The Socrates and Plato of golf literature no doubt would dread being compared against each other. Just as Plato studied under Socrates, Herbert Warren Wind received counsel from Bernard Darwin while pursuing a degree at Cambridge in the 1930s. It was Darwin who convinced the young American to pursue golf writing.

Wind’s gentlemanly eloquence appeared for decades in The New Yorker and Sports Illustrated, a career of classic writing that has aged gracefully. But his most vital contributions to the game were his collaboration with Ben Hogan on Five Lessons: the Modern Fundamentals of Golf, the Bible of golf instruction books, as well giving Augusta National’s 11th, 12th and 13th holes their immortal moniker: Amen Corner.

Darwin’s “singularly vibrant enthusiasm” (Wind’s description) marked his columns for Country Life and The Times. With a gift for creating timeless essays out of Seinfeldian nothingness, Darwin made golf writing an art form.

Both could churn out classic tournament recaps or take on more nuanced topics like Joyce Wethered’s swing. However, the Englishman’s supreme wit proves too much for Wind.

Take Darwin on slow play: “The real bitterness of waiting, the thing that makes the impatient man dance with impotent rage is the thought of what might have been,” Darwin wrote. “If only you had not stopped to talk to Jones for two minutes about something of no importance; if only you had not forgotten your pipe and run back for it, you would not have got behind those two old gentlemen, as to whom you have to look at the hedge in the background to swear that they are moving.”

Darwin honed his unique style with help from the vagaries of a life of links play at Aberdovey and Royal St. George’s, and later, the Old Course at St. Andrews. Also, Darwin’s playing experience—he competed in several British Amatuers—allowed him to appreciate nuances of golf course architecture that Wind never fully captured.

How am I sure that Darwin wins this match every time?
Because his protégé said so. “Like no other golf writer, Darwin had the ability to take the reader right out onto the course with him. You can practically feel the wind in your face and the crunch of the hard-packed turf under your spikes,” Wind wrote. “There is little disagreement that the best golf writer of all time was an Englishman named Bernard Richard Meirion Darwin.”