June/July Book Reviews
We in the Met Area get to play on many exceptional golf courses. Sometimes we forget there are other locations in this great land of ours with courses that can take your breath away as well.
One special area is the Carolinas, with 923 regulation courses as of 2018. Lee Pace, a North Carolina native, has played and written about them for more than three decades. His latest contribution, "Good Walks: Rediscovering the Soul of Golf at Eighteen of the Carolinas' Best Courses" (University of North Carolina Press, $40), highlights many fabled courses and a few most golfers will want to get to know.
Half the book is devoted to his select 18. The other half focuses on his steadfast love of walking the golf course. Pace is a true believer in not riding with a single companion when he can have much more conversation with everyone in the group as they head to their next shots. Walking provides the opportunity to absorb the nuances of the course design, its beautiful surroundings, and the course's history and special attributes -- not to mention the benefit of walking off those calories gained at lunch prior to the round.
Each essay portrays a course virtually hole-by-hole, but Pace's narrative is crisp, descriptive, and eloquent. He guides the reader around well-known courses including Kiawah Island's Ocean Course (SC), Pinehurst No. 2 (NC), Harbour Town Golf Links (SC), and Mid-Pines Inn and Golf Club (NC). He details how famous golf course architects such as Donald Ross, Seth Raynor, Pete Dye, Bill Coore, and Tom Fazio would stand on a plot of land and envision and then create a golf course of beauty, simplicity, and great challenge to even the most skilled golfer.
Many readers will be introduced to classic but not overly familiar courses including Palmetto Golf Club (SC), Roaring Gap Club (NC), The Dunes Golf and Beach Club (SC), and hidden-away modern gems such as Old Chatham Golf Club (NC).
At each one, Pace plays with a member or a golfer who prefers to walk too, and relates their reasons why. Pace provides the ages of his playing companions -- male and female -- most of whom are senior citizens who appreciate golf's traditions, especially the walk which they claim is never spoiled.
The book is filled with superb photographs -- many by the Met Area's Larry Lambrecht. These complement Pace's informative and colorful prose formed by a life-long love of golf life in the Carolinas. The book should inspire a reader to quickly head south to one of these celebrated venues -- and once there, to refuse a golf cart and walk the course.
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If you ever wish to start a barroom brawl at a Texas golf clubhouse, just bring up the Hale America National Open and hold on to your 10-gallon hat. Over the past eight decades many have made it a matter for serious discussion . Veteran sportswriter Peter May tackles the subject in his new book, "The Open Question - Ben Hogan and Golf's Most Enduring Controversy" (Rowman & Littlefield, $24.95). The book could easily have been titled, “Did The Hawk Win a Fifth U.S. Open?”
From the start of U.S. participation in World War II, most professional sporting events here came to a halt, with the exception of baseball and golf. In 1942, the USGA sanctioned the Hale America National Open, conducted on the same weekend as its canceled U.S. Open and with a stellar cast of the nation's elite professional golfers including the event's winner, Ben Hogan, who contended it was an Open in every sense but its name. He went to his grave believing this represented his first U.S. Open Championship, though Hogan didn’t win the first of his four official National Opens until 1948.
Many argued, especially famed golf writer Dan Jenkins, that the Hale America victory counts as one of Hogan's five Open titles, while the USGA remains steadfast it was not an official U.S. Open for a variety of reasons. The author dissects each faction's argument, pro and con; he takes a careful and balanced journalistic approach before presenting his own conclusion on the matter.
May relates stories of other players of Hogan's generation who competed in the Hale America, including Byron Nelson, Craig Wood, Lloyd Mangrum, Jug McSpaden, Jimmy Demaret, the Turnesa Brothers, Herman Keiser, and Bobby Jones. He also provides a retrospective of the role golfers and other athletes played during that era. May notes that golf offered a significant and positive contribution to society during a national emergency, not unlike its role in the past twelve months.
The book covers a great deal of territory and has the air of a thriller. The author gives readers the chance to develop their own conclusions and be part of the continuing controversy, which may never be settled to anyone's satisfaction. But remember: Hold onto your hat!
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Twenty-five years ago one of golf's historic moments occurred outside Portland, Oregon, at Pumpkin Ridge GC as Tiger Woods attempted to claim an unprecedented third straight U.S. Amateur Championship. His opponent was a less-known University of Florida sophomore with his girlfriend carrying his bag.
The showdown between Steve Scott and Woods had the golf world entranced. Scott built an early 5-up lead after the morning 18 and was still 1-up with two to play when he performed the kind of sportsmanlike act that’s central to golf's culture -- and may have changed the outcome. The tell-all book is appropriately titled, "Hey, Tiger -- You Need to Move Your Mark Back" (Skyhorse Publishing, $19.99).
Written with Tripp Bowen, a former Augusta National GC caddie and author of three books, Scott writes openly of his rise as a highly-ranked amateur golfer and recounts the matches leading up to this epic battle. He reveals the depth of emotions that flow through a competitive golfer's mind, whether he’s playing for a national championship or fighting to make the cut in a professional tournament.
The book's subtitle, "9 Simple Words That Changed the Game of Golf Forever" may be debatable, but it conveys the substance of some of the very few words Scott and Woods exchanged that day. Tiger’s ball marker had been on Scott’s line, and Scott asked him to move the mark to the side; Tiger did so, but when it was his turn to putt he began to place it where the marker now stood. In the moment, Tiger had forgotten to move the marker back – but before Tiger could play from an incorrect spot, a mistake that would have cost him the hole and the match, Scott uttered the words in the title and saved his opponent from an unforgettable gaffe.
Scott's simple but honorable act was hailed by the media, top-ranked PGA Tour pros and leaders of corporate America, including Phil Knight, who immediately after Tiger's victory speech -- which did not even mention Scott, signed the winner to a Nike contract worth $40 million.
Scott spent several years in the Met Area, first as an assistant pro at Canoe Brook, and later as head professional at Paramount Country Club in New City, N.Y. Mostly self-taught as a golfer, he graciously credits the few instructors who gave him lessons when he was a youngster at no charge as well as access to unlimited golf on the range and the golf course. He offers praise and appreciation to these PGA professionals who taught him much including the Rules of Golf and the importance of good sportsmanship.
Giving the book a further personal touch are the pages of photographs of Scott as a promising junior player, from his collegiate career, and as a member of the 1997 and '99 Walker Cup teams. A chapter written by his wife Kristi, his caddy on that fateful day, adds another perspective.
The book provides a close look at one man's defining moment in his golf life, but this time -- unlike when he missed his putt at the second playoff hole -- he comes out a winner.
-Les Schupak