The Natural Golf Swing (19 page)

Soon after we began the book I went to San Francisco to cover the United States Open for
The Globe and Mail
. When I returned a couple of weeks later I learned that George had lung cancer. George knew the prognosis wasn’t favourable, but he felt characteristically optimistic. “We’ll just work hard on the book,” he told me, “and when I have my down days, we’ll just wait those out. But we’ll get the book done.”

We got the book done, and the first printing in hardcover soon sold out. This gratified George, of course, and he deserved the many generous comments that came his way. One fellow in New Orleans, who had watched George play the U.S. tour years before, wrote that George had helped him understand the swing – finally. A young professional in British Columbia quickly knocked three or four shots off his game and looked forward to trying for his tour card. George took this all in stride, as he went through the chemotherapy and radiation treatments that were a part of his life with cancer. He was glad that he had made the game simpler for his readers. He smiled through his pain when he read the letters. I knew how much he was suffering; getting out of bed was as arduous as running a marathon. But he didn’t complain.

George died in January 1989. He suffered in his last days, and yet … there was that smile. So often he looked up from under his blankets, tired, hurting, and somehow, smiling. Always a wave of the
hand when a friend came in, always a hand to clasp the hand of his beautiful wife, Shirley. Shirley: caring, there every day, making George as comfortable as possible, taking him home on weekends, where their three sons Kevin, Paul, and Dean helped. If one can judge a man by his family, especially by the children he has helped raise, then it’s fair to say that George was top-class. He was, as the English might say, over the moon with love for his family. George never stopped caring and never stopped showing his love, no matter how much he suffered. He gave and he gave – through his book, through his words, through his actions, through his gestures and the looks on his face.

George loved to strike the golf ball, and to try and understand the swing. Hence his lifelong study of technique. Hence his teaching, which he started in the late 1970s after leaving the tour. Hence this book. He was a perfectionist, a golfer who didn’t like to play a round of golf without practising beforehand for at least thirty minutes. One summer evening when George was about fourteen or fifteen his pals at the St. Charles Country Club in Winnipeg convinced him to go out for a few holes. He hadn’t practised, but out he went. George hit his first tee shot off the heel of his driver, told his friends “see you later,” and went back to the practice tee. Skipping practice meant he hadn’t given himself a chance to play his best. What was the point?

Even then George knew what it took to achieve results. And achieve them he did. Ben Hogan said he had the best swing of his generation. Lee Trevino said that George “was one of the greatest ball strikers I’ve ever seen. If George Knudson had been the putter that [Tom] Watson or I was, or any of the other guys, hell, George Knudson would have won every tournament he ever played in.… George Knudson was fantastic when it came to striking golf balls.”

But George was much more than a golfer to me. Sure, I would go a long way to watch him hit balls, and was privileged to play with him from time to time. As I write now, I think of his enthusiasm for life, the pleasure he took at being alive, even when there wasn’t much life left in him. But I think most of what our friendship has meant.

Before I knew George well – long before – he helped me. I wrote my first article for a major magazine in 1979, just a short time after we met. George read it. He was on the phone that evening. “Lorne,” he told me, “you’ve got your foot in the door. Just keep writing and good things will happen.” That sort of generosity was typical of George.

George’s own dream was someday to live in the country and paint. He enjoyed painting, and had studied art in Winnipeg before he took up golf. I remember walking into his home in north Toronto the first time and thinking that here was the home of an artist. There was a view, open spaces, trees, nature’s gifts to which George responded so completely. We spent many happy times on the back patio by the pool, overlooking the Don Valley ravine, while we worked on this book. George was in his element. He helped me appreciate what was so special about golf – that it was a place to quiet the mind. And he encouraged me to keep my mind as quiet as possible. He told me that if I liked golf – the freedom, the sense of escape, the healthy air – then I would also like skiing. He knew that peace of mind was rare, and important. And if I could have more of it, through golf, through skiing, whatever, I should go for it. That was George all the way.

I remember one evening when I visited George in the hospital. We talked quite late into the night. He told me that if he were to build his own course it wouldn’t have any in-course out-of-bounds. “The general feeling would be that of freedom,” he said. And he spoke about how aware he was feeling now, even more aware than he had felt when well – and he was plenty aware then. He recalled being on a golf course and being so tuned in to his surroundings that he could see a drop of water glistening on a branch of a nearby willow tree. He was weak, and spoke softly. But there was no mistaking the conviction in his voice.

“I want people to come alive,” he said to me late that winter night. “T want them to use all their senses. That’s what I’m all about.”

That’s what George was about all right. No doubt about it. He loved life, the uncomplicated thrill of a cleanly-hit iron shot, the sun over the ocean surrounding the sixteenth green at Cypress Point in California, his favourite course, evenings in ski country north of Toronto, his friends and family gathered round. His mind and his eyes and his heart were open. He helped me open my senses, and he was a true friend.

Lorne Rubenstein
January 1989