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Tim Glover

Peter Higgs

In golf, nowhere is the mental strain more apparent that at the closing stages of a major championship. The crowd, absorbed in every shot, conveys the tension to the players, who are also involved in another contest - the mind game. Before missing the most notorious putt in the history of the Open Championship, Doug Sanders was already thinking of which side of the gallery he would turn to first to acknowledge the applause. When he missed a three foot putt that would have won him the old silver claret jug, there was no applause. Instead people reacted as if they had just witnessed a terrible accident - which, in a sporting context they had. It was Jack Nicklaus, rather than Sanders, who went for the jugular and, in the process, took possession of the jug. The line between victor and victim can be measured not only in millions of dollars but also in fractions of inches. `One minute you're on cloud nine, ' Sam Snead remarked

Fairway to Heaven

Victors and Victims of Golf's Choking Game

John P. Hagen

The St Andrews Old Course Starter's Box was sold in a controversial international auction on 10 September 2001, the day before the infamy of the Twin Towers attack. 'Play Away Please' recounts the glory of the little building in St Andrews, 'the home of golf', and tells the tale of those who used its services for 77 continuous years. 
 
Unlike many epics, the story does not centre on a rich dynasty or a heroic quest for the truth. Instead, it centres on the production of the perfect round of golf and the global marketing of the Box - one of the most celebrated buildings in the world of sport - as a brand and an icon. The book also chronicles the suspense and notoriety that greeted the Box after its voyage from Scotland to California, by way of the Panama Canal, and the role it assumed as an emotional balm for many in the aftermath of the 11 September atrocity. 
 
Alas, nothing is as simple as it seems and miracles are rare. The businessman who bought the Box was imprisoned before it reached Los Angeles, accused of stealing millions from the real-estate development that was to be its home. Eight years later, a happy ending was finally brought about, but only after a healthy dose of gut-wrenching fear and suspense became a part of the story. 
 
Supplemented with exclusive photographs, 'Play Away Please' is also a personal story of patronage and odyssey to assure the Box's preservation as the sporting world's consummate symbol of integrity and fair play. Along the way, the author brings to life the unforgettable local characters of Fife, celebrating their customs, lifestyle and unique command of the English language.

Play Away Please

The Tale of the Sale of Golf's Greatest Icon - The St Andrews Old Course Starter's Box

Lorne Rubenstein

In 1977, Lorne Rubenstein, an avid golfer, travelled to Dornoch in the Scottish Highlands. Young and adrift in life, he was profoundly affected by the experience. As he writes, 'My week in Dornoch introduced me to a place with which I felt a connection. A week wasn't living there, but it was enough for Dornoch to imprint itself on my mind.' 
 
 Twenty-three years later, in 2000, now an established golf writer, Rubenstein returned to Dornoch to spend an entire summer. He rented a flat close to the Royal Dornoch Golf Club and set out to explore the area on many levels. 
 
 Rubenstein writes about the melancholy history of the Highland Clearances, which have left the beautiful landscape sparsely populated to this day. He writes about the friendly and sometimes eccentric people who love their town, their golf and their single malt whisky, and who delight in sharing them with visitors. But most of all he writes about a summer lived in a community where golf is king and the golf course is part of the common lands where townspeople stroll of an evening. Rubenstein is able to return to thinking of golf as play, as opposed to a game of analysis and effort. 
 
 A Season in Dornoch is an affectionate portrait of a place and the people who live there, a fascinating look at golf and the spirit and skills it calls forth, and a perceptive and ultimately moving memoir of one man's quest to experience again the pure love of sport that he knew in his youth.

A Season in Dornoch

Golf and Life in the Scottish Highlands

Scott Murray

Simon Farnaby

The hilarious, heartwarming and - unbelievably - true story of Maurice Flitcroft, the World's Worst Golfer 
 
'The story of its greatest anti-hero is just what the game needs' Spectator 
 
When 46-year-old crane driver Maurice Flitcroft chanced his way into the Open - having never before played a round of golf in his life - he ran up a record-worst score of 121. The sport's ruling classes banned him for life. 
 
Maurice didn't take it lying down. In a hilarious game of cat-and-mouse with The Man, he entered tournaments again - and again, and again - using increasingly ludicrous pseudonyms such as Gene Pacecki, Arnold Palmtree and Count Manfred von Hoffmanstel (more often than not disguised by a fake moustache). 
 
