The Legend of Bagger Vance: A Novel of Golf and the Game of Life

by Steven Pressfield

  “Or,” Bagger Vance continued, “have you ever watched a boy pick up a club for the first time and swing? I mean his first swing ever. And then seen him years later as an accomplished player? Isn’t his mature swing virtually identical to the one he took the first time he picked up a club?”

  “That is so,” Keeler agreed enthusiastically. “Please continue.”

  “Or consider a professional instructor trying to alter a student’s swing to fit some preconception of the proper motion. It’s virtually impossible, is it not?”

  Keeler agreed. “I see you’re driving at a point, sir.”

  Vance paused. Keeler stood, absolutely attentive. “I believe that each of us possesses, inside ourselves,” Bagger Vance began, “one true Authentic Swing that is ours alone. It is folly to try to teach us another, or mold us to some ideal version of the perfect swing. Each player possesses only that one swing that he was born with, that swing which existed within him before he ever picked up a club. Like the statue of David, our Authentic Swing already exists, concealed within the stone, so to speak.”

  Keeler broke in with excitement. “Then our task as golfers, according to this line of thought…”

  “…is simply to chip away all that is inauthentic, allowing our Authentic Swing to emerge in its purity.”

  We had reached the sixteenth green. Keeler paced beside Vance as he strode the putting surface, examining its slope and grain. “That’s why a boyhood swing like your young friend’s here is so fascinating. We marvel at its raw purity and unselfconsciousness. It’s why we laughed involuntarily when we saw it. It shamed us, in a way.”

  “Think of a swing like Hagen’s,” Bagger Vance resumed. “That lurching slashing motion, could you teach that to anyone else? Could anyone other than Hagen even make contact with the ball? And yet for him, it’s perfect. It is authentic. It is he. The swing he was born with, the swing that is the true expression of his existence.

  “Have you noticed, Mr. Keeler, the endless praise and even adulation that is heaped upon your friend Mr. Jones’ swing? To watch it evokes emotion, does it not? One might even say love; and do you know why? Is it not because we, in some deep intuitive part of ourselves, recognize Jones’ swing as Authentic? The pure expression of his being, his inner grace and nobility, his power, his concentration and even his flaws and imperfections? Jones’ swing embodies every aspect of his being like a perfect poem or symphony, and, if I may guess, has embodied it from the start.”

  Keeler assented emphatically. “I believe you’re on to something, sir! I’ve known Bobby since he was thirteen and, do you know, his swing today is virtually identical to the one he possessed then and, I’ll wager, to the swing he had at ten and eight and even six. Probably the first swing Bobby ever took would be recognizable to us, had we film of it.”

  “And before that,” Bagger Vance declared. “Before he ever picked up a club. Before he was even born.”

  Vance paused, realizing that Keeler had a notepad in his hand. “Do you mind if I take some of this down?” Keeler asked. Bagger Vance hesitated, but continued.

  “Consider the swing itself,” he said. “Its existence metaphysically, I mean. It has no objective reality of its own, no existence at all save when our bodies create it, and yet who can deny that it exists, independently of our bodies, as if on another plane of reality.”

  “Am I hearing you right, sir?” Keeler asked. “Are you equating the swing with the soul, the Authentic Soul?”

  “I prefer the word Self,” Bagger Vance said. “The Authentic Self. I believe this is the reason for the endless fascination of golf. The game is a metaphor for the soul’s search for its true ground and identity.”

  “Self-realization, you mean?”

  “If you like. We enter onto this material plane, as Wordsworth said, ‘not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home.’ In other words, already possessing a highly refined and individuated soul. Our job here is to recall that soul and become it. To form a union with it, a yoga as they say in India.”

  “You’ve been to India, sir?”

  “Many times,” Bagger Vance replied. “In the East, men are not embarrassed to speak openly of the Self. But here in the West, such piety makes people uncomfortable. That is where golf comes in.

  “The search for the Authentic Swing is a parallel to the search for the Self. We as golfers pursue that elusive essence our entire lives. What hooks us about the game is that it gives us glimpses. Glimpses of our Authentic Swing, like a mystic being granted a vision of the face of God. All we need is to experience it once—one mid-iron screaming like a bullet toward the flag, one driver flushed down the middle—and we’re enslaved forever. We feel with absolute certainty that if we could only swing like that all the time, we would be our best selves, our true selves, our Authentic Selves. That’s why we lionize men like Hagen and Jones and treat them like gods. They are gods in that sense, the sense that they have found their Authentic Selves, at least within the realm of golf.”

