How I Wrote Bagger Vance

In the early 1990s, Steven Pressfield was an unknown, nearly bankrupt writer. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, he produced what would become one of golf’s most beloved texts and, later, films: The Legend of Bagger Vance. This is his story about how inspiration struck from the most unlikely place—but maybe it had been there all along.

Ripping Off Krishna

I used to read the Bhagavad Gita on airplanes. I figured if the plane went down and I met my Maker, I wanted to be reading something spiritual. Are you familiar with the Gita? It’s been called “the Hindu Bible.” Gandhi used its principles, so they say, to free India.

The Gita is not like the Old or New Testament or any Buddhist or Confucian or Native American scripture I have read. It advocates killing. “Slay the enemy without mercy,” Krishna instructs the great warrior Arjuna. “You will not be killing them, for I have slain them all already.”

The Gita addresses such topics as duality and nonduality, attachment and non-attachment, karma, meditation, and previous lives. It has a wonderful section called “The Field and the Knower.” And it’s short. You can read the whole thing in an hour. I have read it in numerous translations.

The Gita is basically a mentor-protégé story. In it, the troubled warrior Arjuna declares that he has had enough of killing. On the eve of a great battle, he lays down his immortal bow, Gandiva, and refuses to fight. At this point, his charioteer steps forward. This charioteer is Krishna, i.e., God in human form.

Krishna reads Arjuna the riot act. 

You are a warrior. You were born to fight. Stand up! Shake off this shameful self-abdication and do your duty! 

One day on an airplane I thought, “I’m gonna steal this. I’m gonna use the structure of the Gita to write a story about golf.”

Instead of a troubled warrior, I’ll make it a troubled golf champion. And instead of the warrior receiving spiritual instruction from his charioteer, he’ll get it from his caddie. 

I didn’t know it then, but that loony thought would change my life.

A Subject That Grabs You

Here’s how I experience the inception of a project: 

Something grabs me.

It may be a character. It may be a setting. Sometimes it’s just a line of dialogue.

But something seizes me. I become hooked. The process is like falling in love. You don’t know why, you can’t put your finger on how. But you’re smitten and you know it.

A writer has to think beyond that, however. He has to ask himself (and not let go till he has the answer): “What exactly am I in love with? What’s the essence of it? If I boil it down to one sentence, what does that sentence say?”

In other words, we’re seeking the theme.

For me with Bagger, this process played out in two ways: 

First, in off-hours when I kept coming back to that question.

Second, in the writing itself.

Scenes began coming, characters appeared and spoke lines of dialogue. But I didn’t know where these scenes went, or what the overall thrust was. I could tell when a scene “fit.” But I didn’t know where to slot it into the overall story.

A writer (or any artist) trying to come to grips with his specific, mysterious inspiration has to dig deep into his subject.

For Bagger, that subject is golf.

Okay, great.

We could write ten thousand books about golf. What exactly, Steve, has seized you about this particular story, setting, and characters?

I started thinking as deeply as I could about golf.

Why is this sport different from football, say, or basketball, or baseball? What are its parallels to life?

What is the essence of the game?

The following chapters detail the thought process that ensued.

Golf Is an Individual Sport

Yes, there is such a thing as the Ryder Cup. Yeah, golf has team competitions. But golf is not a team sport in the way that basketball is, or football, or baseball. You don’t pass the ball in golf. There are no “plays.” You don’t celebrate a victory with your teammates.

In life, you’re born alone, you die alone, and most of the time you live alone.

Golf is just like that.

In golf, the competitor is on his own.

In Golf, Your Opponent May Not Impede You

The quarterback may be flattened by the blitzing linebacker. The slugger can be struck out by the fireballing hurler.

But in golf, your opponent is not allowed to impede you.

He can’t tackle you or punch you or even try to rattle you by jingling the change in his pocket. In fact, the etiquette of the game insists that he comport himself at all times as a sportsman and a gentleman.

In golf, no one can hurt you but yourself.

In Golf, You Play It as It Lays

Yeah, there is such a thing as “winter rules” and “lift, clean, and place” when the fairways are muddy. And yes, Bill Clinton has been known to take a mulligan.

But at the competitive level, the player hits the ball, finds it, and hits it again. No adjustments, no slack, no do-overs.

In golf, the playing field is absolutely level.

Golf Is Played From a Standing Start

Do you remember the scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when Paul Newman and Robert Redford are trying to get hired as payroll guards for a mine in Bolivia? Strother Martin plays their potential boss, Percy Garris. Percy wants to see if Sundance is good with a gun, so he chucks a plug of tobacco onto the ground about thirty feet away.

PERCY GARRIS: Hit that.

Sundance draws his Colt, takes careful aim, and fires. He misses. (Much to Butch’s astonishment.) By now, Percy is shaking his head and walking away.

SUNDANCE: Can I move?

PERCY GARRIS: What the hell you talking about?

