Top
golf prose: A guide to the season's biggest golf books
Adam
Daifallah
National
Post
Now
that the warmer weather has arrived and the course conditions are good, June is
a great month for golf. And soon, the playing of the major championships will
start occupying our Sunday afternoon television screens -- the first of which,
the U.S. Open, takes place in two weeks at storied Shinnecock Hills in the
While
you're waiting for the TV coverage to start, you might consider picking up one
of the string of new golf books on the market. I'm not referring to
instructional books (I've found that any gadget or book purporting to lower
your score by X strokes in 90 days or less is usually best left on the shelf),
but rather books about the golf world's remarkable personalities.
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One
of the most talked-about golf books of the season is Ken Venturi's Getting Up
& Down: My 60 Years in Golf (Triumph Books, 272 pp., $43.95). Though
Venturi had a decent career in professional golf in the 1950s and '60s, he's
best known as the recently retired voice of weekend golf on CBS, a job he held
for 35 years. But Venturi will likely now be remembered for what he alleges in
this book: that Arnold Palmer cheated.
Back
at the 1958 Masters, Palmer was in the lead by one over Venturi after 11 holes.
On
But
later on, Palmer, thinking he might be able to get a more favourable ruling by
a different official, played a second ball (technically illegal under the
rules), taking relief from the poor lie. This time he made par. After the
round, Clifford Roberts, Augusta National's chairman, ruled that Palmer could
use the score for the second ball. And Palmer won by a single shot.
Because
of his job at CBS, Venturi has kept his feelings about this to himself. Now
that he's gone public, he has encountered much criticism for impugning the
reputation of golf's most beloved figure.
The
Palmer brouhaha aside, this book is well worth reading. Though Venturi cannot
be counted among the first tier of greats from his era, he had a fascinating
life and career. And his story -- particularly his win at the 1964 U.S. Open
where he suffered severe dehydration and defied doctors orders to quit -- is
legendary.
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Venturi
isn't the only TV personality to put pen to paper this season. NBC's Johnny
Miller's I Call the Shots: Straight Talk About the Game of Golf Today (Gotham
Books, 268 pp., $38) is a new collection of tightly written, no-nonsense
commentaries on a variety of issues facing the game. For example, Miller
laments what he sees as signs of decline in the gentleman's game: the
jettisoning of traditions and etiquette. Players are swearing more and throwing
temper tantrums; cellphones ring on the course; standards of clothing are sliding.
Miller also wades in on whether Tiger Woods can one day eclipse Jack Nicklaus
as the greatest player ever, assesses some of his favourite players, offers
advice on practising techniques and recommends some changes to the rules of
golf.
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For
something a little more solemn, there's Caddy for Life: The Bruce Edwards Story
(Little Brown, 416 pp., $36.95) by the esteemed sports writer John Feinstein.
Edwards, the long-time caddy of golf legend Tom Watson, died in April at age 49
of Lou Gehrig's Disease (ALS) -- just before the opening round of the Masters
and the release of this book. Edwards became the golf world's darling last year
because of his dogged determination to continue caddying despite a very visible
physical deterioration.
The
book, written by the most admired writer in the game today, is a fitting
tribute to Edwards. It is a candid look at the life of the caddy: the unsung
hero who does so much of the tour pro's dirty work, but shares in so little of
the glory. And it is an emotional look at the devastation of living with ALS.
Caddy for Life also serves as a mini-biography of Edwards' former boss Tom
Watson -- perhaps the greatest player of the post-Nicklaus, pre-Tiger Woods
era.
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Before
Nicklaus, Bobby Jones, Sam Snead, Byron Nelson and the smoothest swinger of
all, Ben Hogan, were considered the game's greatest. James Dodson, an
accomplished golf writer and columnist for Golf magazine, has done a great
service to the game by writing a comprehensive, detailed and nuanced biography
of the latter: Ben Hogan: An American Life (Doubleday, 528 pp., $39.95).
This
book is among the best golf biographies ever written. Hogan, known as The Hawk,
has always been considered somewhat of an enigma. The Texas-born legend was a
shy and private man, which may have been a partial result of the shock of
witnessing, at the age of nine, his father commit suicide. Hogan never
discussed the circumstances of the death until very late in life, which Dodson
likened to exorcizing "the demons of self-doubt that had doggedly pursued
him for more than 75 years."
Few
broke Hogan's shell. Unlike any before him, however, Dodson was given full
access to the late golfer's files, friends and family members. Hogan's wife,
Valerie, fully co-operated on the book, which is authorized.
The
result is an intimate portrait of a complex man and his remarkable career on
and off the golf course. He came famously close to being killed in 1949 after a
head-on collision with a bus. Doctors predicted he would die or at least sustain
serious injuries. Few believed he would ever golf again. Yet he triumphantly
returned to competitive play the following season and won the U.S. Open at
Merion in spectacular fasion. He went on to win a record three major
championships out of four during the 1953 season.
While
the Dodson book is the most satisfying, each of these books is a worthwhile
read. So enjoy the June weather, keep 'em on the fairways and remember to steer
clear of instructional books.
©
National Post 2004