Tee+Room+EB

Evan Bower The Tee Room

//The Tee Room// by John McPhee takes us on a trip through the history of golf. His vehicle for doing this is through the experience of Rand Jerris, the director of the Mueseum and Archives of the U.S Golf Association (U.S.G.A). What was once a fancy restaurant in downtown New York called the “Russian Tea Room,” was purchased by the U.S.G.A, and for the article McPhee joins Jerris in the building as he heads up its transformation. Through the sale of the Tea Room, the Tee Room is born. Get it? McPhee opens the story, as any golf story should open, by telling us about the pizza Jerris ordered for lunch. In typical McPhee fashion, this seems aimless at the beginning, but seems to make more sense once the story is fleshed out. This is not just a story about Jerris, or the Mueseum, or even about Golf itself. It’s a story about all of them, to reflect why golf is important and why some people do not understand that.

McPhee’s history of Golf is not more anthropological than statistical, as he tells anecdotes to highlight what is so human about the game, rather than recounting who won what. What is interesting is how far back the history of golf goes, and how each interpretation of the game seemed to paint a picture of the culture participating in it. The same way humans’ interpretation of God has changed to make sense in the world around them, it seems Golf has been similarly adapted. Whether the ball be packed feathers or synthetic materials, the impulse for human beings to hit them towards a hole seems to be one they must of necessity act upon.

About halfway through the story, the anecdotes seem to take a turn for the less universal. The advancements in Golf seem to become less about humans’ primal need, and more about the wealthy passing spare time in their backyard courses. As a reader, I for the first time felt that I was ahead of McPhee. His argument was lost. Golf may have been originally something natural to humans, but the romance was lost in his stories of the bored elite. I was both impressed and relieved to find out that this is exactly what McPhee’s story is about.

After fooling you in mixing the stories of old with the stories of the rich, McPhee tell of how the U.S.G.A has set up a sort of “swear jar,” playing a sort of snobbish game where employees must pay out if use golf lingo not approved in the official Golf rulebook. Like calling a bunker a sand trap, or a water hazard “the drink.” Just when you’re rolling your eyes at the organizations anal rules, McPhee corrects himself after saying the words “sand trap.” In this, you see what McPhee’s story is really about. While the U.S.G.A hopes that the museum will open the game up to the average person, they place such importance on the aspects of Golf which have made it inaccessible.

This was the longest I have seen McPhee wait before showing his hand in an article. While the wait had me thinking for the first time that McPhee was missing something about his subject matter, once again his humour lets you know he is right there with you. The payoff benefits for him holding back for so long, and in retrospect the article nails the dilemma in the elite pandering to a class they so long ago left behind.