Summer Sounds: Golf

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MICHELE NORRIS, host:

This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.

MELISSA BLOCK, host:

And I'm Melissa Block.

Now to the latest in our summer series meant to tickle your ears. We're listening to the unique sounds of the season.

(Soundbite of music)

SCOTT TUROW: I'm Scott Turow, an attorney and the author, most recently of "Innocent." My summer sound is related to the game of golf.

(Soundbite of golf swing)

TUROW: For me, the liberty and lushness of this season is most fully summoned by the cool crack of a tiny ball against the metal face of a driver.

In my case, that sound is too often followed by the woodpecker-knock of my ball on an oak's limb, the warning screams of my playing companions to other golfers, or even, in one case, by the honk of an indignant goose I struck with a mishit grounder that left the bird uninjured but outraged.

(Soundbite of golf swing)

TUROW: Yet in my mind's ear, there is always the perfect ping of that sphere on the center of my club face and the faintest vacuum as the ball ascends.

(Soundbite of golf swing)

TUROW: Golf is an untimed game played in a pastoral space, not merely the grass you tread but the sky in which your shots travel, all within the borders of the fully-leafed forests and ravines and ponds that frame our Midwestern courses, the entire enterprise subject always to the whims of weather - people against nature in the most amiable competition, conducted to the music of wind and water and the peculiar sounds of humans striving.

(Soundbite of golf ball rolling)

BLOCK: Those images of golf from writer Scott Turow. And you can share your summer sound by going to npr.org. Click on contact us, and remember to put the words summer sounds in the subject line of your message.

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