The Life of O'Reilly The Amusing Adventures of a Professional Irish Caddie By John O'Reilly & Ivan Morris Sleeping Bear Press, 2002 ISBN: 1-58536-059-7     $18.94

Known far and wide in pro golf circles and the horsey set, 'Reilly,' as he's known, has spent a remarkable 50 years on the bag, 25 of them caddying on the European PGA Tour. The stories are suitably genteel and unfailingly diplomatic. (Perhaps with a few pints, he might be cajoled into sharing the really good stuff.) He's obviously had a grand time, but one doesn't move among the cagey set of pro golfers without keeping his wit and his wits about him. He says he's never been fired which surely must be a record among the increasingly professional but once itinerant and more colorful clan.

There are some inspired tales. Pirate descendant Frank Nobilo once kicks the bottom of his bag with such force that his golf shoe punctures the bag and gets stuck. As Frank tries, as unobtrusively as possible at first, to disengage his foot, clubs fly, the scene gets ever more entertaining, and his blood pressure and embarrassment soars.

"I always believe that you should not trick around and try to finesse when your back is to the wall and under pressure," he suggests, profiling his long relationship with Padraig Harrington. "Situations like those are what pros do all the practice for, so they should simply trust themselves and perform automatically."

He's seen the world, had more than his share of adventures, hobnobbed with royalty and once, having lost all his money on the boat train, managed to get from Liverpool to Southampton to Holland to Berlin in part by hiding in a zipped golf bag. "Trying to beat the system," he writes "has always been a stimulating endeavour for traveling caddies." Indeed. No doubt he made an engaging companion, particularly on those days when the putts weren't dropping.

Take Dead Aim By Don Wade Sleeping Bear Press, 2002 ISBN: 1-58536-037-6    $24.95

The premise is close enough to the surface, proper foundation for potboiler stew. A well-drawn Faldo-esque World No. 1 finds himself the target of an IRA hitman.

Our golfer is glibly unconcerned and stoically goes about his business while everything is kept on the hush-hush, and the wheels of international cooperation turn amidst the manhunt.

One thinks back to Hubert Green, badly hooking his ball at Southern Hills upon learning of a death threat on Sunday of the U.S. Open, though - let's face it - the political implications of assassinating Hubert Green are hard to fathom, and it all turned out OK; one would suppose hardly meriting a file in the Tulsa FBI office (unless of course we haven't been told the ... whole story.)

If memory serves, and Sandy Tatum provides an interesting insight on the episode in his book - amazingly there were officials who didn't think Green should be told - Hubert sloughed it off, making light in referring to an old girlfriend. His drive luckily hit a tree and he got a member bounce, from which he saved par, steadied himself and went on to win.

Anyway, if any golfer could set aside the prospect of being in a gunman's cross hairs down the stretch of a major, perhaps it's Faldo. At least his fictional counterpart does the right thing when the bullet meant for him veers in the Rivera (the golf course, not the region) winds and instead fells his caddie. When shots ring out he dives on top of the Tiger-like character, in effect shielding him, clearly under the assumption that the charismatic phenom was the target; a nice touch.

The search takes us ultimately to the Masters and the turns will kill the monotony of a dull flight.

There are entertaining insider tour insights, particularly of Augusta National, but the most entertaining passages concern the pandemonium that routinely takes place behind the quiet façade of televised golf. Perhaps some day we'll get to hear the producer's snarl in the ear of commentator headphones. From this fictional treatment, it seems what transpires privately is often more entertaining than the product going out over the air.

A Love Affair with the Game By Frank "Sandy" Tatum, Jr. The American Golfer, 2002 ISBN: 1-888531-10-x    $25

"Playing the game in a cart simply is not and cannot be golf."

It's one of a number of noble pronouncements from the former USGA president who served notice, in a classic dispatch that the course set-up of our national championship is meant not to humiliate the best golfers, simply to identify them.

The reader's fervor may be tempered somewhat by reality, U.S. open rough notwithstanding. Carts are endemic. Money's ruining golf. It's an uncomfortable feeling rising to a standing 'O' only to realize no one else in the room has budged. But he's right about carts, as he is about the PGA's eschewing match play for its championship, what he calls "Elyball" - the whole ERC II fiasco, and a host of other defining moments that have been largely met by the great unwashed golfing public with a slow forming resounding yawn.

Less polemic than reflection, the book details an affair that is no mere dalliance. Looking back on some 70 years of golf, he recalls his excitement as a sprout in getting to watch Bobby Jones tee it up, and, later, the reclusive Howard Hughes and Katherine Hepburn at Wilshire Country Club.

