Nongolfers have it wrong about Mark Twain

Blogging, like brushing one's teeth, ought to be a daily activity. The main difference is, one only needs to take two minutes; the other, if you're doing it well, can take much longer.

I'll leave it to you to guess which is which.

So I created a bit of a dilemma for myself with this blog, where I'm supposed to write about taking up the sport anew after a long layoff and making progress (or not) in a quest for a below-100 score. I don't play golf every day, you see. I don't even go to the driving range more than once a week.

To be completely frank, I only went to the driving range once, two weeks ago, since digging my clubs out of the basement.

But golf is a sport that allows lots of time for contemplation. When you're not on the course, it's still easy to think about golf, whether pondering The Game or simply a game in the past. (In my head I've been reliving the par I got on the front nine of Village Greens earlier this week; my best tee shot ever.) So I'm afraid, dear reader, that on the days I don't have thrilling tales of birdies and niblicks, I will share my thoughts on golfing miscellany.

Which brings me to Mark Twain.

The common belief is that America's first great humorist once said of golf that it is "a good walk spoiled." Sportswriter John Feinstein used that phrase for the title of his book about the PGA tour and you hear it from just about anyone who disparages the game.

You can see why: It's short, pithy and mildly insulting without being offensive. There's just one problem: Mark Twain probably didn't say it.

I intended to write a post about how America's first great humorist dissed the game and analyze his reasons for poking fun at golf. I'm sure they would have been fun. But some quick research convinced me that of all the quips Mark Twain made, calling golf a good walk spoiled was not one of them.

The good folks at Quote Investigator came up with some convincing evidence that the saying originated somewhere besides Twain's pen. F. W. Payn, for instance, in "Secrets of Lawn Tennis," published in 1902, referred to a jockey who said of golf that it "merely spoilt a good walk."

As Yogi Berra could sympathize with Twain. He was once (possibly mis-)quoted saying "I never said half the things I said."

I can laugh at the saying, regardless of who coined it. But since taking up the sport this second time around, I respectfully disagree with the sentiment. For all its frustration, golf has a meditative quality I didn't appreciate the first time around.

Because even for duffers and foozlers like me, the object of the game -- hit a tiny ball into a larger hole -- doesn't warrant the stress, frustration and anger that some people (me included, sometimes) get from it.

Why, after all, would you want to spoil a perfectly good walk?