In doing so, he sent the authorities into apoplexy, and won the hearts of fans from Muirfield to Michigan, becoming arguably the most popular - and certainly the bravest - sporting underdog the world has ever known 
 
'Hilarious' Esquire

The Phantom of the Open

Maurice Flitcroft, the World's Worst Golfer - NOW A MAJOR FILM STARRING MARK RYLANCE

Carl Hiaasen

"Every weekend, thousands of otherwise rational men and women are cursing, kicking at divots and smashing expensively milled putters against the trunks of immovable hardwood trees. These players go home in a toxic funk to inflict gloom upon their loved ones until the following Saturday, when they rush back to the golf course and do it all over again." 
 
In the summer of 2005, Carl Hiaasen picked up a golf club again for the first time in 32 years. He was not the best of players in 1973, and had certainly not got any younger in the intervening period. Undeterred, and weighed down by an increasing quantity of golf equipment and game-enhancing products acquired from adverts on The Golf Channel, who can see a sucker coming, Carl was soon hacking and shanking his way around the courses of Florida, and his obsession with the sport was rekindled. Animals were harmed during the making of this book. 
 
Over the course of the next 18 months, Carl's game got better, then worse, then slightly better, then much worse again, and he even managed to jinx Tiger Woods. On the way to finally summoning up the courage to compete in an actual tournament himself, Carl details the hilarious consequences of his misguided belief that he could actually play the game. We also learn that Justin Timberlake has a better golf handicap (6) than Bob Dylan (17), that Eagle Trace golf course contains not one trace of an eagle, and that Mind Drive capsules are not necessarily a good idea. 
 
But through all the misery and frustration (save the odd glorious shot), golf took up residence in Carl's heart again. Fairway to Hell is the ultimate tale of the trials and tribulations of the amateur golfer, but also the heart-warming story of how the game brought together the generations of the Hiaasen family.

Fairway To Hell

Deepak Chopra

Golf for Enlightenment is the fable of Adam Seaver, an ordinary person, with a terrible game. Adam meets a mysterious young teaching pro named Wendy who, in seven crisp, short yet profound lessons, teaches him things that seem baffling at first: 
- You and the ball are one 
- Find the now, and you will find the shot 
- Let the game play you 
 
From the moment they begin to put these lessons into practice, what was previously a humiliation turns into a transforming experience, not just for Adam's score but for his whole life. 
 
Long a famous writer on spiritual subjects, hailed as the poet-philosopher of mind-body medicine, Deepak Chopra found himself fascinated by the game of golf. He could not escape its parallels to life: 'Golf is like lightning caught in a bottle. It can turn triumph into disaster in a split second.' Faced with the wild ups and downs of his own game, Chopra crystallised a teaching based on mindfulness, the ability to remain calm and focused, relaxed and powerful at the same time. Mindfulness can improve any golf game, from the beginner's to the tour professional's. And it can improve anybody's life, no matter what game they play - or none.

Golf For Enlightenment

The Seven Lessons for the Game of Life

Vivien Saunders

Vivien Saunders, a former British open champion, tells golfers of every standard how to get the most out of their practice sessions. The book gives exercises and ideas to help player’s correct faults and improve their skills. There are ideas for competitive practice routines in pairs or groups, exercises for loosening and strengthening the golfing muscles and ideas for monitoring progress on and off the course. Vivien Saunders, who in 1987 received the award as Britain's top woman sports coach, is a graduate psychologist and an established author of golf instructional books.

The Complete Book Of Golf Practice

Tom Cox

As a teenager in Nottingham, Tom Cox was possessed. Despite the best endeavours of his frankly rather groovy parents, nascent fashion sense and regular exposure to credible music from an early age, he was inexorably drawn into the bizarre, esoteric world that is golf, with its male-bonding rituals and strange trousers. And thus a strange hybrid was born -- from 1988 to 1995, Tom was Midlands golf's answer to Iggy Pop. 
 
Assisted by his fellow junior members at the local club, he cut a swathe through the golfing establishment, putting dead animals in his fellow golfers' shoes, setting fire to the club professional's shop, bringing Colin Montgomerie close to tears and repeatedly wearing the wrong colour of socks. On the golf course he felt simultaneously at home and somehow alienated. But Tom also wanted to be (and became) the best, taking five years out of normal adolescent existence to live, breathe, walk and talk nothing but the sport he loved. 
 
Nice Jumper is the story of how Tom tried to fit in, failed, got down to a handicap of two, tried to fit in again, got suspended from the club, got corrupted by rock and roll, then attempted to corrupt golf itself. Original, poignant and highly entertaining, it's a book about one teenager's obsessive attempts to attain sporting nirvana - despite the slings and arrows of outrageous fashion.