This time Sundance quick-draws. Three shots. Each one drills the tobacco plug. Percy’s eyes grow wide. Butch grins.

SUNDANCE: I’m better when I move.

We’re all better when we move.

But in golf, we’re not allowed to.

The tennis player dashing to return a shot is lucky. In motion, he doesn’t have time to think and screw himself up. Same for the center fielder or the wide receiver. They make their plays in the flow of action. The ball is moving and they’re going after it.

In golf, the ball sits still.

This is no small thing.

Many world-class athletes are absolute hackers in golf. Why? Because the game doesn’t give them the luxury of movement. It doesn’t let their bodies react the way the human body was designed to react.

In golf, the ball sits there, staring up at you.

Many brave men’s knees have buckled, confronting that gaze.

In Golf, the Player Polices Himself

There’s a rule in golf that says if your ball moves while you’re addressing it, even if that movement is only a fraction of an inch (and even if the cause is an “outside agency” such as the wind), that movement is deemed to constitute a stroke.

You have to count it. You have to take the penalty.

In other words, a player can lose the Masters, the U.S. Open, or the Grand Slam through no fault of his own.

And here’s the kicker: 

The competitor must report this infraction himself. Even if no one else sees it.

Bobby Jones did just that in the 1925 U.S. Open. He called a penalty on himself when his ball moved in the rough during the first round. No one saw the ball move except Bobby. The one-stroke penalty cost him the championship.

Golf is about impeccable integrity.

That’s how the game is played.

The Golfer Can Play Only One Shot at a Time

In golf, there is no way to undo a shot that has already been played. By the same token, the golfer cannot hit a shot that exists in the future.

He can only confront the specific problem that lies before him in the moment.

The Golfer Can Only Swing His Own Swing

No matter how hard he tries, the golfer cannot swing anyone else’s swing. He can only swing his own.

Therefore, he must find his own swing—and make it as good as he possibly can.

In Golf, the Player Has Time to Think

Because the ball doesn’t move, the golfer preparing to hit it has time to think. And we all know what happens when we have time to think.

Golfers Choke

The competitor facing a 210-yard shot over water into a heavily bunkered green may feel his puckerstring contracting. That’s not hard to understand. But let’s consider a more diabolical example.

Let’s stride up to the green and take our stance over a three-foot putt. Three feet equals thirty-six inches. A child could knock a three-footer into the hole. We can do it one-handed. Left-handed. Blindfolded. We can practically kick it in.

And yet…

Doug Sanders missed a putt of that length to lose the 1970 British Open. Scott Hoch lost a playoff in the Masters on a putt even shorter. Golfers choke. They blow drop-dead leads. Even the immortals—Hogan, Palmer, Snead, Watson—have taken the gaspipe.

The Golfer’s Greatest Enemy Is Himself

I watched the ’96 Masters on TV with a bunch of friends, among whom were several professional golfers. Greg Norman was leading the championship by six shots when he and Nick Faldo teed off in the final pairing. Who is tougher than Greg Norman? Who, in those years, was a stronger player?

As the holes ticked past and Norman threw away one shot, then another and another and another, my PGA pals began drifting out of the room. They collected on the porch, smoking and silent. They wouldn’t come back inside. They couldn’t stand to watch Norman’s self-crucifixion.

Even Nick Faldo felt terrible. When he embraced Norman on the 72nd green, having made up all six strokes (and five more on top of that, to win the championship), it was like watching a living man putting his arms around a corpse.

Faldo didn’t defeat Norman.

Norman defeated Norman.

The golfer’s greatest enemy is himself.

Golf Is a Mental Game

Let’s review for a moment.

The golfer is all alone.

No one can impede him but himself.

The golfer must play from a standing start.

He must play the ball as it lies.

The golfer competes by the honor system, enforcing the rules of the game on himself.

He cannot play more than one shot at a time.

He cannot swing anyone’s swing but his own.

Golfers choke.

The golfer is his own worst enemy.

Oh, I forgot one thing: 

The golf swing is the most complicated, difficult, and unnatural athletic movement in sports.

Then there’s the final, weird quirk that sets golf apart from all other sports:

The Golfer Has a Caddie

We said earlier that golf is an individual sport. The golfer competes alone. He may not be counseled in play by his coach, his mentor, his father, his wife, his priest, his shrink, or his sports therapist. The rules forbid it.

But at the player’s side stands an individual, technically his servant, upon whom he depends more than a Formula One racer relies on his pit crew or an alpine climber on his belaying partner, and with whom he shares a union that is in many ways closer than the bond between brothers.

No other sport has a figure comparable to a caddie.

Caddies evolved out of the obvious necessity of relieving the competitor of the burden of carrying his own bag and clubs. But something magical happened when a squire took his place alongside a knight.

Who is the caddie anyway? What is his role?

The caddie exists for the golfer alone. He effaces his own ego. He serves. That is his only purpose.