  Keeler was now utterly in Vance’s thrall. We had passed off the sixteenth green and were climbing the rise to the seventeenth tee. Ahead we could see the ballroom lights and hear the orchestra music, faint scraps of it coming to us on the air. “Tell me, Mr. Vance. How does one find, if that’s the correct word…how does one find his own Authentic Swing?”

  “I will answer that, Mr. Keeler. But before I begin, let me make an important distinction. The wild fearless cut we saw young Hardy take a few holes ago, that was not the Authentic Swing. It is a precursor, a foreshadowing. To reach the Authentic Swing, a player must pass through three distinct stages.

  “First the pure state of unconsciousness, or preconsciousness. Pre-self-consciousness. This is the state in which our youthful companion resides now. He doesn’t think about what he’s doing, he simply picks up the club and swings. This demonstrates deep wisdom, because it expresses faith in the existence of the Swing, it launches itself fearlessly into the Void. Unfortunately this pure state, like youth itself, cannot last. It must by Nature’s law pass on to the next stage.”

  “Self-awareness”—Keeler strode step-for-step beside Bagger Vance up the rise—“self-consciousness.”

  “Exactly,” Vance acknowledged. “In this stage, we realize that we possess an Authentic Swing, but we can’t repeat it. Some days we can’t find it at all. Our frustration mounts. We begin to study, to seek instruction, to strive by dint of effort to mold and control our motion. This as every golfer knows leads only to despair. We cannot overcome golf by force of will.”

  Vance stopped at the pinnacle of the teeing ground for the seventeenth. He looked out pensively over the dark duneland that stretched for a thousand yards along the night shore. His focus seemed to have wandered, to have left Keeler and traveled to some distant shore in his mind.

  “You said there was a third stage,” Keeler prompted. “A stage, one assumes, beyond self-awareness.”

  “Few reach that level, as we well know.” Bagger Vance smiled, returning from whatever inner land he had journeyed to. “And then only briefly. It is as elusive as Enlightenment. Merely to realize we possess it makes it fly from us. And yet paradoxically it is always there, nearest of the near, closer to us than our own skin.”

  “But how,” Keeler pressed, “how do we get to it?”

  “It gets to us,” Bagger Vance said. “Surrendering to it at last, we allow it to possess us.”

  “The Self, you mean?”

  “And then we can play.”

  A soft chiming sound interrupted us. Keeler tugged a silver railroadman’s watch from his vest pocket. It chimed its last sweet beat. “My goodness, it’s four A.M. I must get at least an hour of sleep.” He was torn, you could see, wanting to stay up and listen to Vance all night.

  “Sir, could you briefly, as we walk in, expound on this subject just a little more? Is there a path, a Way, that leads us to the Authentic Swing?”

  “There are three,” B
agger Vance said.

  Unfortunately I missed most of what he said, for he had me pacing yardages on these two last and most important holes. I scooted out quickly, with Vance shouting after me not to rush but to keep my strides uniform, then scurried back as fast as I could while still being true to the yardage. I confess that a part of me was distracted, held spellbound by the grandeur and majesty of these two spectacular closing holes—“Prudence,” number seventeen, a 444-yard par four, uphill and awesome in the moonlight, and eighteen, “Valor,” which tracked the phosphorescent surf for 541 grueling brilliant yards. In a state of near rapture I caught what I could of the instruction Vance gave to Mr. Keeler.

  The first path, I heard him say, was that of Discipline. It had something to do with beating balls, with endless practice, an utter relentless commitment to achieving physical mastery of the game.

  Second was the path of Wisdom. I heard practically nothing of what Vance said here (I was checking yardage to three separate bunkers off the eighteenth) except, I believe, that the process was largely mental—a study of the swing much like a scientist might undertake: analysis, dissection, and so on.

  Third (and this I heard most of) was the path of Love.

