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Golf's Greatest Eighteen
Today's Top Golf Writers Debate and Rank the Sport's
Greatest Champions
With "New Money" Statistics by Joey Kaney
Edited by David Mackintosh
Contemporary Books, 2003
ISBN: 0-07-141366-9 $24.95
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Jimmy Breslin was writing about the 1962 Mets when he observed that "Figures are notorious liars, which is why accountants have more fun than people think."
Number crunchers dying to know what, say, Gene Sarazen would've made for winning two Long Island Opens in "new" money will enjoy the new math. Of course, money of any vintage is welcome, no doubt a comfort in old age, but what Hogan or Hagen made way back when converted to the present is far less riveting a currency exchange, I suspect for most, than what comes back from turning dollars into euros or pounds. Golf, can we agree, is about so much more than The Money?
It's not that I don't appreciate the effort and burned midnight oil by the calculator. But far more captivating is curling up with venerable members of the fellowship to hear tales worth retelling. And there are always entertaining tidbits, the sort of trivial detail that fills notebooks and can fill out personalities or debunk myths: Gene Sarazen unknowingly hitting on Bob Hope's wife, Gary Player on the range when Ben Wright closed his hotel room blinds, and there again when he pulled them open the following morning, and just about anything with Trevino.
Books like this one brazenly parade their bias. For some there will be issues. The obvious tilt to our Great Nation and the modern era, for instance, in the ultimate tally. Oh, I get. So, who really counts? In this case, enter and sign in please Messrs. Floyd, Irwin, Norman and Casper. Your list may be different. Mine is. But that's part of the debate. And yes that's part of the fun, too.
This homespun hardcover biography struggles to do justice to its subject, an earthy, imaginative and prolific course architect, a past ASGCA president who gave us the par 5 double dogleg and the early semblance of real estate-driven golf. A pleasant-enough resort complex, perhaps his best work, the four courses at Innisbrook, north of Tampa, once hosted the PGA and LPGA Tours mixer, likely the most entertaining and beloved silly season event. The two better courses are terrific.
"He designed courses that are fun to play and challenging," recalled Mike Souchak, Innisbrook's first resident pro. "So many of the courses built today are really not fun to play. Even though Larry was not a serious golfer, he was a good course architect. He had engineering know-how, the ability to see factors like drainage, wind, and sun come into play. But the most important thing Packard had was imagination. All successful professional golfers have imagination. They imagine the flight of the ball before they hit it, its trajectory, where they want it to go. Packard could visualize all that."
They certainly don't make course architects this way anymore. Packard had no upbringing in golf at all as a player when he began designing courses in the 50's; his first set of clubs came from Sears. But he had a practical and academic grounding in landscape architecture, followed by a fruitful apprenticeship with Robert Bruce Harris, and 20 years working a variety of jobs, from cataloging trees to landscaping airfields at O'Hare. The experiences provided him with a liberal grounding, along with an appreciation for informality in nature and an eye on containing costs.
"I learned the hard way," he said. "I talked to all the old golf course superintendents and found out what the players wanted. I always asked them what they would have done differently if they had designed the course. All of this just sneaks into your subconscious and into your planning process."
Yes, listening, seeking and taking input would certainly qualify him as not only imaginative but innovative, then or now.
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Zen Golf
Mastering the Mental Game
By Dr. Joseph Parent
Doubleday, 2002
ISBN: 0-385-50446-2 $17.95
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There's a euphoric updraft with the best instruction books (and, even rarer, a carryover into non-golfing matters.) No telling how long it can last nor how long before excitement (Yes!) turns to inertia (#$@&*). There's the first blush of enthusiasm, then invariably gears stick. Wheels spin. The book moves from nightstand to bottom shelf. Dust gathers on the tops of the pages. This ride may be familiar to dabblers in Harvey Penick or Bob Rotella.
Aware of having been down the road before, your correspondent can only attest that this book has been nothing short of a continual comfort and revelation, wise and insightful. Every time it's cracked. The Hearthstone nightstand is a crowded place. Benchley and Thurber, Charteris, Honig and Hanh. This book has a permanent spot.
Conscious Golf, reviewed last time out, is an excellent primer, and I'm wedded to several techniques. This advanced edition is for those who already seriously play the game. Those who perhaps have been guilty of caring too much, who, frankly, have bumped up against themselves too often, suffering from a most spiritually unfulfilling and unhealthy frustration. The doctor has a tour presence, a Ph.D. in psychology, a Buddhist foundation, a sense of humor and a knack for compelling and believable parables.
