REVIEW: The Downhill Lie: A Hacker’s Return to A Ruinous Sport
Alfred A. Knopf, New York 2008
Carl Hiaasen is no longer the lean, spry fellow with a fine drive and a decent putter. Today he is a popular author of some 14 books of fiction and a widely syndicated columnist for the Miami Herald. He is at a point in his life with his career firmly established, but then a couple of years ago did a very foolish thing – he took up golf after a 32-year layoff. “I just wanted to be better at something at middle age than I was when I was younger.”
For those readers unfamiliar with Hiaasen, he holds a spot somewhere between Elmore Leonard and Jimmy Buffet, writers who have captured a slice of Florida’s quixotic criminal and reprobate culture. In this book, Hiassen brings along his signature irreverence with his reporter’s notebook. Readers can expect a realization or a solid laugh on each one of the book’s 207 pages.
More to the point, the book is an amusing archeological field study with a prodigious amount of research to frame the current culture of golf with the question: How could someone who is completely alien to golf take up the sport?
Step by step Hiassen takes us through the lessons, the course design, purchase of equipment and gadgets galore. Hiassen, secure in his own right, is willing to ask all the dumb questions we’d like to ask. All this is infused with a sharp banter of a freshly minted golfer, but with a twist; he is also a highly regarded investigative columnist who has exposed criminal activity among many within Florida’s monied class who can afford to play golf and buy all the equipment they wanted. Not much evades his reporter’s eyes and ears. This means he often plays alone or with a close friend. It’s just as well, because Hiassen recounts his bouts with a Type-A temper that does not serve him well on a golf course.
Hiassen remains an objective observer of a game he has decided to reveal as much to himself as to his readers. With ample detail he writes about his selection of drivers, balls and putters and how he has attempted to trim his handicap – seldom breaking 90 and scoring a USGA handicap of 142 – all the while playing several times a week.
His frustration mounts as he must prepare for a true test: the club tournament. Thrust into action he tries a variety of different hand grips, tries different forms of meditation to quell his need to toss a putter or driver into a pond with alligators. He reads every book on the swing and putt, takes first-class instruction and even talks to a mental coach. He ingests every potion pharmacology has to offer and just for good measure brings along vo-doo charms.
Pointedly, the author puts to rest that question many of us have: “How good a golfer could I become if I had unlimited time and money to devote to improving my golf?”
With aplomb, Hiassen delivers an answer most hackers could live with.
Eventually Hiassen is ready for the club tournament with the single aim of not embarrassing himself. As the pressure mounts he finds in a moment of epiphany that he is about the same age as his first teacher, his dad, when they played together. He also notes that his son’s game has surpassed a parent’s wildest dreams. Here, he finds, the tournament itself is but a metaphor. With candor Hiassen realizes he has reached a bittersweet maturity of being the father, the inheritor and teacher of lessons about golf.