  On this path, Vance said, we learn the Swing the way a child acquires its native tongue. We absorb it through pure love of the game. This is how boys and girls learn, intuitively, through their pores, by total devotion and immersion. Without technically “studying” the swing, they imbibe it by osmosis, from watching accomplished players and from sensing it within their own bones.

  “All three of these paths embody one unifying principle,” Vance said. We were now approaching the eighteenth green. “That of surrender. Surrender of the Little Mind to the Big Mind, surrender of the personal ego to the greater wisdom of the Self.

  “The path of beating balls defeats the player, as it must, until he surrenders at last and allows his swing to swing itself. The path of study and dissection leads only to paralysis, until the player likewise surrenders and allows his overloaded brain to set down its burden, till in empty purity it remembers how to swing.

  “In other words, the first and second ways both lead to the third. Love is the greatest of these ways. For in the end, grace comes from God, from the Authentic Self. But to plumb this mystery would take us far more than a night and, I’m sorry to see, we have reached the final green. You must be very tired, Mr. Keeler.”

  On the contrary Keeler was energized, electric. “I won’t sleep a wink after this,” he said, “but I suppose I must try.” He extended his hand. “Mr. Vance, it has been my good fortune to encounter, and I may say to interrogate, many of the most profound thinkers on the game alive today. You, sir, tower above them all. We must meet again and continue. It would be my fondest wish to have you discuss these thoughts with Bob.”

  “I have,” Vance declared cryptically. When Keeler reacted with surprise and inquired eagerly to know when, Bagger Vance evaded the question in his usual pleasant but firm manner, remarking only “Before you met him.”

  They took their leave at the eighteenth, Keeler striding off vivid with energy, squinting to read his notes by the late moon. Across the dunes, the orchestra had finally retired; at last the shoreline slumbered. I looked up at Vance, who had resumed his distant expression, gazing out again over the silent linksland. For many moments he remained in this pose, motionless and rapt. Some thought or resolution seemed to crystallize inside him; I could see him return to the present and become again aware of me, still in attendance beside him.

  “Mr. Keeler’s instincts are truer than he thinks,” Bagger Vance spoke quietly, once again placing that warm powerful hand on my shoulder. “A battle was fought here, once, long ago.” I followed his hand as it swept across the rolling dunes, indicating a plain along the shore and including, it seemed, a vast expanse out over the water.

  “In the days when the austral constellations hung visible in this Northern sky, before the Great Ice retreated to the pole, this ocean we call Atlantic withdrew as far as the Afric shore and gave birth to a brilliant continent, a land called Mu. Its peoples were mighty warriors, artists and magicians whose knowledge of the subtle powers far surpasses anything our so-called moderns possess today.”

  His hand indicated the land from the seventeenth, back down to the twelfth, then stretched out over the water, which apparently had been dry land then. “There, where you see, great armies once clashed in battle lines that stretched as far as the horizon. Blows thundered heavenward, steel upon steel, and horses and men cried out in victory and death.” He paused. “That was nearly one yuga…twenty-one thousand years ago.”

  It sounded, of course, completely fantastic. And yet I believed him. “How do you know all this?” I asked.

  “I was there,” Bagger Vance answered casually, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

  He looked down at me, to see if I believed him. I felt the power of his eyes, their warmth and even love for me. I was held as if by the sun.

  “Junah was with me as well,” he smiled, still touching my shoulder. “And do you know what, young Hardy? You were there too.”

  Twelve

  I WOKE UP LYING IN THE BACK SEAT of the Chalmers with a pillow under my head and a blanket on top of me. Light was in my eyes and Bagger Vance was shaking my shoulder.

  “Wake up, young man, it’s almost six. Time to get your breakfast.”

  I crawled out, blinking. Spectators’ cars were already arriving; you could see their headlights in the foggy dawn, creeping down the lanes already packed on both sides with parked automobiles.

  People had slept in their cars, camped out right on the roadsides. Men were scratching their hindsides and pissing off into the cattails. An enormous kitchen tent had been set up on the rise inland from the hotel; sweet coffee and egg smells climbed from the stove flues that protruded from its bright arcing canvas. Latrine tents rose from the various parking areas; bleary-eyed galleryites were already forming lines.