Nice Jumper

Timothy O'Grady

Weather, hazards, poor coordination, erratic biorhythms, hangovers, an unruly mind and statistical improbability - these are just a few of the obstacles to hitting a pure golf shot. Che Guevara, Alice Cooper, Dennis Hopper, and Tiger Woods have all struggled with the above to a greater or lesser degree. And, since being initiated as a child into the arcane mysteries of the game of golf, Timothy O'Grady too has carried in his mind an obsession with the sport, shrugging off its social unacceptability and embracing its history, its literature and his own private battle with the club.   For O'Grady, the obsession has, at times, been all-consuming and On Golf is structured around a personal history - how his father played and taught him, how the game dominated his teenage years, and how father and son continued to talk manically about the game even as the older man lay fading away in the bed in which he would die. But O'Grady also discusses the rich literature of golf, from Tobias Smollett to P. G. Wodehouse, and tells us of the terrifying and glorious occasion when he got to play a round with Arnold Palmer. On Golf is the work of a great writer and a good golfer. Timothy O'Grady still dreams that he may one day become a truly fine player but in the meantime he has given us a book which beautifully describes his love affair with the game and goes to the root of the obsession that captivates so many.

On Golf

David Godwin

Forget the Ryder Cup, forget Rory McIlroy, forget keeping your head still and correcting your putting stance. Forget eagles and albatrosses and definitely forget holes-in-one. David Godwin has a dream, the same dream held by millions of amateur golfers. He's not aiming to break on to the pro circuit, he's not aiming to break par. David Godwin is going to break 80. Or it's going to break him. 
 
Written with humour and charm, Breaking 80 is a book for those who recognise all too well the pleasure of a sweetly struck seven iron to within a few feet of the pin, followed by the agonizing fury of a three-putt back and forth across the cup.

Breaking 80

George Plimpton

From the author of Paper Lion 
 
What happens when a weekend athlete – of average skill at best – joins the professional golf circuit? George Plimpton spent a month of self-imposed torture on the PGA tour to find out, meeting amateurs, pros, caddies, officials, fans and hangers-on along the way. 
 
In The Bogey Man we find golf legends, adventurers, stroke-saving theories, superstitions, and other golfing lore, and best of all, Plimpton’s thoughts and experiences – frustrating, humbling and, sometimes, thrilling – from the first tee to the last green.

The Bogey Man

A Month on the PGA Tour

Donegan Lawrence

It is sport's greatest event. The Ryder Cup - Europe versus the USA, three days of golfing brilliance at the Belfry featuring the best players in the world and the loudest, most partisan fans this side of an Old Firm derby. Lawrence Donegan - author, musician, European PGA Tour caddy (retired) - is determined play his patriotic part. 
 
Too mean to buy a ticket, and cruelly denied a place on the European team by a selection process emphasising the ability to play golf, Donegan tries - and fails - to become Lee Westwood's bagman at the Belfry. Then he lands the perfect job - Ryder Cup marshal. Free clothes, free food, his very own 'Quiet Please' paddle ... and look at that uninterrupted view! 
 
This is a Ryder Cup story with a twist, a golf fanatic's story from the back of the tee by Lawrence Donegan, author of the bestselling Four-iron in the Soul.

Quiet Please

In this very funny sports book (a cross between Nick Hornby and Bill Bryson) young journalist Lawrence Donegan tells the story of the summer he spent caddying for Scottish golfer Ross Drummond, ranked over 400 in the world,on the European Tour. Thisis the inside story of the geniuses,the cheats, the gurus and the hangers-on that make up the golf scene. 
 
&quot;A joy to read. Not since Bill Bryson plotted a random route through small-town America has such a breezy idea for a book had a happier or funnier result&quot; - Lynne Truss, The Times 
 
&quot;Funny, beautifully observed and it tells you things about sport in general and golf in particular that nobody else had thought to pass on&quot; - Patrick Collins, Mail on Sunday

Four Iron in the Soul

P.G. Wodehouse

'Wodehouse would have made an excellent sports writer' Sunday Times 
 
As Wodehouse’s biographer Frances Donaldson observed, it was vitally important to the boy Plum that he was ‘above average at games’. Luckily, he was known at school as ‘a noted athlete, a fine footballer and cricketer [and] a boxer’, and sport inspired much of his earliest writings, as well as some of his very finest and laugh-out-loud funniest. 
 
Wodehouse wrote with trademark wit on a rich range of games – and on cricket and golf, in particular – as well as anyone ever has, bringing a knowledge and a passion born of practice. 
 
