumber’ last night.”

We is he and his 11-year-old son, MacKenzie. Which brings us to the final stop in this journey of self-exploration. The local driving range.

That was our compromise. Still resistant to the links, Murphy mentioned how he and Mac make the range a Sunday ritual. And this being Marin County, it’s not any range--they sell a wine of the day.

Murphy stands tall and elegant in khaki pants and a straw hat. Although once a fine junior golfer, he directs me to a stall where I’ll face away from him and quips “you’ll never get a look at me.”

The Esalen group might be surprised by his competitive streak. He took up running after Kingdom, once finishing third in the nation in the mile for 50-and-overs. But he need not be self-conscious about his golf. His swing is sweeping and focused, the take-away a little short, but with a textbook stiff left arm and pro-caliber follow-through. He could use a few more yards on his shots, though, so I ask, “Have you tried club throwing?”

“Is that what you learned at Esalen?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say, “and that I need to write more about golf and less about gore.”

An 11-year-old voice calls from the next stall. “Dad look!” Then MacKenzie Wilmott Murphy says, “I’ll bet you a dollar I get a really long hit!”

The kid flails away with his driver, virtually falling out of his untied tennis shoes and missing the ball entirely--reminding us that the swing may not be that natural, after all.

So Michael Murphy, the co-founder of the Esalen Institute and author of the cult classic “Golf in the Kingdom,” offers advice that would make both a Zen master and existentialist proud.

“You’ll do a lot better,” he tells his son, “if you tie your shoes.”

The kid ties them and smacks one 160 yards. “You owe me a dollar,” he says.

*

“Golf is an arrogant, elitist...meaningless, mindless...boring game...hitting a ball with a crooked stick...and then walking after it. And then hitting it again. I say: “Pick it up, asshole! You found the f------ thing!”--Comedian George Carlin

*

“It’s an X-ray of the soul, this game o’ gowf...psychic force can add 10 yards to yer drives, ye know.” --Shivas Irons, the mythical Scottish golf pro in “Golf in the Kingdom.”

*

“Two hundred and seventy-five dollars.” --The greens fee at Pebble Beach