  Vance wiped my face and poured me into a clean shirt and long trousers, which he had brought along apparently for just this purpose. He gave me a two-quart steel jug and a rucksack-type pack, canvas lined with rubber. “Go to the employees’ kitchen, use this badge if they give you any trouble.” He handed me an official Krewe Island I.D., dove-gray with plum letters: COMPETITOR. (Vance wore one too, pinned to his caddie’s cap.) “Fill the jug with hot sweet tea. Put ice in the rubber pack, plenty of it, and nestle five crisp apples among the frozen blocks. Put a couple of bananas in the main pouch pocket and as many raisins and nuts as you can fit in the others.” He straightened my shirt and smoothed the hair out of my eyes. “Make sure you get a good meal in your own belly first. And empty your bowels before you start for the course!”

  “Where are you going?” I turned back as he scooted me on my way.

  “Meet me at the practice tee in an hour. I must wake Junah.”

  The carriage-house dorm was bedlam when I got there, looking for Garland. Men were trying to shave, peering over each other, five to each mirror, while the sounds of farting, pissing, coughing, spitting and hacking echoed like a TB ward. Every man was smoking already, and many of the boys. “Thirty-six holes today, lads,” Dougal McDermott was calling, already dressed and shaved, with a steaming mug of coffee in his fist. “Tee-off at eight sharp and no excuses!”

  I found Garland out in the tent kitchen. He was with the other forecaddies, dressed in shirt, tie and plus fours with his flags beside him at the table; they were all wolfing down chipped beef on toast and glowing like princes. Garland declared me a fool for giving up such an opportunity, and vowed he wouldn’t switch back no matter how much I begged him. Then he tugged me aside and swore me to secrecy. “You’ll never guess what I saw, in the locker room not ten minutes ago. Swear to me on your soul, cross your heart Mama ’n’ Daddy never part, or I’ll never tell you.” The other forecaddies protested; Garland had apparently already told them the secret, which they now cons
idered their own private treasure. “He’s my brother, dammit, and I’m gon tell him.” Garland glared. He ordered me to cross my heart and spit. I did. He tugged me closer.

  “I was washing up, back yonder in the dormitory, and my bladder was about to bust. The stalls were all full, so I went outside; I was about to let her go right there in the bushes, but ladies kept passing on their way to the dining room. I thought I was about to pee in my brand-new pants. Then I saw an attendant duck through to the players’ locker room; the door was open so I scooted in after and flashed off fast so he didn’t see me.

  “My, it was grand in there, Hardy, all carpeted and quiet with only three bags standing by themselves up against the wall, with the heads of their irons all emery-buffed and shiny, the woods all a-gleaming, and two sets of spit-polished shoes beside of each bag and little handwritten cards, all neat and perfect, saying ‘Mr. Jones,’ ‘Mr. Hagen’ and ‘Mr. Junah.’ I thought about swiping them little cards, they must be worth jillions, but just then I heard that attendant or something coming, so I snookered into the back and there I was, in the shiniest damn shithouse you ever saw. You could eat your supper right off the floor, I swear, that’s how clean she was. There was Kreml hair tonic and Vitalis up there on the shelf, all free, just help yourself, and witch hazel and rubbing alcohol and cotton balls, and even combs and tooth powder, and each commode had a pure mahogany wood seat. Hell, I figured, I ain’t gon waste this by only pissing, I’m gon drop a full load, just for the glory of it.

  “There I was, a-perched on this brand-new commode that probably nobody’s ass hadn’t never sat down on, when I heard fast footsteps, spikes a-clattering, coming in to the sinks. The stall door banged open two down from me and I heard this godawful retching, puking, disgusting sound. I zipped up and peered under the stalls. There was a man down there on his knees, with his hands on the rim of the bowl; the poor bastard was just heaving his guts up right into the commode! I froze right there on my bowl, with my feet tucked up so he wouldn’t see me. I could hear him finish and flush and then wash his mouth out in the sink and spit and heave some more, splashing Listerine around to kill the smell and even swallowing it. I raised up, tiptoe on the commode seat, so I could just peek over the top rim of the stall. The man’s hair was all hanging down in his face, I couldn’t make out who it was. Then he combed it back and leaned forward into the mirror and you know who it was?” Garland paused dramatically, peering around to make sure no one could overhear. “It was Walter Hagen, bigger’n shit!”