Best golf books: 14 books every golfer should read

If you really love the game, you’ll appreciate a good read, and not just the one your caddy gives you. here they are: 14 golf books that belong in every golfer’s library.

1. Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf

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by ben hogan

hogan searched the land for answers. then he wrote them down in this sharply focused volume, laying out the fundamentals of golf’s most famous repeatable swing. do exactly what it tells you. then do it again, several million times.

2. the big miss: my years training tiger woods

by hank haney

You could call it kiss and tell, but it’s more thoughtful than that. During his six years working as Tiger’s swing coach, a period during which Woods won six major titles, Haney stood by his famous student both on and off the course, evaluating his mechanics but also trying to figure out what made Woods tick. Tiger. the coach is frank about everything he found troubling. but despite all the criticism of him, he too is on a quest to understand. the portrait that emerges is complex, human. Tiger’s biggest fear on the course was hitting “the big miss,” a shot so wild it would ruin the round. But as Haney demonstrates, the phrase also works as a metaphor.

3. the best game ever played

by mark frost

Year: 1913. A blue-collar boy named Francis Ouimet, who grew up across the street from the Country Club in Brookline and learned to caddy there, enters the United States. he opens on that same course, and against all odds, he wins the title, beating two of the best players in the world in an 18-hole playoff. With a 10-year-old caddy in his bag. you can’t make these things up. luckily for mark frost, and for us, the author didn’t have to.

4. leslie nielson’s stupid little golf book

by leslie nielson and henry barba

good golf is elusive. but terrible golf? that is within your reach. Your guide on this quest is the late great comedic actor Leslie Nielson, who played bumbling Lt. Frank Drebin on the Naked Guns series but was also unlucky on the golf course in real life. here he shares the secrets of abject mediocrity and mendacity, with advice on everything from faking your score to infuriating your opponent. A firm believer in the fundamentals (“always hold the stick at the thin end where the length of the rubber is, and not the end that has that curved metal or wooden thing with the number on it”), Nielson also understood that the intangibles are often what matter most—hence his breakdown of a practical move like “the brusharoo,” a perplexing tactic in which a golf cart driver drives so close to trees and hedges that he almost knocks his passenger out of his car. seat.

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5. golf is not a perfect game

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by bob rotella

The most important distance in the game is the space between the ears, and the best book on the region is by Rotella, the mind game guru known for his work with Nick Price and Davis Love. Mixing anecdotes with vivid observations, Rotella digs deep without falling into psycho-babble. his tone is conversational, his pragmatic advice and ideas applicable beyond the course. “Confidence is crucial to good golf,” he writes. it is also “simply the sum of the thoughts you have about yourself.”

6. golf in the kingdom

by michael murphy

depending on who you ask, this 1971 novel about a young traveler’s encounters in the scottish highlands with golf pro and mystic shivas irons is either a funny story imbued with deep spiritual meaning or a bunch of nonsense of the new age. with a kick of whiskey. We’re not taking sides, except to say that it’s a must read if you want to join the grill debate.

7. the boogeyman: a month on the pga tour

by george plimpton

a weekend pirate gets between the ropes and lives to tell the tale. Many golf writers have tried this device, but Plimpton did it early and did it better, with a colorful tale that features not only the players, but also the eccentric caddies, the candid-talking officials, the fans who clink cocktails and a variety of parasites. he was lucky to be working in a less guarded era, when access to the tour was less controlled. But above all he was lucky enough to be George Plimpton, a bewildered observer with an eye for the absurd, blessed with an incomparable writing style.

8. to linksland: a golf adventure

by michael bamberger

Less than halfway through the journey of his life, Michael Bamberger quits his job as a newspaper sportswriter and crosses the pond on a journey of discovery that doubles as an investigation into the game. Along the way, he caddys for a talented oddball, plays some of the world’s oldest courses, and absorbs the wisdom of a Scottish sage. it’s the kind of trip you wish you had taken when you were younger. Thanks to Bamberger’s lyrical prose, you’ll feel like you did. [Full disclosure: Bamberger is now a senior writer for Sports Illustrated and a contributor to Golf.com.]

