SPORTS June 7, 2004 Issue

Golf legend Bobby Jones

By Kim Shippey

No Matter How You Try to avoid overusing golf as a metaphor for life, it's hard to deny that the game played at almost any level really does abound with useful life lessons. Who doesn't need to learn something about self-control under pressure? Concentration. Playing fair. Losing graciously. Never giving up.

These are among the issues at the heart of the movie, Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius, which is about as wholesome as any Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation, give or take a few expletives when the young Bobby tosses clubs in frustration (not something top golfers would do in front of the cameras today!).

The movie, which stars Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in The Passion of the Christ, reminds us that golf is a game of recovery: "Three bad shots and one good one, and you can still make par." And there's no finer example of patient persistence on the US golf circuit today than Phil Mickelson, who in April won his first major after 46 attempts—happily on the Augusta course designed by Jones himself.