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Golf as Meaningful Play offers a philosophical introduction to golf as a sporting practice and source of personal meaning. It is intended both for scholars interested in the philosophy of sport, and for intellectually curious golfers who seek a better understanding of the game. This book describes the physical, emotional, mental, and ethical aspects of the game and how they influence golf instruction. It looks at golf as play, game, sport, and spectacle, discusses golf’s heroes, communities, and traditions, and analyzes the role of the virtues in golf, linking them to self-fulfillment, the ultimate good of golf experience. The book concludes with discussions of classic works of golf literary and film art, including Caddyshack, Missing Links, Tin Cup, and Golf in the Kingdom, which celebrate its follies and glories. The fact that golf can serve as a playful laboratory to test oneself is a deep part of the game’s attraction. Golf, if played well, conveys an experience which unites happiness, excellence, and interpersonal flourishing. This book strives to give an account of golf both as it is and as it ought to be—how golfers may improve their games and even themselves, in meaningful play.
This book represents a bold statement concerning the excitement and energy of the field of sports ethics and philosophy in contemporary terms. It is comprised of a collection of commissioned essays from the leading international scholars in the field to celebrate the ten year editorship of Mike McNamee for the journal: Sport, Ethics and Philosophy. The collection includes essays familiar sport philosophers on work about the nature and nuances of sports and games playing, winning and losing, role models and strategic fouling. It also celebrates in phenomenological terms the complex and heterogeneous experience and values of sports in both phenomenological and analytic modes. Finally, it addresses the most serious threats to sport integrity and governance, in the shape of doping, and the unchecked power of sports institutions, and the charisma of sport that is at the mercy of commercialism. This book was originally published as a special issue of Sport, Ethics and Philosophy.
In a game where players are expected to call their own penalties and scoring the least points leads to victory, decorum takes precedence over showmanship and philosophical questions become par for the course. Few other sports are as suited for ethical and metaphysical examination as golf. It is a game defined by dichotomies -- relaxing, yet frustrating, social, yet solitary -- and between these extremes there is room for much philosophical inquiry. In Golf and Philosophy: Lessons from the Links, a clubhouse full of skilled contributors tee off on a range of philosophical topics within the framework of the fairway. The book's chapters are arranged in the style of an eighteen-hole golf course, with the front nine exploring ethical matters of rationality and social civility in a world of moral hazards and roughs. The back nine pries even deeper, slicing into matters of the metaphysical, including chapters on mysticism, idealism, identity, and meaning. Taken together, the collection examines the intellectual nature of this beloved pastime, considering the many nuances of a sport that requires high levels of concentration, patience, and consistency, as well as upstanding moral character. Golf and Philosophy celebrates the joys and complexities of the game, demonstrating that golf has much to teach both its spectators and participants about modern life.
Golf is one of the most, if not the most, complex sports because of the massive number of variables involved in golf. We have a large number of "tools" that we use to play the game. We have 14 clubs that we use to hit an infinite number of shots. In addition, we play the game outdoors which introduces an exceptionally large number of variables that we have to manage skillfully to perform well. The complexity of golf places significant value on having a strong mental game. A strong mental game helps us manage the complexity of golf without becoming overwhelmed and in a state of analysis paralysis. The biggest mistake that golfers make is that they overuse their analytical ability and underuse their imaginative ability as they try to manage golf's complexity. We need well-developed analytical skills and imaginative skills. Most golfers already have or can develop sufficient analytical skills to play golf. Our educational systems are heavily biased toward analytical skill development and do very little imaginative skill development. This book focuses primarily on developing your imaginative skills because those are the key skills involved in "playing in the zone." The essence of a strong mental game is skillfully managing our thinking, emotions, and physical states in order to perform at our highest levels. We apply our mental game knowledge to develop ourself and make important changes so that we can perform at our highest levels. This kind of learning and skill development is primarily an imaginative process. You'll learn the art of "mental practice" with this book. With mental practice, you'll learn to use your imagination powerfully to accelerate your learning and skill acquisition. You'll learn to manage your thinking, emotions, and physical states using your mental practice. For many of us golfers, playing at our highest levels or "in the zone" is an unpredictable event. We don't know why it only sporadically happens. After we've learned to practice mentally, we recognize that the experiences that we have while mentally practicing are similar to the experiences that we have while playing in the zone. That's because playing in the zone is an imaginative skill. We learn to play in the zone more often with our mental practice. This book is for golfers who are committed to actualizing their potential. Developing a strong mental game takes time, practice, and persistence. Developing a strong mental game is similar in scope to the developing our ball striking and short game skills. There's no magic pill. We get to work. We consistently work on the right things in the right ways. Large breakthroughs are possible, but on a daily basis, we put in the right work and confidently wait for the results to come. Put in the right work on your mental and physical games and you'll get significant results. Making a golf sports psychology workbook both simple and powerful is challenging. Our mind is an exceptionally powerful and complex system. Most golf sports psychology books try to entertain, motivate and educate the reader with stories, inspirational quotes and anecdotes. This book is different. You'll find no entertaining or motivational stories in this book. This book is a roadmap to guide you on your journey to golfing excellence. This workbook is filled with short mental practices that you'll do on a daily basis. Each day you'll read a few paragraphs about a specific golf mental game topic. Then you'll actively engage your imagination for 15 minutes and see, feel and hear yourself making improvements in the ways that you train and compete. You'll find great satisfaction as you learn, make changes and improve the performance of your mind and body in golf.
