Fascinating Authors

Book Review
by
John H. Manhold

Straight Down the Middle, ISBN 9780811863599, Chronicle Books, 253 pages, paperback, $23.95 by Josh Karp is a ménage of introspective observations, golfing tips and oddball bits of Eastern philosophy delivered by equally unusual pundits.

The author is a journalist with the usual family responsibilities (a suburban inhabitant with a wife and four children, with all that entails) and an 18 handicap. He conceives the idea of investigating the effect of Buddhism and similar Eastern philosophical practices on his golf game, and to write a book detailing the process. His description of the attempts to reach the “zone’ most coveted by players provide the main substance of the book.

The quest begins with a man who teaches the principles of Feldenkrais that concentrate on body movement and breath-awareness to increase range and motion. From there his journey takes him to confer with an unusual assortment of teachers throughout much of the United States and into Scotland, the original home of golf. His instruction is provided by an unseemly group of teachers and covers techniques that purportedly helped V. J. Sing and Jug McSpaden, and a kung fu drill that Jack Nicklaus did as a kid.  He is told that the swing starts with the arms, with the body, with the left knee, with the club head, and with pressure beginning on the inside of the left foot. Concurrently, he is given instruction in Aikido and several forms of quasi-eastern meditation. He also variously is informed that the answer to better golf is to use a glove, not to use a glove, employ an overlapping grip, and that a baseball grip is better.

Straight Down the Middle is an amusing look at the extremes to which a golfer will go to better his game. However, as one of those countless individuals who has been down the same road, some of the suggestions offered “just might work.” It would seem especially worthwhile since Josh Karp lowered his handicap from 18 to 11 and even found that what he had learned washed over into his daily non-golfing life – his quota of oppressive thoughts and anxiety attacks were fewer in number and lesser in intensity

So, a final thought – Read it! What have you got to lose?