In describing the need for his book Golf’s Three Noble Truths, English professor James Ragonnet relates a story very similar to his own, about how people play golf for their entire lives without improving. Ragonnet’s friend Chuck has been the handicap chairman of his golf league for thirty-three years. Over this thirty-three years, the handicaps of all the league members, more than eighty golfers, remained essentially unchanged. In sum, in 33 years, these golfers did not improve at all. “Can you imagine,” he says, “a bunch of people continually and avidly doing an activity (e.g. ball room dancing, martial arts, carpentry, knitting, etc.) for more than three decades and never improving!? It’s an outlandish situation. I say to golfers, “Okay, that’s it. Wake up and pay attention to what you’re doing out there. Otherwise you won’t grow.””

Many books describe golf as a mental game, one that relies on overcoming psychological blocks to succeed. In this entertaining book of short lessons/essays, Ragonnet takes that argument a step further, demonstrating that to truly excel at golf, one must recognize that the game follows universal spiritual truths that apply both to golf and to life.

To summarize these truths, Ragonnet adapts the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths, which serve as the underpinning of Buddhism, into Golf’s Three Noble Truths.

•The First Noble Truth: “To grow totally, you must actualize your full potential — your golf potential and your human potential.”

•The Second Truth: “To actualize your full potential, you must stay balanced and centered.”

•The Third Truth: “To stay balanced and centered, you must unite head and heart.”

Ragonnet transforms these lofty goals into eminently practical lessons with stories, examples, and even instruction. Never losing his sense of the absurd, Ragonnet reminds golfers of the transcendent beauty of the game and how this recognition can actually transport an average golf game into a great one. As Thomas Moore writes in his afterword to Golf’s Three Noble Truths, “Non-golfers sometimes ask: What drives grown men and women to hit a little ball, chase it, and go into tantrums if they don”t hit it into a hole in the ground? I suspect that the meaning of life might be hidden in the answer to that question.” His website is www.golfsthreenobletruths.com.

About the Author
An avid golfer for more than forty years, James Ragonnet is professor of English at Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts. A Navy veteran, he attained the rank of Commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve, serving primarily as a writer, editor, and adjunct instructor at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, RI. He is also Managing Partner/VP in The Collegiate Development Network, Inc., a consulting firm that provides on-line, desktop faculty development materials to improve college teaching and learning. He lives in Springfield, MA.

Golf’s Three Noble Truths by James L. Ragonnet
April 16, 2007 • Golf/Sports
Cloth • Price: $19.95
272 pages • 5" x 8"
ISBN-10: 1-57731-580-4 • ISBN-13: 978-1-57731-580-3

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