My Greatest Day in Golf The Legends of Golf Recount Their Greatest Moments As told to Bob McCullough Thomas Dunne Books, 2001 ISBN: 0-312-25259-5     $24.95

Some laughable transcription boo boos and sloppy editing spoil this otherwise nice, if unoriginal idea. Gibby Gilbert, Steve Melnyk and Wayne Levi are accorded legendary status, which for the purposes of an oral history we can let slide; a good story is a good story regardless of who tells it. Others who sat down to share: Tom Kite, Bruce Crampton, Billy Casper, Tommy Bolt, Hal Sutton, Nick Price, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Jim Colbert, twenty-five in all.

Here are a few of the phonetic boners, with guesses as to who or what is being discussed. Sometimes, it's kind of fun:

Michael Menalik (Former R&A captain Michael Bonallack?)

Art Wald ('59 Masters champ Art Wall)

Aronameck (Philadelphia gem Aronimink)

Hoyt Hardin (Augusta honcho Hord Hardin)

Muriso Village (Muirfield Village?)

Ted Rose (Black pioneer Ted Rhodes)

Bob Rotello (Sports shrink Bob Rotella)

Jack Flick (Hogan conqueror Jack Fleck)

White Marsh, Ternberry, Shinnicock, Wing Foot, and my favorite, gutter percha. As I say, all very unfortunate because the mistakes mar some good stories. My favorite conversation is with Calvin Peete who enters into the spirit of the thing with good humor and candor. He recalls watching Lee Elder duel Jack Nicklaus down the stretch one year at Firestone, two years before he ever picked up a club. (Remarkably, he didn't take up golf until he was 23 becoming one of the game's straightest drivers for a decade). He tells the author:

"But I was so impressed with the brother, Bob…I was impressed. And that's where I got my inspiration from…hey, there's a brother out there doing this, why can't I? And I didn't see no brothers in bowling…I mean, just to be frank."

The book's premise would seem an uphill three-footer but several men see some break. Lee Janzen's worried that if he picks out his best day, he'll never surpass it. Hale Irwin responds: "Fictional or otherwise?" Kind of makes a man stop and think.

Tom Kite naturally picks the final round of the '92 Open, Lehman and Sutton go with the Ryder Cup. Interestingly, the man riddled by Sam Torrance as a "man of god" expresses regret about the disruptive victory dance at Brookline.

"It doesn't matter where I am in the world, against whatever competition," Nick Price sums up. "When I play well, I win. That's something where I could not have asked for anything better. And I'll tell you what, I've had a hell of a lot of fun doing it, too."

Trolleys and Squibs A Golfer's Guide to Irish Links By Louise and Rick Miracle Pomegranate Communications Inc., 2000 ISBN: 0-7649-1336-0     $24.95

Expert essays on Irish weather, geology (250 million years ago, Ireland apparently was in the Middle East with a desert climate), green keeping, and the pleasures of true links golf, embellish the standard fare of this pre-hoof and mouth guide. Some 290 courses are given the once over, with 153 getting the full treatment: a page apiece with the obligatory amoeba-like course map, scorecard (meters are thoughtfully converted into yards), e-mail addresses, directions, a brief description, suggestions on nearby housing, pubs, itineraries, etc., and the course logo - a nice touch.

The authors, a three-handicap and his wife, seem overly concerned with the state of the "facilities," what kind of pro shop is available and the quality of the clubhouse, that sort of the thing, as if these mattered. This is evidence of a common naiveté. Certainly, a comical displacement is something of a given with American golf tourists, an alternate source of glee and bewildered frustration for the hosts. There is mention, for instance, in an otherwise comprehensive section on advance planning, where the Miracles write: "We have tried to describe other breakfast alternatives such as pancakes and French toast and asked if they could be provided instead of [a traditional full Irish breakfast], to no avail."

No doubt! I can just see the matron shaking her head back in the kitchen. Yanks! And, then, there is this comment about the dearth of coffee: "Starbucks has not made Irish inroads…" As if the Irish…oh, never mind; there is always more to be learned about Irish golf and this guide does as good a job as a book can in helping a pilgrim pick his spots in the promised land.

The title comes from the names for the handcart (the trolley) and the short burst of coastal rain often accompanied by fierce gusts (the squib).

Writer and designer Pat Ruddy tells us that a true links course is several golf courses.

"Upmarket, inland golf," he writes, clearly warming to the task, "has become something of a gardening contest. On the links, golf has more to do with raw Nature. This is a person's opportunity to step back into time, when humans first began to walk this planet. The best linksland holes are presented not just as great tests of physical skill and human spirit, but also as microlandscapes, with the player walking into one picture postcard after another, gasping at the splendor of it all, wondering how anything could be more perfect. On a links course, one looks back and sees the wonderland that one has just left. Time is suspended. A troubled world has vanished. Don't spoil it by resisting. Get out of that worrying, aching, snarling animal body that controls too much of your life. Forget dinner, forget the mobile phone, forget the stock market, forget the family….Get into the links and let it get into you. That, my friend, is golf.