9. the match: the day golf changed forever

by mark frost

When is a friendly four-ball better than a friendly four-ball? when the players are a quartet of the greatest in history, and the place is cypress point. True to its title, The Match is an account of the folkloric duel between amateur stars Harvey Ward and Ken Venturi, and professional legends Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan. But the book also breaks away from the action on the field to tell a larger story about the birth of Cypress Point and the origins of the Crosby Clambake, while also describing a sport in transition, whose axis shifts away from its amateur roots. the result is a rich cultural history, highlighted by some of the best shots the world has ever seen.

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10. final rounds: a father, a son, the golf trip of a lifetime

by james dodson

“Golf is mostly about who you choose to play with,” writes the author, whose partner in this book is his dying father, Brax. Learning that the elder Dodson’s cancer has returned, leaving him with only months to live, the two men set out on a golf trip to the venerable golf courses of Scotland and England. The game has always been a bond between them, but never more so than on this trip, which takes place in the countryside but also in pubs, where Brax gives the locals a few pints and shows off a sunny perspective that Dodson writes would have “ taught the entire hemlock society the power of positive thinking.” Given its content, you’d expect the book to be a maudlin read, but Dodson doesn’t take the syrup, leaving room for the story’s bittersweet sweetness to come through. golf is like life, it is often said. final rounds exposes the similarities.

11. I call him “mr. president”: stories of golf, fishing and life with my friend george h. w. bush

by ken raynor and michael patrick shiels

an unlikely friendship that developed between ken raynor and president george h. w. bush, and raynor’s i call him “mr. president” takes you inside their relationship that led to countless stories and memories on the golf course. raynor, longtime head pro at cape arundel golf club in kennebunkport, maine , and Bush met during one of the president’s annual summer sabbaticals. The friendship continued from there, and here Raynor reflects on his rounds and experiences with Bush, who passed away on Nov. January 30, 2018, the duo played at everywhere (augusta national and on the white house putting green to name a few) and raynor even played with him in the final round of bush as president a new updated version of the book was recently published to reflect the events since the death of the president.

12. the complete golfer

edited by herbert warren wind

Just like a high handicapper over 18, golf writing covers a lot of ground. This anthology spans the broad genre, bringing together works of short fiction, humor, history, and instruction from the likes of P.G. Wodehouse, Bernard Darwin, Gene Sarazen, Henry Leach and more. no matter the subject: the personality quirks of a star player; the idiosyncrasies of his swing: golf, you realize, is a good copy, interesting enough even for non-golfers. however, let’s be honest: the golf architecture pages are probably best left to the hardcore devotees.

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13. the stubborn victims of inexorable destiny

by dan jenkins

if you’re not familiar with early jenkins, here’s a good excuse to familiarize yourself: a collection of reports, essays, and reminiscences from one of the all-time greats of golf journalism. any lackey in the press room can report the facts; jenkins does it by being completely fun, a skill he demonstrates in myriad ways, whether recapping the action in augusta or counting his own rounds in a “windy, dusty, nonchalantly mowed, rock-hard, broomstick-flagged, practically treeless”. ”residentially surrounded public field” which he and his friends called govern hill. too much golf writing is blindly reverent. Jenkins never gave up (“I keep getting invited to Winged Dip and Burning Foot and all those fancy clubs sophisticated New Yorkers are supposed to frequent…but I usually apologize”), but he also resisted low shots. , and showed respect where it was needed. it was due. One of the book’s most compelling passages captures the charm of Arnold Palmer, whom Jenkins describes as “the most immeasurable of all golf champions,” not for all he won, but for “the nobility” with which he lost and the “no mix”. joy that he brought in trying.” the king, jenkins concludes, has been “the most stubborn victim of us all.”

14. the little red book of harvey penick: lessons and teachings of a lifetime in golf

by harvey penick with bud shrake

“select a club, maybe a 7-iron, and love it like a sweetheart.” when it comes to golf instruction, it’s not always what you say but how you say it. And no one said it better than Harvey Penick, the driving range house poet. Over the span of a long life devoted to the game, Penick showed a knack for making golf sound simple, whether working with a big winner (Ben Crenshaw, Tom Kite, Mickey Wright were just a few of his famous pupils), or help a rookie pick up the ball. At the end of each workday at the Austin Country Club, where he served as the chief professional for nearly 50 years, Penick made a habit of scribbling advice and observations in a red, spiral-bound notebook. “aim for the target”. “Swing the club like a weed cutter.” “sitting next to good golfers at dinner time; their confidence will make you a better putter.” Late in Penick’s life, those pearly phrases became the source material for what now ranks as the best-selling golf book of all time.

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