FOOTBALL Rising to the Challenge will help college football and rookie football players who are considering a career in the pros prepare for certain challenges and learn to overcome them. It includes advice on financial career aspects; agent issues; mental and emotional preparation; dealing with the media; balancing personal goals with team interests; and endorsement deals. This volume has forty-seven original essays written by more than thirty-five well-known professional athletes, college and professional coaches, NFL team and league administrators, agents, lawyers, and others who have experience in the field.
The Buddha's seven years of wandering in search of enlightenment ended in frustration. So did the author's thirty years of traversing golf courses. Neither found what they were looking for until they stopped searching outside and started looking within. The result for James Ragonnet was the kind of "second birthday" Eastern thinkers describe when "you wake up to everything happening around you." Through delightful anecdotes and practical lessons, Ragonnet reveals the power of awareness, balance, and unity to banish the dissatisfaction and stagnation so many golfers experience. He shows how "all golf Buddhas -- Bobby Jones, Jack Nicklaus, Annika Sorenstam, Tiger Woods -- play with their outer and inner eyes wide open," describes his twelfth-green OOGE ("out-of-golf-experience"), and offers readers simple truths that prompt flashes of understanding. These insights invite birdies, drop handicaps, and transform experience both on and off the course. Now in paperback, this edition includes two chapters of all new material.
Reflections on the game and getting through life’s hazards and roughs. In a game where players are expected to call their own penalties and scoring the least points leads to victory, decorum takes precedence over showmanship and philosophical questions become par for the course. Few other sports are as suited for ethical and metaphysical examination as golf. It is a game defined by dichotomies—relaxing, yet frustrating, social, yet solitary—and between these extremes there is room for much philosophical inquiry. In Golf and Philosophy: Lessons from the Links, a clubhouse full of skilled contributors tee off on a range of philosophical topics within the framework of the fairway. The book’s chapters are arranged in the style of an eighteen-hole golf course, with the front nine exploring ethical matters of rationality and social civility in a world of moral hazards and roughs. The back nine pries even deeper, slicing into matters of the metaphysical, including chapters on mysticism, idealism, identity, and meaning. Taken together, the collection examines the intellectual nature of this beloved pastime, considering the many nuances of a sport that requires high levels of concentration, patience, and consistency, as well as upstanding character. Golf and Philosophy celebrates the joys and complexities of the game, demonstrating that golf has much to teach both its spectators and participants about modern life. “Any volume built on the premise that if Aristotle and Plato were still here they’d likely be ardent golfers is apt to tickle a few brain cells.” ―Golf Magazine
Surfing and the Philosophy of Sport uses the insights gained through an analysis of the sport of surfing to explore key questions and discourses within the philosophy of sport. As surfing has been practiced dynamically, since its beginnings as a traditional Polynesian pursuit to its current status as a counter-culture lifestyle and also a highly professionalized and commercialized sport that will be included in the Olympic Games, it presents a unique phenomenon from which to reconsider questions about the nature of sport and its role in a flourishing life and society. Daniel Brennan examines foundational issues about defining sport, sport's role in conceptualizing the good life, the aesthetic nature of sport, the place of technology in sport, the principles of Olympism and surfing’s embodiment of them, and issues of institutionalized sexism in sport and the effect that might have on athletic performance.
In Sport Realism: A Law-Inspired Theory of Sport, Aaron Harper defends a new theory of sport—sport realism—to show how rules, traditions, and officiating decisions define the way sport is played. He argues that sport realism, broadly inspired by elements of legal realism, best explains how players, coaches, officials, and fans participate in sport. It accepts that decisions in sport will derive from a variety of reasons and influences, which are taken into account by participants who aim to predict how officials will make future rulings. Harper extends this theoretical work to normative topics, applying sport realist analysis to numerous philosophical debates and ethical dilemmas in sport. Later chapters include investigations into rules disputes, strategic fouls, replay, and makeup calls, as well as the issue of cheating in sport. The numerous examples and case studies throughout the book provide a wide-ranging and illuminating study of sport, ranging from professional sports to pick-up games.
From martyr to insult, how “Uncle Tom” has influenced two centuries of racial politics. Jackie Robinson, President Barack Obama, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, O.J. Simpson and Christopher Darden have all been accused of being an Uncle Tom during their careers. How, why, and with what consequences for our society did Uncle Tom morph first into a servile old man and then to a racial epithet hurled at African American men deemed, by other Black people, to have betrayed their race? Uncle Tom, the eponymous figure in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s sentimental anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was a loyal Christian who died a martyr’s death. But soon after the best-selling novel appeared, theatre troupes across North America and Europe transformed Stowe’s story into minstrel shows featuring white men in blackface. In Uncle, Cheryl Thompson traces Tom’s journey from literary character to racial trope. She explores how Uncle Tom came to be and exposes the relentless reworking of Uncle Tom into a nostalgic, racial metaphor with the power to shape how we see Black men, a distortion visible in everything from Uncle Ben and Rastus The Cream of Wheat chef to Shirley Temple and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson to Bill Cosby. In Donald Trump’s post-truth America, where nostalgia is used as a political tool to rewrite history, Uncle makes the case for why understanding the production of racial stereotypes matters more than ever before.