Sir! Same again for Mr. Ruddy, if you please! Murphy's is it?

Golf Without Tears Stories of golfers and lovers By P.G. Wodehouse Breakaway Books, 1999 (Originally published in England in 1922) ISBN: 1-891369-08-3     $12.95

The only acceptable excuse for not having this reproduced (in paperback) classic is that you already have the stories somewhere else. And if you don't, for shame. What a tonic it is, a large G&T out on the imaginary Wood Hills veranda at twilight, to consider life through the ancient eyes of the Oldest Member. The technology, the money, the pervasive severity of golf today - set it aside. Do your mental health some good by affixing a strong grip ("V's" pointing to the shoulders) around some Wodehouse.

Follow genial fellows with names like Cuthbert, Rollo and Mortimer, willing to give affairs of the heart the old college try, assuming, of course, that they don't interfere with golf. As the O.M. likes to say, love is an emotion which your true golfer should always treat with suspicion. Romance vis-à-vis golf is a recurring theme, delightfully evident in the following exchange:

"You never take me anywhere."

"I asked you to come with me to watch the Open Championship."

"Why don't you ever take me to dances?"

"I can't dance."

"You could learn."

"But I'm not sure if dancing is a good thing for a fellow's game. You never hear of any first class pro dancing. James Barnes doesn't dance."

"Well, my mind's made up. Mortimer, you must choose between golf and me."

"But, darling. I went round in a hundred and one yesterday. You can't expect a fellow to give up golf when he's at the top of his game."

And so it goes, ad infinitum, like a Bob and Ray sketch. The endings are suitably upbeat, as in the above story that ends with yet another "young woman of ambition" huffing off to marry someone else, thankfully allowing the game to resume.

By all accounts a miserable golfer, Wodehouse is peerless in his understanding of the game's nuances. There are Scottish pros who say little more than Mpmh! and in one instance the interference of a "casual dog."

Astute readers will also enjoy literary references, both real and imagined. There's Sandy McBean's How to Become a Scratch Man Your First Season by Studying Photographs, perhaps an homage to Barnes's Picture Analysis of Golf Strokes, James Braid's Advanced Golf, Braid on the Push Shot, Vardon on the Swing, Duncan on the Divot, etc.

Bud, Sweat, & Tees A Walk on the Wild Side of the PGA Tour By Alan Shipnuck Simon & Schuster, 2001 ISBN: 0-7432-0070-5     $24.00

It's Coors Lite, apparently, as the beverage of choice for those following the sun but the artistic license of the title is excusable. The author memorably peels back the staid and square-jawed curtain fronting the PGA Tour. Backstage, the daily grind rivals events inside the ropes. On the surface the tour may maintain an enviable calm, but as is true of the golfers themselves, inside is a different story. En route to meeting Destiny, they worry about "blowing chunks" or, as Bill Glasson recalls of his first victory, "Winning had nothing to do with it. It wasn't even in the equation. . . It was just a matter of trying to finish without bleeding to death."

Life's undertow, presented through the adventures of El Paso rags to riches aspirant Rich Beem and caddie Steve Duplantis, is considerable. Child support, financial instability, isolation, family damage control, "trolling," bad management, sheer panic, alcohol; the stuff of daily struggle - and occasional triumph - is as much a part of survival on the PGA Tour as it is in any other line of work. As the affable Beem reflects at one point: "It's almost like golf is the easiest thing."

Of course most of us don't endure a weekly cut, nor struggle for our daily bread against the vicissitudes of something as fickle as tournament golf. And rarely will we pick up the paper, as Beem did en route to his first win, and worry that the shade of our blue shirt in USA Today makes us look like "fu*king Barney."

There is much here to ponder: the tiered tee time system that keeps Q School alumni and Monday dew sweepers down at the "ass end" of the draw, the fine print of the indentured servitude system of financial backing, the caddie-golfer dynamic.

This is Ball Four-type stuff - humane, humbling, miraculous, jaw-dropping, enlightening, honest, not to mention humorous. When Curtis Strange pops up next to Beem on the range, this very early on, the rube gag reflex kicked in. Beem took a deep breath. "I was just trying not to bounce any shanks off Curtis's ankle."

From the laundry list of colorful caddy nicknames (there's Tommy "Burnt Biscuits" Bennett, caddy for Tiger Woods in the 1995 Masters, who once made the mistake of going after some still hot biscuits) to the strategy, sometimes salacious detail (Fanny swears like a sailor!) and keen insights ("Eat like McDonald's, play like McDonald's," Breem's father told him), anyone more than casually interested in the underpinnings of pro golf will find this a captivating tale. Every generation of pro tourists should be so well served.



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