"Relax? How can anybody relax and play golf? You have to grip the club, don't you?"

Ben Hogan’s remark gets at the paradox faced by many who pursue mastery in golf and other challenging endeavors. Golf, outwardly serene and rooted in the imagery of beautiful courses and a leisurely pace, is often marketed as a game for relaxation. Yet, those who have truly immersed themselves in it know the profound demand it places on focus, technique, and mental control. When Hogan voices his incredulity, “Relax? How can anybody relax and play golf?”, he is highlighting the contradiction between the perception of golf as tranquil and the physical and psychological tension inherent in playing well.

The simple act of gripping the club, seemingly basic, becomes emblematic of the entire struggle. In golf, the importance of grip is foundational, grip too tight and you introduce rigidity and tension that spoil a fluid swing; grip too loosely and you lose control, risking accuracy and power. Hogan’s rhetorical question about having to grip the club is laced with irony: you can’t simply be at ease or casual, because every detail, including your grip, is critical. The deeper message is that achieving even the illusion of effortlessness in golf is hard-won, counterintuitive labor. “Relaxation” in golf is not a passive state of comfort, but a disciplined relaxation: a precise balance of control and letting go, tension and ease.

Hogan’s legendary work ethic and search for perfection come through in his wryness. For him, the demand of the game never allowed for pure relaxation, at least not in the common understanding of the term. It’s a subtle reminder that mastery demands engagement, often to the point where relaxation is a skill in itself, deliberately cultivated and never wholly natural. Golf, then, is a contradiction, demanding a calm mind with an active body, always asking its players to do the impossible: relax and strive, simultaneously.