At the same time, the golfer is utterly naked before his caddie. He cannot hide. He can’t dissemble. The player is known by his caddie more intimately than by his confessor, his psychiatrist, his loving wife. The caddie sees parts of the man that only God sees.

Wait a minute.

We may be onto something here…

After Bagger Vance was published, I was invited by a lady named Jane Howington and her husband Jerry to visit them at their home in Augusta, Georgia, and to play a round at “the National” (as the locals call Augusta National). Part of my stay included an evening’s literary talk with seventy of Jane and Jerry’s friends.

To them, Bagger Vance was a Christ figure. He was Junah’s “personal savior.” This made absolute sense to me. In my own mind, Bagger’s antecedent is Krishna of the Bhagavad Gita. In other words, a very similar divine personage.

Writers think in metaphors. What, then, does a one-on-one god or avatar, a personal deity, represent?

He represents the highest expression of the inner man. The connection to the divine ground. He represents the Self.

Bagger is Junah. He is Junah’s supreme self, that seminal source to which Junah is struggling to return.

Here, to me, is the most fascinating mystery of all: 

Why is this divine core depicted in scripture and in myth as a servant? Shouldn’t he be a king or a hero? Why is Jesus a “man of sorrows,” who kneels to wash the feet of one he wishes to save? Why is Krishna a humble charioteer?

I don’t know.

But I’m beginning, now, to get an inkling of what this story is about.

Research

If the book were about atomic fusion or 14th-century Ireland, I would have to do research. There’d be no way to go forward without it. But because The Legend of Bagger Vance is about a subject I know intimately, I’m lucky. I can work with what I already know.

Here’s one thing I know: 

In 1926 an exhibition match took place between the two greatest golfers of their day, Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen.

The match was played over 72 holes: 36 at the Sara Bay Country Club in Sarasota, Florida, on February 28, then 36 at the Pasadena Golf Club in St. Petersburg a week later. The prize was $10,000—an incredible sum in those days. If Hagen the professional won, he’d put the dough in his pocket. Jones was an amateur. If he prevailed, he’d contribute the pot to charity.

I was thinking about that match. The idea came: 

“What if there were a third competitor? What if that competitor were Junah? What if Bagger Vance was Junah’s caddie in that match?”

That’s it.

Now we have a story.

The Authentic Swing

When I was growing up in the caddie shack, I had two friends who were identical twins—Tom and Todd Sandler (the Sparrow Hawks). I always marveled at the fact that their golf swings were wildly, radically different.

Writing the first draft of Bagger Vance, I had Bagger musing on this phenomenon. If identical twins are composed of the exact same genetic material, shouldn’t they have identical swings?

(Of course, since Bagger is a god, he knows the answer.)

Further, Bagger observes, the golf swing of any player is unique to that individual. Not only that, but it is indelible. A player can plant himself on the lesson tee and hit a thousand balls a day from now till doomsday, seeking to ingrain some “new” or “ideal” way of making a pass at the ball.

It never works. The golfer’s swing remains the same. A friend who knew him at ten years old will recognize his swing when he’s seventy.

As I was writing these paragraphs, following this line of thought, a phrase fell out onto the page: 

The authentic swing.

Maybe you don’t believe in the Muse. I do. I recognized that term immediately as from heaven. And I reckoned it as the core concept of the book. At once I added initial caps.

The Authentic Swing.

From this simple phrase an entire philosophy unspools.

How Writing Works, Part Three

A second idea fell out right after the Authentic Swing: the idea that the golf swing is not learned, it is remembered.

This is Plato’s idea of knowledge. Have I read him? Backwards and forwards. But somehow this concept had never penetrated to the front of my brain. Now it popped out from the back.

It came in the middle of a sentence. I was following a train of thought and suddenly there it was.

I loved this idea and the idea of the Authentic Swing because they gave the book philosophical heft. But the ideas did not come from outside. This is important. They arose organically from the material.

This is how writing works.

You start with instinct.

You plunge in.

Good things happen.

The Philosophy of the Authentic Swing

The philosophy that underlies the idea of the Authentic Swing contradicts the Western ideal of education, training, and evolution. It rejects the axiom that “you can be anything you want to be.”

According to Bagger Vance, we can only be who we already are. If we find ourselves lost or tormented or in pain, the reason is that we have somehow become estranged from who we really are, from the ground of our individual being.

Our salvation lies, then, in getting back to that source, that Self.

The Authentic Swing, Part Two

Now I’m beginning to understand what hooked me about this material. It’s this: that the struggle of the golfer, particularly one in Junah’s tormented, fallen condition, is the same as the struggle of the writer.

It’s the struggle of any artist or entrepreneur, any athlete or warrior, anyone engaged in a spiritual pursuit, as meditation or the martial arts, yoga, dance, calligraphy; any person, male or female, in any creative or ethical field.

What is this struggle? It’s the quest to connect with one’s true ground. To become who we really are.

It’s the search for our true voice.