Wave Maker: Herbert Warren Wind, 1917-2005

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Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Herbert Warren Wind, 1917-2005

Herbert Warren Wnd, long-called the "poet laureate of golf," died on Memorial Day.

If you don't know the name, you'll probably care to pass on, since the notion of a man making his fame due to his writing on the sport of golf is liable to make you sleepy.

But write on golf he did, perhaps like no other man in history (save for perhaps Grantland Rice).

I remember reading Following Through, a book containing a collection of Wind's golf articles written during his thirty-five years at The New Yorker Magazine. It was difficult to believe that a man could utilize such elegant prose to describe a shot-by-shot contest between two individuals on a golf course across the Atlantic Ocean. But he did, and his writing provided one with a vivid image in the mind's eye, almost to the extent to one could smell the heather and hear the sparrows.

Here are excerpts from the Boston Globe obituary:

"Mr. Wind's unerring eye for detail, knowledge of the game's history, and penchant for classical allusions made him a must-read for golf writers and fans of the game. He wrote for The New Yorker from 1948 to 1953, and spent several years writing for Sports Illustrated before returning to The New Yorker from 1960 until his retirement in 1990.....

"...It was while writing for Sports Illustrated in 1958 that Mr. Wind dubbed the tricky 11th, 12th, and 13th holes at the Augusta National Golf Club, the ''Amen Corner." It was a name that stuck, and it can be heard frequently during coverage of the annual Masters Tournament, which he attended more than 20 times....

...Other subjects he covered for The New Yorker included tennis, writers, politicians, and social figures. He was the author or co-author of several books, most about golf, but also one about humorist P.G. Wodehouse...

...The son of a shoe company executive, Mr. Wind grew up in Brockton, where he began playing at the Thorny Lea Golf Club when he was 7 years old...

...He played whenever he got the chance, but he said it was a radio program that really ignited his passion for the game. In a story published in the Globe in 2001, he recalled listening to a radio show that golfer Bob Jones used to do with sportswriter Grantland Rice.

'It was marvelous,' he said. 'We huddled around the radio every Friday night to learn about golf.'...

...Mr. Wind graduated from Yale University and earned a master's degree in English at Cambridge University in England, which allowed him to play on many of the storied golf courses of the British Isles....He was accomplished enough on the links to compete in the 1950 British Amateur....

...During major tournaments in the United States and Europe, he was familiar figure walking the courses, usually dressed in a tweed cap and jacket, white shirt, and tie, even in the hottest weather....
'I think all his clothes were tweed,' said his sister. 'He really was a bit of an anglophile....'

...Mr. Wind even wrote glowingly about watching golf on TV. 'Is there any greater pleasure in this astonishing age of telemechanics and microcircuitry than to lean back on a wintry weekend and watch the latest installment of the professional golf tour?' he wrote in a story published about 35 years ago in Golf Digest....

...In 1985, a selection of his golf stories from The New Yorker was published in a book titled ''Following Through." A 1985 review of the book in the Globe, Charles Kenney wrote: 'Wind knows golf and its history so well -- and he writes so lovingly about the game -- that for one who cares about golf, reading his book is sheer pleasure. His unhurried tone is so relaxing that it makes reading these pages nearly as soothing as playing 18 holes on a sunny summer morning'...."

Imagine the talent of a man who can write glowingly about watching golf on television.

Posted by: Wave Maker / 10:20 AM/ |