A favorite, the case of the evil caddie is discussed in Talking Points. ViJay Singh contributes an endorsement. Perhaps his example only confirms the difficulty of catching the mental game genie in a bottle, but that wouldn't be the Buddhist approach anyway. As they say, "Hasten slowly and you will soon arrive." If you're willing to consider and apply the ramifications of ancient truths - without unduly delaying play, of course - the results will truly astonish.
Don't complain
About anything
Not even to yourself.
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Playing Partners
A Father, a Son, and Their Shared
Addiction to Golf
By George Peper
Warner Books, 2003
ISBN: 0-446-52707-6 $24.95
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He's not exaggerating. Unfortunately, the game's pleasantries are nearly poisoned in an alkaline-based obsession. The author, former editor-in-chief at Golf magazine, admittedly "semi-detached" from friends, a child loner who discovered a "blissful monomania" in golf, provides an introspective and often painful account of what golf has wrought on Pepers senior and junior as well as the missus.
Early on there's an inopportune call from Johnny Miller that interferes with something of a first date (actually a couch moving). The call took an hour. "Golf had come between us for the first time - and far from the last," he writes. "For the next twenty-five years the game would pull me physically, mentally, and emotionally from my wife." While maintaining his vows, he nevertheless feels compelled to add, "However, I have nonetheless been criminally unfaithful to her through my fatal attraction to golf."
Perhaps this book is meant as an apology to the long-suffering Libby. Perhaps he should pack it in. The deadpan earnestness - an admission, really, without the apology - is reminiscent of the criminally negligent at last coming clean, but only to make sure the details are in order.
"Golfers are essentially nice guys," Mrs. P. suggests in a rare aside, "but they're insensitive. They need to be beaten over the head with things. Once they understand what it is that you want or need, they're like big loping dogs, only too eager to please. But until then they're clueless, so absorbed in themselves and their game that they're oblivious to everything else."
That may very well be true, one of the few genuine insights obscured by the myopia - honest and sincere as it may be - that will likely interest only those closely acquainted with the personalities.
Pity there wasn't more time for the interesting brushes working with name tour players and the occasional celebrity (he helped Bill Murray with his book, which included a "desperate" all-nighter), or even detailing the trials of growing a national magazine. We learn he is very likely the only person who agreed with Jan Van de Velde's club selection at Carnoustie. It would be entertaining to hear more of his observations about those who display the qualities, as Shoeless Jean has, that he clearly admires in others, namely lack of self-absorption and friendship.
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Hole in One!
The Complete Book of Fact, Legend,
and Lore on Golf's Luckiest Shot
By Chris Rodell
Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2003
ISBN: 0-7407-3631-0 $9.95
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Those who calculate such things believe there were 109 aces yesterday. There will be 109 tomorrow, the same number the following day. They will be recorded by those who have never before gripped a club (and never will again), and by ancient mariners who after 60 years of never getting one find they can come in bunches. Four members of the same Pennsylvania family have each holed out - on the same hole! And consider the possibilities of a curious fact - each cup can accommodate four golf balls. Could it ever? Nah. Well, maybe!
Holes in one have bounded off trees, rocks, cart paths and body parts, and they have been launched on their glorious way with borrowed sticks and every club from putter to "trusty" four-wood to Snoopy driver.
Mark Brooks must be in the minority of those who see "golf's uncommonly common miracle" as "just another shot." For others, it's simply a matter of "aiming and having fun." Religious or supernatural intervention is a regular theme. Then there is the chap whose card on the back nine went: 9-21-9-16-11-13-1-11-9 = 100. Another guy's card ran: 2-1-1-2. Gary Player's wife had two in the same day, although why we need to be told this story twice is but a minor glitch in an otherwise absorbing frolic recounting this happiest and most unexpected shot.
Many golfers have never seen the ball go in, a personal secret fear, but the incidence of golfers who if not called their shot at least privately raised the possibility could lead one to reconsider a divine assist. You never know. Then again, the odds of getting a hole in one are (depending upon whose stats you buy into) about the same as being struck by lightning. Dear Lord, just so they don't both occur on the same day.
Light Reading - Edition I
Light Reading - Edition II
Light Reading - Edition III
Light Reading - Edition IV
Light Reading - Edition V
Light Reading - Edition VI
Light Reading - Edition VII
Light Reading - Edition VIII
Light Reading - Edition IX
Light Reading - Edition X
Light Reading - Edition XI
Light Reading - Edition XII
Light Reading - Edition XIII
Light Reading - Edition XIV
Light Reading - Edition XV
Light Reading - Edition XVI
Light Reading - Edition XVII
Light Reading - Edition XVIII
Light Reading - Edition XIX
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