You don't have to be a golfer to enjoy this engrossing golf tournament

Rating: 7/10 (26 February 2001)

All the disappointments, frustrations and exultations in the game of golf are carefully scripted into this story right up to the final hole. There is mild excitement between the top-notch photographic shots of the setting sun and the trees that line the well-groomed fairway, but there are really no surprises. I was pretty sure that Rannulph Junuh (Matt Damon) would beat the world champions, Bobby Jones and Walter Hagan. After all he could not let down his young somewhat precocious little friend Harley (Michael Moncrieff), the beautiful Adele Invergorden (Charlize Theron)in her sumptuous twenties outfits and the mystical Bagger Vance (Will Smith) who appears one night while Junuh is hitting golf balls into the darkness surrounding his house. Vance proves to be a minder. adviser, psychologist and coach while he carries the clubs around the course. "You've lost your swing" he says with his critical smile. "You must focus". There are close-ups of Kunuh's eyes peering forward along the fairway at the distant green. There is an amazing piece of photography where we actually travel with the ball from tee to hole. On one occasion the ball lands among a clump of trees and there seems to be no way out. "Focus!" he is told and focus he does and we travel upward with the ball and through a narrow opening in the treetops. Even the name of Matt Damon could not draw large audiences to the film which had a short run at my local cinema. It is not so much a story about golf as about a young man in a perilous state after atrocious World War 1 experiences who finds his real self and re-establishes himself with the people of Savannah his home town.