The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield

acquired a body. All memory was lost of that perfect bliss in the prenatal firmament. Or was it? Nay, we sought now, without suspecting its mystical source, to recapture if only for a moment the sensation we had known in the womb of the stars. We sought to think and to make our thoughts so!
    “I’ve lived and breathed sports my whole life and, mark me, this is the power by which they hold us spellbound. They remind us, when we perform an athletic feat aright or even vicariously, when we witness others doing so, of our days before birth. Our days in the ether. To throw a blistering fastball and watch the leathern pellet streak swift as thought precisely where we willed it: we feel like gods! We have willed, and our will has made it happen. To rifle a perfect pass. To fire the perfect punch. To pound a perfect serve. All these recall that idyllic existence, traces of which still linger in memory below the surface of consciousness.
    “But tell me, gentlemen, and I will yield to any man who can gainsay me: is there another field of athletic endeavor upon which man can work his will that is grander or of greater scale than a golfing links?
    “The distances alone! Out here we may visualize a drive of 300 yards, by God nearly three times as far as the mightiesthome run, and then we execute it! And not just distance but accuracy as well. Consider a screaming long iron that rises and banks, fading or drawing exactly as we imagined, 210 yards to land precisely on target and stop within inches of the hole. From an eighth of a mile away! That is godlike! It makes us feel our will triumphant, we return to that paradise in which we dwelt before our natal hour.
    “Why quibble that this taste of perfection comes only once in a hundred shots, or once in a thousand? We taste the nectar once and must ever after continue to seek it.
    “That glimpse, gentlemen. That glimpse the goddess of golf grants us when she will, and that is all she requires to render us abject before her forever!”
    The reporters laughed and surrounded Rice, kidding him good-naturedly. “That may be the reason on the ethereal plane,” one spoke up loud, “but down here what brings ’em out is a plain old head-knocking. They come to see battle. To see a man spill another man’s blood.”
    Jones and Keeler were already there on the practice tee when I hurried up at five minutes before seven. There must have been two hundred spectators already, held back by ropes and swelling three and four deep just to watch Jones hit his warm-up shots. I had the apples and ice now and resettled them so the pack wouldn’t leak.
    Behind the crowd I could see the Chalmers pull in, with two police cycles rumbling ahead as escorts. The spectators stirred and jostled and there came Junah, stepping forth tall and handsome as the gallery parted before him. Bagger Vance emergedbehind, carrying Junah’s bag. Photographers set up for photos. Junah obliged graciously but without pleasure. I saw Jones wink over and Junah smile back.
    On the practice tee, which was clipped as short and flawless as a putting surface, waited three pyramids of golf balls, brand-new high-compression Spalding balatas that were so white in the sun you couldn’t look at them without squinting. Jones could see that Junah was shy about approaching him, so he came over on his own, smiling, with O. B. Keeler, and they shook hands and wished each other luck. I was fetching the shag bag from the Chalmers and couldn’t get back quickly enough in the swell to hear what they were saying. I could just see them talking, two knights of the fairway, both tanned and athletic and handsome in their immaculate linen shirts and perfectly creased plus fours. Apparently Keeler had told Jones about last night on the course, and about Bagger Vance’s theories. Keeler beside Jones was gesturing to Vance, motioning him to join their group. Vance declined with a diffident motion of his hand, apparently thinking it unseemly for a caddie