He's toured Cypress Point by his own estimate "well over" a thousand times. He saw Henry Cotton shoot 66 in a gale at Muirfield alongside King George VI. ("The king appeared to be restraining himself from asking for Cotton's autograph.") He's savored the great links of Ireland and Scotland with Tom Watson, partnered Hogan at Seminole (They lost every bet), and played for Oxford in post-war Britain with no less than Darwin of The Times reporting the outcome.

His suggestion that Tiger "could've had transcendent import and impact" had he retained his amateur standing and stayed in school has, I would suggest, been disproved but on that we'll never know.

We could argue another point, that love affairs are best enjoyed by the participants, but a vicarious interest in Mr. Tatum's affair is rewarded. His affection is genuine and we should all be so fortunate to have such rich experiences. "I remain absolutely convinced," he suggests when the inevitable dark clouds gather, "that a breakthrough to consistently good golf is about to occur. The efficacy of that conviction includes:

that the expectation includes the realization that when it occurs, it will render all the lousy shots I have hit and lousy rounds I have played utterly meaningless."

Ah, the eternal optimistic. Therein lies the heart of a goof. To your health, sir!

The Golfer's Alphabet Rhymes by W.G. Van T. Sutphen Pictures by A.B. Frost Tuttle Publishing, 1967 ISBN: 0-8048-3459-8

Originally published in 1898, the rhymes are attributed to a Scribner's poetry and short story contributor. Van T. wrote extensively on golf, including "Official" golf guides in 1901 and 1902. A short story, "The Hong Kong Medal," surfaces in a recent collection alongside more familiar tales by Updike, Darwin, Marquis and Wodehouse.

The artist's hand embellished great works by Mark Twain, Charles Dickens and Lewis Carroll; his evocative and playful style remains instantly recognizable. Frost died in 1928, according to the New York Times, the "dean" of American illustrators. Together, they capture golf's spirit of joy, pain and sustenance better than a thousand successors.

The faces of the caddies, especially, provide the sort of priceless commentary, akin to 'Daisy' the dog in the Blondie strip - wonderfully expressive. Toiling in a game that then still perplexed mainstream America, the boys are at turns: studied, concerned, apoplectic, philosophical, stoic, gleeful, dour, bemused and overcome with joy and sadness. No wonder. The antics and guile of their golfers is classically inept and no less timeless.

"C is the Card, that began with a three, And was torn into bits at the seventeenth tee." The poor boy in the background can't believe what he's seeing, bag dropped, clubs akimbo as his man goes ballistic.

"N is the Niblick, retriever of blunders, And now and again it accomplishes wonders."

Here the caddie is depicted in a mild state of shock, the golfer having hit a miraculous shot. Recently returned from a harrowing caddie experience in Scotland, over a century later, I feel the lad's pain. It is a heavy burden for the golfer to bear, being a grave disappointment to one's caddie.

"E is the Eye, and its least little quiver Spells ruin. The moral: Look after your liver."

In this scene, the golfer stands poised over "one of those," another short missable putt. The caddie crouches behind, anxious, no doubt expecting the worst.

What the golfers in these psychological profiles would think could they see these expressive looks, there's no telling, but then being golfers, they're oblivious, absorbed in their shot. These caricatures are amusing to us sophisticates so many years later, but not quite so much when we stop to think about it.

Unplayable Lie A Chief Inspector St. George Mystery By Peter Jamesson Sleeping Bear Press, 2002, ISBN: 1-58536-088-0    $22.95

The chief inspector is an eminently likeable chap, diligent and upstanding and quite enthusiastic about the golf. His efforts to untangle an arson case with financial entanglements and familial suspects will be as comfortable a fit as a smoking jacket to those fans of the very British parlor 'who donit' mined by Dame Agatha and Conan Doyle.

After the opening histrionics, it does take quite a while for the plot to thicken. The golfing reader may wonder when it is that we get around to anything golf related, let alone the Old Course, the bare mention of which shows promise of some importance; pages of fluid conversation float by resembling a court transcript. The astute mystery reader who prides himself on separating clue from McGuffin will find the mind does wander.

All the elements are nevertheless methodically put in place, most importantly a well-conceived and executed crime and a verdant list of suspects. There is another fine line, which the author pulls off admirably: incorporating scientific detail and plausibly presenting it. We also get a pleasing walking tour of St. Andrews. Perhaps in future adventures the Chief Inspector will find more time to indulge his passion, showing us something of his personality.

"I never kid about golf," he tells his trusty underling, showing himself a student of the game's history. His approach to crime fighting is strictly fairways and greens.

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