 English cricket inspired in Wodehouse what he himself long considered to be his favourite work; and yet America (which he first visited keenly and then came to call home) led him to the love of baseball, and golf – enthusiasms that drew him to new tales for new audiences, including the celebrated golf stories which John Updike described as ‘the best fiction ever done about the sport.’ 
 
This rollicking anthology, selected, edited and introduced by the novelist Richard T. Kelly, offers a vivid picture of Wodehouse at play – in the ring, at the crease, on the tee – which is guaranteed to please any sporting crowd. Beginning with early journalism, taking in extracts from novels and short stories in their entirety, it all adds up to a medal-winning collection.

Above Average at Games

The Very Best of P.G. Wodehouse on Sport

Vivien Saunders is a top golf coach with an enviable record of producing national champions and successful international teams. A trained psychologist as well as a former British Ladies' Open Champion, she runs her own golf club in St Neots, Cambridgeshire, and is the author of several successful instructional books on golf including The Golfer’s Mind, The Complete Book of Golf Practice, and The Complete Woman Golfer. She also helped Nick Faldo with his Golf: The Winning Formula. In this invaluable book she goes on to describe clearly and in detail the techniques needed to become a successful golfer. She looks at a player's best swing and asks how he or she can produce this regularly. She separates the elements of the swing and systematically reconstructs them. She deals with each type of shot, from driving to putting, with a simple technical analysis. She advises on the short game, how to get out of problem situations including bunker play, and she identifies common faults and advises how to overcome them. As all golfers know, the game is won and lost in the wind and no one is better able to advise on the mental approach than Vivian Saunders. With instructional photographs adding to the text and with in-depth studies of the techniques of some of the world's top golfers.

Advanced Golf

Better Shot-Making for Better Scoring - Every Time You Play

James Dodson

FINAL ROUNDS celebrates a lifetime of golf shared by a father and son who take on a last trip together to the finest courses of England and Scotland. Their relationship is forged on the golf course, and whatever problems they have are worked out while smashing drives and lining up putts. But Jim's father is 80 years old and just before they leave for a visit to the Scottish links where his father played during the First World War, he finds out his cancer has returned and he only has few months to live. The trip to the Scottish links takes on a new meaning, as they determine to honour their lives and love together (for each other, their families, and for the game). While playing the world-renowned courses as St Andrews and Muirfield, they encounter great golf lore and legend; but more importantly, a son learns the secrets of his father's past and to admire his father even more than he thought possible. In the process, he takes home some very important lessons about the meaning of family. Written with searing honesty and unbounded wit, FINAL ROUNDS is a tribute to a very special game and the fathers and sons who make it so.

Final Rounds

Mark James

Into the Bear Pit is the most talked about sports book for years. Throughout the summer of 2000, Mark James's inside story of the Brookline Ryder Cup was never out of the sports headlines and took up a lengthy residence in the upper reaches of the Sunday Times' bestseller list. 
Fuelled by a media feeding frenzy, the controversy rapidly gathered enormous momentum and eventually led to James's resignation as one of Sam Torrence's assistants for the 2001 Ryder Cup at Belfry. 
Read about Mark James's rocky relationships with Nick Faldo and Tony Jacklin and the infamous disposal of Faldo's good luck letter. Read about the extraordinary behaviour of American Players, wives, officials and spectators during the 'Battle of Brookline'. 
Read the most explosive golf book ever published.

Into The Bear Pit

The Hard-Hitting Inside Story of the Brookline Ryder Cup

Norman Dabell

Everyone remembers a winner, especially when victory comes in the oldest major golf championship in the world. But what about the players who got to the brink and then let the ancient trophy slip through their fingers? The Open has always featured triumph and disaster since it began in 1860 and this book is all about the latter of those 'two impostors'. From Doug Sanders' missed three-footer in 1970 to Monty's brave bid to finally end his major wait in 2005, at last the Open's hard-luck stories can be told. 
 
 What happened when the chips were down for Tony Jacklin and how did it affect his major chances from then on? 
 Whose 'air-shot' possibly cost him the Open? 
 Why did Tom Watson hit a two-iron at the Road Hole? 
 How could a marshal have cost Bernhard Langer his best chance of winning an Open? 
 Why didn't Jesper Parnevik check the leaderboard in 1994? 
 Who had a vision he was going to sink one of the most famous putts in Open history? 
 Why did Jean Van de Velde have such a nightmare at the Barry Burn at Carnoustie in 1999? 
 
Read about those who had one hand on the Claret Jug but, in the end, didn't lift it in triumph.

One Hand on the Claret Jug

How They Nearly Won the Open

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